OpenSea, the leading marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), announced in a tweet on Feb. 17 that it would take a controversial step to temporarily waive its marketplace fees. With this it wants to compete with Blur, which was launched in October 2022. Blur has not charged any transaction costs since its launch.
2/ Context: There’s been a massive shift in the NFT ecosystem.
In October, we started to see meaningful volume and users move to NFT marketplaces that don’t fully enforce creator earnings.
Today, that shift has accelerated dramatically despite our best efforts.
— OpenSea (@opensea) February 17, 2023
NFT marketplaces war
On February 15, Blur passed Opensea in terms of trading volume for the first time since its launch. However, OpenSea’s weekly volume was still much higher. According to data from Nansen, Opensea’s weekly volume was 36,608 ETH, while Blur’s was only 11,424 ETH. In addition, between February 7 and 14, OpenSea averaged 8.37 times more sales than Blur and about 8 times more wallets.
However, the gap between the two platforms is getting smaller and smaller. On Wednesday, Opensea had only 1.63 times more sales than Blur. Also, the number of active wallets was only twice as much as that of the competitor.
NFT marketplace OpenSea measures
In response, OpenSea is announcing three major changes in its tweet. First, it will reduce fees to 0% for a limited time. Second, OpenSea will move to optional creator revenue (minus 0.5%) for all collections without on chain enforcement and lastly, marketplaces with the same policy will not be blocked by the Operator Filter, a feature intended to help creators secure their revenue for the resale of their work.
OpenSea admitted in the series of tweets that it is losing users to other NFT marketplaces that don’t fully enforce creator revenue. The new measures are therefore an attempt to revive OpenSea’s dominance.
OpenSea believes it defended creator revenue for all collections while reiterating its support for Operator Filter. However, Operator Filter proactively blocked recommendations from marketplaces using the same policy.
Blur’s increase in daily trading volume can be attributed to the new royalty policy that reflects the differences in royalty payment options between its platform and OpenSea. OpenSea’s current policy prevents collections from earning royalties everywhere.