The once dominant marketplace is rapidly losing its market share to Blur.
According to the DappRadar industry report, NFTs are making a strong start to the year. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about the NFT marketplace Opensea. Indeed, the secondary marketplace which dominated for so long is now watching its prominence disappear. Conversely, Opensea’s rivals Blur seem to be doing everything right.
During the first quarter, Opensea recorded a 31% market share in terms of NFT trading volume. However, during the month of March, Opensea’s trading volume decreased by 35% to $381 million, which gave them just 22% of the market share.
That’s the smallest market share for Opensea since February 2021.
As for Blur, they recorded an impressive 57% of the market share in Q1 2023. Furthermore, Blur’s trading volume of $2.7 billion was a 783% increase from the previous quarter.
In summary, Blur is skyrocketing in popularity, whilst Opensea is plummeting in its significance.
Changing of the guard
Let’s look at the reasons why Blur is doing so well. Firstly, the marketplace is offering fresh, unique features to the market. For example, Blur rewards traders with free token airdrops based on how often they trade. Consequently, this is inspiring traders to use Blur’s marketplace. In addition, Blur is rewarding its loyal customers, who only trade on its marketplace.
On the other hand, Opensea is declining in popularity and hasn’t had an answer for Blur’s bullish tactics. In fact, Opensea was widely denounced for cutting its royalty fees for artists – a move made in response to Blur’s increasing grip on the market.
Polygon on the up
Another notable takeaway from DappRadar’s industry report is the dominance of blockchain gaming. Indeed, blockchain gaming accounts for 45% of all on-chain activity.
This goes hand-in-hand with Polygon’s bullish start to the year. According to the quarterly data, Polygon’s trading volume in Q1 2023 was $85 million, which is an increase of 125% from the previous quarter.
In essence, Polygon is a top choice for NFT creators due to its low GAS fees and transaction times. Therefore, those looking to launch and trade NFTs will find Polygon a highly favourable option. What is more, Binance NFT also announced that Polygon network had been included in its supported blockchains in the marketplace.
All in all, the NFT market had a strong start to the year in Q1 2023, with a 137% increase in trading volume and a total of $4.7 billion.
