Ascendant NFT marketplace Blur announced Tuesday that it will soon airdrop some $300 million worth of additional tokens to loyal users, days after overtaking once-untouchable competitor OpenSea as the most popular Ethereum NFT trading platform by trading volume.
Blur will release 300 million of its native BLUR tokens to traders over the course of the platform’s “Season 2,” which has already begun. BLUR is currently trading at $0.99, according to CoinGecko.
“Season 1,” which culminated with the debut of its native token BLUR last week, saw Blur dole out “care packages” of BLUR to traders who transitioned to the platform from a competing NFT marketplace, listed NFTs on the platform immediately following its October launch, or used Blur to bid on NFTs.
“Season 2” will see tokens distributed to traders in a more fixedly gamified program, according to the company. Blur customers will be assigned a “loyalty score” based on their interaction with and commitment to the trading platform, and buyers and sellers who refrain from using any other NFT marketplace will receive a 100% loyalty score, for example.
A user’s loyalty score, in combination with the quantity of NFTs they list, will determine how many BLUR tokens they will ultimately gain in a later airdrop.
Under this new loyalty system, even minor actions can potentially boost a user’s odds of receiving more BLUR. The company implied Tuesday that even quote-tweeting its Twitter announcement regarding Season 2 could increase a user’s loyalty score.
It is unclear, though, what technical mechanisms Blur has in place to link activity on separate platforms like Twitter with metrics on its own site. The company did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for clarification.
Tuesday’s announcement marks the latest escalation in an all-out war that has erupted between NFT platforms to attract and hold customers. $13.3 billion behemoth OpenSea, long considered the sole dominant Ethereum NFT marketplace, has in recent months bled users to Blur, largely thanks to the latter’s lucrative token-backed incentives program. Both companies have offered perks to users who blocklist the other.
Last week, likely prompted by Blur’s sharp ascension and lack of marketplace fees, OpenSea eliminated its own 2.5% fee—the company’s primary source of revenue—for a “limited time.” It also cut down creator royalty protections, once a hallmark of the NFT model, which previously guaranteed creators a royalty fee—typically 5-10%—on secondary NFT sales. Such royalty fees are how NFT projects generate ongoing revenue following an initial drop or sale.
While the sustainability of Blur’s aggressive incentives program is unclear, its immediate impact on competitors like OpenSea is all but certain to reinforce current trends.
Though Blur does currently boast markedly higher trading volumes than OpenSea, the majority of that activity appears to have been generated by a smaller number of whale traders flipping NFTs to game Blur’s rewards program to accrue as much BLUR as possible.
The popularity of that rewards program is contingent on the value of Blur’s native token, however. In the last 24 hours, BLUR has shed some 24% in value, down from $1.28.
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