The NFT space has had its fair share of NFT marketplaces fighting to earn the first spot of the ‘best NFT marketplace’ in the Web3 sphere. Marketplaces like Opensea, Magic Eden, and LooksRare are topping the charts according to Dappradar. However, Magic Eden might not be able to hold the second spot for long after the Solana crash. Queue in Blur, the upcoming NFT marketplace that is coming in a BOOM to send all these marketplaces crying to their NFT mommy. How is Blur, a new and fresh marketplace, taking the NFT world by storm? Well, because of the Blur Airdrops of course.
Blur has already launched two of its airdrops in a series of airdrop waves, and the third one is just around the corner. Let’s dive in on the mechanics of Blur airdrop 3, how you can start bidding to earn Blur’s native token $BLUR, and if the upcoming marketplace is here to stay.
Blur Marketplace Fighting to Lead
Launched on October 19, 2022, the Blur marketplace is one of the fastest real-time NFT aggregators and has already over $390 million in volume! The Blur marketplace came in strong when the feud over creator royalties was just beginning to create tension between NFT marketplaces. Blur had voiced out its statement that it is a strong supporter of creator royalties and offered enforced royalties on its platform.
In addition, the announcement that really lifted the marketplace on a higher pedestal was its series of airdrops. Let’s just say, for a new marketplace to make noise among the sea of established NFT marketplaces, it had to do something BIG. Which it did.
Blur Airdrops Strategy
As a strategy, Blur announced that the launch of its native token $BLUR will be preceded by a series of airdrops that contain an undisclosed amount of $BLUR for holders and traders on the platform. This tactic has worked well with Blur because instead of having one massive airdrop, it created a series of 3 airdrop waves. That way, Blur ensured continued activity on its platform by having users participate in a bidding process to farm points for Blur’s airdrop liquidity mining.
The first airdrop took place in October, right along with the launch of the marketplace. The airdrops took the shape of digital care packages that got distributed to eligible wallets connected to the platform. The care packages came in three categories: Uncommon, Rare, and Legendary. The user got a specific care package that relates to his NFT trading history.
Airdrop 2 came in later in November with the same concept as Airdrop 1 but was much bigger. And finally, the last care packages to be distributed are within Airdrop 3 launched in December and get this, you can still participate in it!
Blur Airdrop 1 and 2 Recap
Before we get into the details of Blur’s airdrop 3, let’s see how did the last 2 airdrops take place.
Airdrop 1 – Trade
The first Blur airdrop came in fairly simple for users. It targeted NFT traders with over 1 ETH in trading volume on Opensea, X2Y2, and LooksRare in the last 6 months. Getting the first airdrop of $BLUR tokens was simply users connecting their wallets and following 2 steps:
#1. Listing 1 eligible NFT on Blur
Users were prompted not only to list on Blur but to also list on LooksRare, X2Y2, and OpenSea. The request to list on Blur includes providing the collection contract address and token ID.
#2. Claiming Care Package
Once listing an NFT, traders could see their care package, however, they can’t open them and receive the $BLUR until the launch of the token in January.
Airdrop 2 – List
The second Blur airdrop took place from October to November 2022. It promised to be much larger than the first airdrop and provided new mechanisms. The mechanisms were placed in such a way that active traders on the platform will get the most tokens. Therefore, the more a trader lists NFTs, the more their loyalty score will rise, and the more Blur will count toward their airdrop amount.
The Blur marketplace has even published a set of tips to help traders farm more points and therefore, get more care packages. These tips included:
- The more NFTs traders list, the more they earn.
- Listing blue chips and active collections get more points.
- Utilizing all of Blur’s listing tools.
- Keeping a fair game.
However, during this Airdrop, some genuine traders have been caught up in Blur’s wash traders filter and didn’t get the amount of care package they deserved. Fortunately, Blur recalculated the airdrop 2 care package counts and updated the distribution. To give traders a fairer chance, the Blur platform extended the claim period of Airdrop 2 to January 3, 2023.
My updated Blur Airdrop 2 stats: 5,538 Care Packages pic.twitter.com/FUMlEUo3fa
— Franklin (@franklinisbored) December 21, 2022
Start Your Bidding for Blur Airdrop 3
And Voila! We have finally come to the final Blur airdrop, Airdrop 3. Since this last round of Blur airdrops is going to be the biggest of them all (around 1-2x the size of Airdrop 2), the mechanics of how traders get their care packages is different from just listing NFTs. Instead of listing NFTs, traders need to place bids. What’s exciting is that you have a chance to get on the Airdrop 3 wave right now! Let’s see how the final airdrop works.
Placing Bids
For the final airdrop, you’ll have to place bids on collections, and based on their 24h volume, you will be rewarded with points. The bids with the highest risk earn the majority of points. How come? Well, the Blur platform has given a great example:
“If the floor is 1.01 and there are 100 bids at 1 and you bid at 0.99, then your bid won’t earn many points because there’s 100 Eth of buy walls ahead of you, but if you bid at 1.01 you’ll earn a lot more because now you’re taking the most ‘risk’”.
The longer your bid is active, the more you’ll receive points. Once the bid is accepted, you’ll no longer earn points. You can also reuse the same ETH used in the Bid pool across collections. Also, there is a 24h leaderboard that boosts up to 2.5x for the top 100 bidders.
Raising Loyalty
Loyalty points don’t affect the number of care packages you will receive, however, it can affect their rarity. That means increasing your loyalty gives you a high chance of getting ultra-rare packages that contains a large amount of $BLUR. How to earn loyalty points? Simple.
When you list NFTs at a higher rate on Blur compared to other marketplaces, you will receive lower loyalty points. Here’s an example provided by the marketplace:
- List for 0.1 ETH on Blur and 0.05 ETH on other marketplaces, the score goes down.
- List for 0.05 ETH on Blur and 0.1 ETH on other marketplaces, the score goes up.
- List for 0.1 ETH on Blur and 0.1 ETH on other marketplaces, and the score goes up.
Here’s how loyalty points relate to the rarity of the care package:
- <50% loyalty – low luck
- 50-90% loyalty – medium luck
- 90-97% loyalty – high luck
- 97%+ loyalty – very high luck
You don’t have to necessarily have a lot of Eth in your disposal, in fact, you can only bid on active collections that have a low floor price.
What Does That Mean for Blur?
So, all the bidding and listing have surely affected the Blur marketplace’s total volume and given a push to all collections. It did. In fact, let’s look at how Blur inflated liquidity by having users participate in the NFT bidding.
Blue-chip collections have all witnessed a surge in floor prices within the 3-month time frame since Blur announced its first airdrop. For example, looking below at Azuki’s charts from NFTGo, we can see that the floor price has risen from 10 Eth to 15 Eth.
As well as pudgy penguins that got to 6 Eth from being just 2 Eth back in November.
And many more.
There are in fact 36,467 wallets according to Etherscan in the Blur pool as I’m writing this. Also, almost 52% are controlled by the top 100 wallets on the Blur leaderboard. Get this, around 29,000 Eth exist in the Blur bidding contract!
How is this possible? Well, let’s go back to the point where Blur mentioned that you can reuse the same capital across different collections AND it pushed users for higher risks. This made users race to get their points higher and faster to increase their airdrop chance. However, they have also increased their bids for getting sold. Therefore, Blur has helped increase the liquidity of some blue-chip projects.
The NFT market is on FIRE
The Blur airdrop this month is a massive liquidity event for traders
2023 is the year of nfts
We’re so fucking back
— ThreadGuy 👑 (@notthreadguy) January 5, 2023
However, you should also beware of some of the dangerous applications of the Blur Airdrop 3 bidding. Many users don’t really care about getting an NFT, as much as they care about getting a $BLUR care package. However, if the bid gets accepted, Blur doesn’t count the points. And users get left off buying an NFT they didn’t want.
So, study the whole mechanics and see for yourself if you want to be the lucky recipient of Blur’s native token before it launches. Happy bidding!