On the morning of November 21, 2023, the NFT community was once again abuzz as Blur initiated an airdrop for its users and revealed plans for the introduction of L2 Blast, as well as the continuation of Blur Season 3. Let’s explore the details of L2 Blast and the opportunities within Blur Season 3.
Overview of Blur
Blur is an Ethereum-based NFT Marketplace Aggregator designed for professional traders. It consolidates data from various NFT exchanges such as OpenSea, LookRare, X2Y2, enabling users to trade NFTs in one centralized platform at the best prices.
Launched in October 2022, Blur quickly rose to become one of the leading NFT marketplaces on Ethereum. Blur’s goal is to build a fair platform and empower the community. Holders of BLUR token (the platform’s main token) can participate in governance decisions, earn rewards, and access exclusive features.
Blur’s Plans for Blur Season 3
Although Blur Season 2 officially concluded on November 20, 2023, Blur demonstrated its strength as a top NFT marketplace with a transaction volume of $6.1 billion, capturing a 65% market share and attracting 260,165 users during Season 2.
During this period, Blur introduced Blend, an NFT lending protocol integrated directly into Blur. Since then, Blend has showcased its superiority over other NFT lending platforms in the market, maintaining over 90% market share since its launch.
To build on the current success, Blur Season 3 officially commenced on November 21, 2023. Blur Foundation collaborated with Blast, a Layer 2 supported by Paradigm and Standard Crypto, to allocate airdrops to the community for Season 3.
Blur Season 3, lasting for six months and concluding in May 2024, will evenly distribute rewards to Blur holders and NFT traders on Blur. This means 50% for Blur holders and 50% for Blur traders. Details on earning points in Blur Season 3 include:
Earning Points Based on Bidding Points:
- This mechanism allows users to bid on NFT collections, and points are rewarded based on the 24-hour trading volume of that NFT collection.
- In each collection, if a user bids close to the floor price, they will receive the most points. For example, if an NFT collection has a floor price of 1.01 ETH, and 100 users bid at 1 ETH, if you bid at 0.99 ETH, you won’t earn as many points as the 100 other users. However, if you bid at 1.01 ETH, you’ll earn more Blur Points than the other 100 users.
- The longer the bidding lasts, the more points users can earn, and when the bid matches a market order, the point-earning stops.
- For eligible collections, users can bid on various features within that NFT collection.
Earning points based on Listing Points:
- Users receive more Listing Points by listing more NFTs.
- Listing Bluechip NFTs provides users with more opportunities to earn Listing Points.
- Using Blur’s provided listing tools, such as listing by floor price, feature floor price, and ladder list.
Earning points based on Lending Points:
In Blur Season 3, Lending Points are equal to half of Listing Points and Bidding Points (no longer a 2x multiplier for any NFT collection in Blur Season 3). Two factors determine the Lending Points earned by users:
- Max Borrow: Represents the maximum ETH amount users can borrow using NFTs as collateral.
- APR: This is the percentage of the amount lent that users earn from their approved lending proposal.
Higher Max Borrow ratios and lower APRs result in users earning more Lending Points. Users can also create multiple Loan Offers on the same collection with different Max Borrow and APY to earn points for all of them.
For example, if a collection’s floor value is 10 ETH, a user can offer one loan with a maximum borrow of 9 ETH, an APY of 50%, and another with a maximum borrow of 5 ETH, an APY of 20%, earning points for both offers.
Earning points by becoming a Blur Holder:
50% of the rewards in Blur Season 3 will be distributed to Blur Holders. Users can earn points by depositing their Blur tokens on the Blur Foundation website via the provided links.
The multiplier starts at 1x and increases by 0.5x each month after the user makes their first deposit. Recipients of rewards in Blur Season 2 started with a double multiplier. If users withdraw funds, the multiplier decreases proportionally to the amount withdrawn.
Note: The lowest multiplier is 1x, even if users withdraw their entire Blur token quantity.
Special Features of Blur’s L2 Blast
Continuing the airdrop activity from Blur Season 2 and the latest scoring rules in Blur Season 3, Blur also announced the launch of a Layer 2 solution on Ethereum named Blast. As per information shared on Blast’s Twitter on November 21, 2023, they successfully raised $20 million from Paradigm and Standard Crypto to develop their Layer 2.
Introducing Blast: The only Ethereum L2 with native yield for ETH and stablecoins.
We’ve raised $20m from @Paradigm and @StandardCrypto to build the L2 that helps you earn more.
Details on how to get early access at the end of the thread👇 pic.twitter.com/AYYmK8YFx4
— Blast (@Blast_L2) November 20, 2023
Blast is built to enhance Staking activities in the Ethereum ecosystem. Users can stake their ETH in Blast to earn interest ranging from 3% to 4% per year through Staking. Additionally, for stablecoins, when users stake USDC, USDT, and DAI in Blast, Blast sends them to T-Bill protocols like MakerDAO, and profits are returned to Blast users through USDB, Blast’s auto-rebasing stablecoin. With Staking in Stablecoin as mentioned, users can earn higher APRs compared to Staking ETH, up to 5% per year.
Blast also stated that they would implement Optimistic Rollups technology, similar to Optimism and Arbitrum, with EVM compatibility, allowing investors and dApps on Ethereum to easily connect and deploy on their Blockchain. The Blast development team includes Pacman, the founder of Blur NFT Marketplace, along with an experienced team that has previously worked at MakerDAO, MIT, Yale, and Seoul National University.
Furthermore, Blast applies a scoring mechanism called Blast Point, where users can earn points based on the amount bridged from Ethereum to Blast and the number of invitations extended to experience this Layer 2. Airdrop funds will be distributed in two phases, with 50% allocated to early users and the remaining 50% reserved for dApp developers building on Blast.
Conclusion
With a plethora of information shared today, the Blur community is genuinely excited. The deployment of L2 Blast suggests that in the future, Blur might migrate to this Layer 2, reducing transaction costs for NFT users on Blur. The above encompasses all the information I aimed to present in this article, and I hope everyone has gained valuable insights.