Blur Declares War Against OpenSea with New Royalty Policy, Recommends Creators to Block Competitor

Blur is making new moves on its way to challenge OpenSea's leading position in the NFT marketplace space. It has published a blog article to explain its new royalty policy, in which it recommended the creators to block OpenSea.

Previously, Blur used an optional royalty model which enforced a 0.5% minimum creator royalty. OpenSea, on the other hand, has a royalty enforcement tool that enforces full royalties on new collections. Creators using this tool will automatically block NFT marketplaces that don't honor full royalty, including Blur. One example is Yuga Labs' Sewer Pass collection, which blocked Blur, sudoswap, LooksRare and NFTX.

Now, Blur announces that it will enforce full royalties on collections that block trading on OpenSea. This is a direct response to OpenSea's current royalty policy that "prevents collections from being able to earn royalties everywhere". The result of this policy is that "creators are limited to earning royalties on only one platform at a time."

"OpenSea's business benefits from having creators block Blur." the marketplace said.

According to Blur, currently, creators have three options: no block, block Blur, and block Opensea, and the third one is recommended by Blur. "Our preference is that creators should be able to earn royalties on all marketplaces that they whitelist, rather than being forced to choose. To encourage this, Blur enforces full royalties on collections that block trading on OpenSea."

In addition, Blur noted that creators blocking OpenSea will be eligible to receive Season 2 rewards.

However, should OpenSea stop blocking other marketplaces, Blur would also stop its new policy, and a fourth option would be recommended, which is creators don't need to block at all. Then they would earn enforced full royalty on both Blur and OpenSea. "Today, OpenSea automatically sets royalties to optional when they detect trading on Blur. We would like to welcome OpenSea to stop this policy, so that new collections can earn royalties everywhere."

Blur is trying to close the gap between itself and OpenSea. According to NFTGo, for the last seven days, Blur surpassed OpenSea's trading volume by over $20m. This is inspired by the launch of $BLUR. But in terms of the numbers of sales and traders, OpenSea is still at the top with huge advantages.