BLUR.IO - Blurring the Line Between Market and Degen - MVHQ

BLUR.IO - Blurring the Line Between Market and Degen

Jasmine
Dec 9, 2022
Platform
BLUR.IO - Blurring the Line Between Market and Degen

TL:DR

If you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t heard about Blur, you’ll want to keep reading this for its most prized utilities, airdrop mechanics and what it means to you as a trader. If you haven’t been living under a rock, you should still read this to validate my existence hear about some observations, strategies and effects on the current market, curated specially from numerous conversations with the degeneracy at large. Let’s do it.

 

Blur is an all-purpose marketplace fitted with the latest functionality for all us beautiful degens. It’s backed by Paradigm and features real time listings/sales/floor, sweeping functions, cross-market functionality and multi-listing all bundled into a neat UI without the bloatedness of the likes of OpenSea. Think NFTNerds meets OpenSea meets Gem - except Blur outperformed all of them in volume this week. Seriously, I can’t remember the last time I actually visited another marketplace or sweeping platform since the Blur gods gifted MVHQ with beta access. I know I’m jumping onto the Blur fangirl bandwagon here, but trust me, I’ll be balanced. For one, the real-time data doesn’t seem to update as quickly as Nerds, so it’s easier to snipe low listings or rarity there, but more on that later…

 

AIRDROP MECHANICS

Blur surprised us all with an airdrop based on volume traded in the last 6 months. These guys obviously know their market, with the format of unwrapping boxes ranked from “Uncommon” to “Legendary” reminiscent of the Pokemon card-esque suspense that we all love (hate?) as NFT traders. Don’t worry, if you’re like me, and took a step back from mass NFT trading this bear market, Blur.io has promised a bigger and better™ airdrop for using the platform in certain ways throughout November, which can be redeemed for $BLUR token in January 2023. In a nutshell, to maximise your airdrop you should focus on listing, sweeping, royalties and loyalties - that almost sounds poetic.

 

Essentially, the more you list, the more you’ll earn. Note that only collections in the top 500 for volume will count, and blue chip/high volume collections are further encouraged. Using listing functions such as floor or laddering also help, but as Zeneca says “the wisest strategy is to list naturally,” as Blur will be auditing users for any funny business, such as listing/delisting or dumping dead/hidden folder collections.

 

Sweeping, which has been confirmed to mean purchasing at least 2 NFTs in one transaction, further increases your airdrop amount. Rumour has it that making 3 sweeps throughout November carries rewards…

 

Royalties! Blur has a 0% royalties option (for now) but wants to incentivise creators. Hence, you will be rewarded airdrop-wise for setting royalties to at least 0.5%, which is on par with the next lowest-royalty platform (SudoSwap), and even more for 0.6% or above. This is mostly a no brainer - while 0% is tempting for swing trading, just note that setting royalties to at least 0.6% will not only be comparable to your next cheapest option, but you will benefit from a beefier airdrop.

 

Last but not least, loyalty (to Blur). Graded on a scale of 0-100%, to increase your loyalty score, you will need to list on Blur every time you sell something. This doesn’t mean you can’t use other platforms, but you should list your items on Blur too and more importantly, make sure your Blur listing is at a lower (or equal) price to other marketplaces. Note that your loyalty score won’t dictate your airdrop amount, but will help net you a higher proportion of rare and legendary boxes.

 

See below for loyalty scores and their rewards:

  • <50% loyalty - low luck
  • 50-90% loyalty - medium luck
  • 90-97% loyalty - high luck
  • 97% loyalty - very high luck.

 

Oh, one more thing. It’s worth mentioning that beta users of Blur will qualify for an additional airdrop in January, shoutout to MVHQ as the OG users!

 

Example listing to maximise royalties:

1. Auto Adjust for Fees if you’re listing across platforms, to ensure Blur is your cheapest and, you know, profits.

2. Use a listing function by clicking one of the floor price, top trait or ladder buttons - don’t just brick that floor frens.

3. The two above features will automatically fill out this section to be airdrop-optimised.

4. Crank up that royalty… to 0.6%.

 

OPTIMISE YOUR AIRDROP

  • The more you list, the more you earn
  • Listing active collections and blue chips helps
  • Use listing tools - floor price, trait price, ladder list
  • No gaming the system (listing/relisting, dead collections, unrealistic pricing)
  • List as you normally would
  • List on other marketplaces but make Blur the lowest price
  • Place 3 sweeps (2+ NFTs) before the end of November.

 

IMPLICATIONS FOR TRADING STRATEGY

So how does Blur affect the market? Here’s a couple of things I’ve noticed - I’m eager to keep discussing these strategies with you!

 

Most evidently, Blur has enabled small margin and swing trading through offering minimal royalties. In recent days as of writing, we’ve seen people successfully swing trading high-entry collections like Art Gobblers, or turn substantial profits from marginal increases of 0.01-0.02 ETH. Obviously, setting 0% is suboptimal for the airdrop, but nonetheless, it’s something traders should definitely factor into their strategy. This has led to a few phenomena…

 

Dumping and floor bricking. This one’s unsurprising, but such low royalties foster a flipper’s culture and increase the likelihood of floor bricking. It’s now profitable to buy something for 0.5 and sell it for 0.52, and this has led to Blur being characterised by extensive floor bricks and pricing that is often significantly lower than on other marketplaces. This is especially true this month while everybody farms the airdrop rewards. The strategy here is rooted in the fact that while every degen is eagerly using Blur, lots of traders/collectors still use traditional marketplaces like OpenSea and LooksRare, particularly if they’re only using Nerds. While trading Halloween Poupelles the other day, I noticed sales happening on OpenSea at 0.08 and above, with a hefty wall in the 0.05s on Blur. Be mindful that in some cases you can turn a higher profit notwithstanding higher royalties on other platforms - you just need to monitor the floors simultaneously, which brings me to my next point…

 

Blur works great in conjunction with Nerds. Since Nerds does not currently support Blur listings, and Blur is often submerged with lower priced listings, it’s great to use both tools to ascertain the floors of both Blur and traditional marketplaces. I’ve also noticed that listings update much faster on Nerds, so by keeping both platforms on your screen it’s easy to see the pricing on each marketplace separately - in high volume scenarios it’s often worth a quick calculation to decide where you’ll turn a greater profit. You may run into surprisingly high exit points from traders who aren’t using Blur!

 

Another thing Blur and its airdrop seem to be contributing to is lower volatility in pricing, particularly in high volume and supply collections. The airdrop is actively incentivising listing and sweeping, while the aforementioned 0% royalties provide a low risk impetus for new entrants. A revolving door of traders, if you will. An example of this would be the first few days’ trading activity on KPR. Of course this phenomenon depends on the individual strength of the project, but I’m relatively surprised at how consistent pricing has remained. A potential strategy here is rooted in Sudo Swap pooling, which has been covered previously, and performs optimally when the price ping pongs within a tight range.

 

Finally, the comparatively low pricing on Blur enables you to farm rewards from other platforms like LooksRare. Listing below the LR floor, but above the Blur (and market) floor, will enable you to farm rewards relatively easily as your NFT is likely to remain listed longer with many eyes on the Blur marketplace seeing lower prices. Just be aware that this could be fixed in the near future, or your NFT may get bought by someone since LR is on Nerds!

 

I hope these insights were helpful. Check out Blur’s Mirror for more information at https://mirror.xyz/blurdao.eth. And that’s the (jasmine) tea!