Nonfungible token marketplace Blur has announced it will shut down its website next month, a move that has surprisingly garnered cheers from some NFT collectors. The platform, which briefly overtook OpenSea as the largest NFT marketplace by trading volume, made the announcement on X on Monday, stating that its frontend will be closed on November 12. However, its onchain marketplace will continue to operate. Additionally, Blend, Blur’s peer-to-peer perpetual NFT lending protocol, will stop matching new loans, with borrowers given until November 12 to repay outstanding loans or face default.
The shutdown has reignited criticism of Blur’s strategy, which included optional creator royalties and token rewards that encouraged traders to bid and flip NFTs. This approach helped Blur dominate the NFT market in 2023 but also contributed to a shift toward lower creator royalties across the industry. Rival OpenSea later adopted optional creator fees for new collections in response.
Blur launched on October 19, 2022, allowing sellers to customize royalty payments while offering larger token rewards to those who paid higher creator royalties. However, it entered a market where royalty protections were already weakening, as competing marketplace Magic Eden had moved to optional royalties the previous week. By July 2023, effective creator royalty fees had fallen to 0.6% from an average of 2.5% in 2022, largely due to Blur’s growth and its minimum royalty policy.
The decision to shut down the frontend and wind down new lending activity on Blend comes amid a significant slump in NFT trading. Data from CryptoSlam shows that total NFT sales in September were $167 million over 2.9 million transactions, far below the peak of $6 billion in sales over 13.7 million transactions in January 2022. Other NFT platforms, such as Gemini-owned Nifty Gateway, Rodeo, and Foundation, have also announced plans to wind down or close.