Last Updated: October 21, 2026
Quick Answer: Blur is a professional NFT marketplace and aggregator for active traders on Ethereum. It launched in October 2022, charges 0% marketplace fees, compared with OpenSea’s 1%, and offers real-time floor analytics, batch buying and listing, collection-level bids, and the Blend peer-to-peer NFT lending protocol. On October 12, 2026, Blur announced that it will shut down its blur.io website on November 12, 2026, after its monthly trading volume fell more than 99% from its 2023 peak. Its smart contracts will stay live on-chain, and Blend will stop matching new loans on the same date. The BLUR token traded near $0.012 in mid-October 2026, down more than 99% from its all-time high of $5.02.
Key Takeaways:
- Closing: the blur.io website shuts down on November 12, 2026. The marketplace contracts stay live on-chain, and BLUR keeps control of the protocol’s fee switch
- Blur charges 0% marketplace fees. Creators have received a minimum 0.5% royalty
- Built for pro traders with batch operations, collection bids, real-time portfolio analytics, and floor sweep tools
- Blend (Blur Lending) lets NFT holders borrow ETH against their NFTs with no fixed fees and no expiry dates. It stops matching new loans on November 12, 2026
- Ethereum only, with no Solana, Polygon, or multi-chain support
- BLUR token rewards active traders. Its price was about $0.012 in mid-October 2026, down more than 99% from its all-time high
What Is Blur NFT?
Blur is an Ethereum NFT marketplace and aggregator founded in 2022 by Tieshun Roquerre and Anthony Liu. In the crypto community, they are known by the pseudonyms Pacman (MIT graduate, Peter Thiel Fellow) and Galaga. Backed by Paradigm, one of crypto’s most respected venture capital firms, Blur launched in October 2022 and became the largest NFT marketplace by volume within months.
Blur is built for professional traders, not casual collectors. OpenSea was designed to make NFT buying accessible to everyone. Blur focuses on fast, data-rich, cost-efficient trading for users who trade NFTs like stocks by placing collection bids, sweeping floors, managing multi-position portfolios, and executing bulk operations in seconds.
The platform includes four main products. All four remain available through the blur.io website until November 12, 2026:
- Blur Marketplace: the core NFT trading venue with 0% fees and real-time analytics
- Blur Aggregator: routes orders across Blur and competing marketplaces to find best prices
- Blend: peer-to-peer perpetual NFT lending and borrowing protocol with no fixed fees
- BLUR token: governance and rewards token distributed to active platform participants
How Does Blur Compare to Other NFT Marketplaces?
Blur has served professional Ethereum traders, but its website closes on November 12, 2026. OpenSea has reclaimed the mass market, while Magic Eden and Tensor lead on Solana.
| Feature | Blur | OpenSea (OS2) | Magic Eden |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marketplace fee | 0% | 1% | 2% |
| Creator royalty | Min 0.5% (optional) | Enforced or optional by collection | Optional on most collections |
| Chains | Ethereum only | 22 chains | Solana only (since March 2026) |
| NFT lending | Yes (Blend) | No | No |
| Batch listing/buying | Yes | Yes | Limited |
| Collection bids | Yes | Limited | Yes |
| Mobile app | No | Yes | Wallet app closed May 2026 |
| Monthly active users | ~38,300 | ~382,000 | ~200,000+ |
| Native token | BLUR (~$0.012) | $SEA (postponed) | $ME |
| BLUR rewards | Yes | No | Yes (ME rewards) |
Blur has the lowest fees for pure ETH NFT trading, but only until its website closes. OpenSea leads in chain breadth and user base, and Magic Eden leads on Solana. For traders focused on Ethereum-native collections such as BAYC, CryptoPunks, Azuki, and Pudgy Penguins, Blur’s zero-fee model and batch tools have reduced costs and sped up transactions. Our guide to OpenSea fees compared with other NFT marketplaces covers the alternatives.
Blur NFT Marketplace Features
Zero Marketplace Fees Blur charges 0% marketplace fees, giving it the lowest fee structure among major NFT platforms. OpenSea charges 1%, and Rarible charges 2% on its EVM chains. For high-volume traders who might execute 50+ trades per week, Blur’s zero-fee structure can save thousands of dollars annually compared with platforms that charge standard fees.
Creator royalties on Blur are optional, with a minimum floor of 0.5%. This design reduced creator income but increased trader adoption. Collections can set their royalties, but traders decide whether to honor amounts above the 0.5% minimum.
Real-Time Portfolio Analytics Blur’s interface displays live floor prices, bid-ask spreads, collection depth, and rarity data that updates every four seconds. Traders can view their entire NFT portfolio’s performance, unrealized gains/losses, and market depth across all held collections from one dashboard. OpenSea and Magic Eden do not offer the same analytics depth.
Collection Bids Blur lets traders place standing bids on entire collections instead of individual NFTs. A collection bid at 0.5 ETH on Pudgy Penguins means any seller who lists at or below that price has their NFT instantly purchased at the bid price. This creates an order book for NFTs, which OpenSea did not have during Blur’s peak market share period.
Batch Listing and Buying (Floor Sweeping) Users can list multiple NFTs at once with customized pricing and adjust multiple listings in one action. They can also “sweep the floor” by buying the cheapest available NFTs across an entire collection in one transaction. Floor sweeping is a core strategy for accumulating positions at the lowest available prices, and Blur’s implementation is the fastest and most gas-efficient of any marketplace.
NFT Aggregation Blur aggregates listings from OpenSea, LooksRare, and other marketplaces alongside its own listings, and it included X2Y2 until that marketplace closed in 2025. When a user buys an NFT on Blur, the platform automatically routes the order to the cheapest available listing across all integrated venues. Users therefore get the best available price without checking competing platforms manually.
Blend: Blur’s NFT Lending Protocol
Blend (Blur Lending) is a peer-to-peer perpetual NFT lending protocol built into Blur. Developed in partnership with Paradigm, it launched in May 2023. It is one of the most significant financial innovations in NFT infrastructure.
How Blend works:
- Borrowing: An NFT holder who needs liquidity deposits the NFT as collateral and receives an ETH loan. The loan has no fixed expiry date and continues until the borrower repays or the lender calls the loan
- Lending: ETH holders who want yield deposit ETH against an NFT as collateral. They earn interest payments from the borrower
- Buy Now, Pay Later: Blur’s BNPL feature lets buyers purchase an expensive NFT with part of the price upfront. They borrow the remainder against the NFT itself, creating a down-payment model for premium collections
- No fees: Blend charges no fees to borrowers or lenders for borrowing, lending, or repayment
- Liquidation: If a lender calls a loan and the borrower cannot repay, the NFT enters a Dutch auction. If no buyer meets the floor price, the lender takes possession of the NFT as collateral
Blend generated significant controversy in 2024 when falling NFT floor prices triggered mass liquidations. Borrowers who had taken ETH against BAYC or Azuki NFTs saw their collateral liquidated at prices far below its original value. Blur’s co-founder acknowledged that some collections’ floor prices declined after launch but noted that others increased. This showed the risks of adding leverage to illiquid asset markets. Blend has been the most developed NFT-native lending infrastructure on any marketplace, but it will stop matching new loans on November 12, 2026. Borrowers can repay their loans or let them default before then, and Blur plans to offer a tool for withdrawing assets from Blend after the deadline.
BLUR Token
BLUR is Blur’s native governance and rewards token. It launched on February 14, 2023, through an airdrop to platform users. It has a maximum supply of 3 billion tokens.
| Metric | Value (October 2026) |
|---|---|
| Token | BLUR |
| Price | ~$0.012 (October 13, 2026) |
| Market Cap | ~$36M |
| Maximum Supply | 3B |
| ATH | $5.02 (Feb 2023) |
| ATH Drop | ~99.8% |
How to earn BLUR: BLUR tokens are distributed to users who actively participate in the platform. Eligible activities include:
- Listing NFTs for sale on Blur
- Placing collection bids
- Trading volume generated on the platform
- Lending and borrowing through Blend
The points-to-token system gives the largest rewards to the highest-volume and most active traders. The goal was to draw professional traders away from competing platforms. This strategy helped Blur capture 60%+ of Ethereum NFT volume within six months of launch.
BLUR token use cases:
- Governance: BLUR holders vote on platform parameters, fee structures, and protocol development
- Staking: stake BLUR to participate in governance and access enhanced rewards multipliers
- Season rewards: BLUR is distributed in “seasons” based on accumulated platform points
The BLUR token’s decline from $5.02 to about $0.012 mirrors the broader NFT market correction, and it fell about 34% in the day around the shutdown announcement. Its circulating supply has increased significantly through ongoing reward distributions, adding sell pressure. As with most marketplace governance tokens, BLUR’s price has not tracked the platform’s trading volume or operational performance. Blur said BLUR will continue to control the protocol’s fee switch after the website closes.
Blur in 2026: Market Position
Blur’s 2026 position reflects the collapse in NFT trading and the competition within the market.
Where Blur led: On August 4, 2025, Blur remained the largest NFT marketplace by volume on that specific day, with Courtyard as the top collection. On July 14, 2025, Pudgy Penguins and Blur dominated the NFT market, with combined activity leading all platforms. These data points show that Blur still attracted significant professional trading activity in 2025, especially on high-volume days for major Ethereum collections.
Where OpenSea reclaimed ground: When OpenSea announced the SEA token in February 2025, traders moved to qualify for the airdrop. OpenSea’s share jumped from 25.5% to 71.5% in a single week. By 2026, OpenSea had 382,000 monthly active users compared with Blur’s approximately 38,300. The OpenSea OS2 rebuild, with more than 20 chains, a 1% fee, and a complete UX overhaul, has made it more attractive to casual and semi-professional users.
NFT market context: NFT supply hit 1.34 billion tokens in 2025, but sales dropped 37% to $5.6 billion, reflecting an industry-wide oversupply problem that has reduced volume across all marketplaces. NFT sales fell further to about $167.2 million in September 2026, according to CryptoSlam, and Blur’s monthly volume is down more than 99% from its 2023 peak.
Blur Pros and Cons
Pros:
- 0% marketplace fees, the lowest cost of any major NFT platform
- Professional-grade analytics: real-time floor data updating every 4 seconds
- Collection bids function as an order book, a genuine innovation over earlier marketplaces
- Floor sweep and batch listing/buying for efficient portfolio management
- Blend: most developed NFT lending infrastructure available
- BLUR token rewards active traders, meaningful for high-volume participants
- Aggregator routes to cheapest available price across all integrated platforms
Cons:
- Website closes November 12, 2026, and Blend stops matching new loans on the same date
- Ethereum only, with no Solana, Base, Polygon, or multi-chain support
- No mobile app: desktop only, with a data-dense interface that can intimidate beginners
- BLUR token down more than 99% from its ATH; token inflation from ongoing reward distributions
- Creator royalties effectively optional above 0.5%, which is unpopular with NFT artists
- Blend liquidations created significant controversy in 2024 bear market
- Monthly active user base (38,300) is dramatically smaller than OpenSea (382,000)
- Blast connection: Blast, the layer-2 network launched by Blur’s founder, announced its shutdown in October 2026
How to Use Blur NFT Marketplace
The steps below apply until the blur.io website closes on November 12, 2026. If you have active listings, bids or Blend loans, review them before that date.
Step 1: Connect your wallet Visit blur.io and connect an Ethereum-compatible wallet such as MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, or Ledger. No account creation or KYC is required.
Step 2: Browse collections Use the Collections tab to browse Ethereum NFT collections with live floor prices, 24-hour volume, bid-ask spreads, and rarity data. Filter by volume, floor price, or recent activity.
Step 3: Buy an NFT Select a collection, view individual listings, and purchase at the listed price. You can also use “Sweep” to buy multiple floor-priced NFTs in a single transaction. Blur routes the order to the cheapest available listing across all aggregated marketplaces.
Step 4: List an NFT Open your Portfolio tab, select the NFT(s) to list, set your price, and submit. Batch listing lets you price multiple NFTs at the same time.
Step 5: Place collection bids In the collection’s bid book, enter your offer price and ETH amount. Your bid is visible to all sellers. If any seller accepts a price at or below your bid, the NFT is purchased automatically.
Step 6: Use Blend (lending) Open Blur’s lending interface to borrow ETH against your NFTs or lend ETH to earn interest. Set loan terms and manage positions from the Loans dashboard.
Where to Buy BLUR Token
Centralized exchanges (CEX):
- Binance: BLUR/USDT and BLUR/BTC; highest global liquidity
- Coinbase: BLUR/USD available for US users
- Kraken: BLUR/USD and BLUR/EUR
- KuCoin: BLUR/USDT with competitive fees
- Gate.io: BLUR/USDT available globally
- OKX: BLUR/USDT with spot and margin options
Decentralized exchanges (DEX):
- Uniswap (Ethereum): BLUR/ETH and BLUR/USDC pools
- Blur itself: BLUR can be earned through platform activity and traded via Uniswap integration
Contract address: 0x5283d291dbcf85356a21ba090e6db59121208b44 (Ethereum)
Always verify the contract address on CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap before purchasing on a DEX.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Blur NFT?
Blur is an Ethereum NFT marketplace and aggregator for professional traders, launched in October 2022 and backed by Paradigm. It became known for zero marketplace fees, real-time analytics, collection bids, batch trading and Blend, its NFT lending protocol. On October 12, 2026, Blur announced that its blur.io website will shut down on November 12, 2026.
Is Blur shutting down?
Blur’s website, blur.io, will stop running on November 12, 2026, according to the team’s October 12 announcement. The marketplace contracts stay live on-chain, and BLUR keeps control of the protocol’s fee switch. Blend stops matching new loans the same day. Blur gave no reason, but its monthly trading volume had fallen more than 99% from its 2023 peak.
What is the Blur NFT marketplace fee?
Blur charges 0% marketplace fees, so neither buyers nor sellers pay a platform fee, while creators have received a minimum 0.5% royalty. Users pay Ethereum gas for on-chain actions, which cost well under a dollar in October 2026. For comparison, OpenSea charges 1% on NFT sales and Magic Eden 2%. Blur’s own website will not be available after November 12, 2026.
What happens to Blend loans when Blur closes?
Blend will stop matching new loans on November 12, 2026. Borrowers can repay their loans or let them default before that date, and Blur has said it will offer a tool for withdrawing assets from Blend after the deadline. Anyone with active loans, listings or collection bids on Blur should review them well before the website closes.
How do you list an NFT on Blur?
Until November 12, 2026, you can connect an Ethereum wallet such as MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet or Ledger at blur.io, open the Portfolio tab, select one or more NFTs, set a price and submit the listing. Batch listing lets you price several NFTs at once. After the website closes, OpenSea is the main multi-chain alternative for listing Ethereum NFTs.
What happened to the BLUR token price?
BLUR launched in February 2023 and peaked at $5.02 that month. It traded near $0.012 on October 13, 2026, down more than 99%, with a market value of roughly $36 million, according to CoinGecko data. It fell about 34% in the day around the shutdown announcement. Blur says BLUR will continue to control the protocol’s fee switch.
What are the best alternatives to Blur?
For Ethereum and its layer-2 networks, OpenSea is the largest active marketplace, with a 1% fee on NFT sales and support for 22 blockchains. For Solana collections, Magic Eden and Tensor charge 2%, and Tensor charges nothing to the maker side of a trade. Rarible charges 2% on Ethereum, Base and Polygon and 1.5% on Solana.
More on this topic: NFT Marketplaces and Yuga Labs Launches Mudwater Trading Cards on Solana as BAYC and MAYC Claims Open.
