Opportunities in NFT-Related Projects as Blur Launches

Amid this resurgence, the market is buzzing with activity. Besides the Blur, Sudo, and X2Y2 airdrops, what other opportunities should we watch out for? Below is an overview of noteworthy projects in the NFT space.

Emerging NFT Marketplaces

Blur (BLUR)

Blur is an NFT marketplace and aggregator designed for professional traders. Despite its anonymous team, the project gained attention thanks to a seed round led by top-tier investment firm Paradigm. Blur aims to create a faster, more efficient NFT trading platform, enabling users to sweep NFTs across marketplaces, list NFTs, view real-time market data, and manage portfolios more effectively.

Key Features of Blur:

• Zero Fees: Blur charges no platform fees for its marketplace, aggregator, and advanced trading tools.

• Royalty Respect Incentives: Blur incentivizes traders to respect creator royalties through airdrops. Default royalties align with the highest rates on OpenSea, LooksRare, and X2Y2, and traders can customize royalties when listing NFTs.

• Community-Centric Tokenomics: Blur has successfully attracted NFT traders with three rounds of airdrops and continuous product updates. Its token, BLUR, launched on February 14, with most tokens allocated to the community, including traders, collectors, and creators.

Sudoswap (SUDO)

Sudoswap is a streamlined NFT Automated Market Maker (AMM) protocol with low fees. It employs AMM mechanisms and adjustable bonding curves, allowing users to trade directly with liquidity pools instead of peers. Liquidity providers can contribute assets to single-sided or double-sided pools, with optional fee spreads to capture trading fees.

Notable Features of Sudoswap:

• AMM Mechanism: Unlike traditional order book marketplaces, Sudoswap’s decentralized AMM mechanism allows teams to deploy NFT liquidity pools.

• Minimal Royalties: Sudoswap’s near-zero royalties appeal to speculators but pose challenges for creators.

• Governance Token: The governance token SUDO was distributed via airdrop to attract users. While SUDO is currently non-transferable, the community can propose enabling transfers through governance.

Token Incentives from NFT Marketplaces

Many platforms have tried to compete with OpenSea by issuing tokens to reward its user base, capitalizing on OpenSea’s lack of community rewards despite its dominant market share.

OpenDAO (SOS)

OpenDAO, founded by the NFT collector 9x9x9 of 721Club, airdropped SOS tokens to all OpenSea users at the end of 2021. This pioneering airdrop strategy kickstarted the trend of community-driven NFT marketplace launches, inspiring subsequent projects.

LooksRare (LOOKS)

LooksRare began development in August 2021 with the aim of creating a community-first NFT marketplace. In January 2022, it launched its governance token, LOOKS, and airdropped 12% of the total supply to OpenSea users, leveraging dissatisfaction with OpenSea. LooksRare also introduced trading rewards to attract activity.

X2Y2 (X2Y2)

Following LooksRare’s footsteps, X2Y2 airdropped 120 million X2Y2 tokens (12% of total supply) to OpenSea users in February 2022 and immediately launched its marketplace. It offers features like batch listing, batch purchasing, and peer-to-peer transfers, along with lower fees than OpenSea. In Q4 2022, X2Y2 introduced an NFT lending platform and now ranks among the top three marketplaces by market share.

Market Dynamics

Since its launch, Blur has rapidly overtaken X2Y2 in trading volume, achieving over $400 million in monthly volume over the past two months. Meanwhile, Sudoswap, after its initial spike following its July launch, has seen trading volume gradually decline.

As the NFT market matures, platforms like Blur and Sudoswap are reshaping trading dynamics, while token airdrops and incentives continue to attract users and drive competition. This evolving ecosystem offers numerous opportunities for traders, collectors, and investors.

Blur and X2Y2 are closely matched in the number of unique users, while LooksRare ranks the lowest. Meanwhile, Sudoswap has experienced a decline in monthly users since reaching over 100,000 unique users in August.

Crypto Art NFT Platforms

Between 2018 and 2020, NFT trading primarily revolved around digital art. During this period, several platforms emerged to cater to the growing crypto art scene, including SuperRare, Rarible, and KnownOrigin.

SuperRare (RARE)

SuperRare is an Ethereum-based NFT marketplace created by Brooklyn-based studio Pixura in 2017 and launched in April 2018. It focuses on fostering a social NFT trading platform, aiming to create a new way to interact with art, culture, and collectibles. Over the years, SuperRare has matured into a robust ecosystem with features like an art community, an online store, and a magazine. In November 2022, it launched the RarePass NFT Collector Pass, which sold out entirely, generating over 3,000 ETH in revenue. The first RarePass sold for a staggering 138 ETH.

Rarible (RARI)

Rarible is another Ethereum-based NFT issuance and trading platform, founded in late 2019. It initially attracted users through an innovative liquidity mining mechanism. In January 2022, Rarible expanded its Marketplace Builder to the Polygon network, allowing creators to mint NFTs for free and build custom NFT brand collections. Additionally, its native aggregation tools enable the listing of NFTs across secondary marketplaces.

Other NFT Marketplaces

NFTb (NFTB)

NFTb is the first NFT marketplace on BNB Chain and is backed by Binance. Its offerings include an NFT marketplace, farming, a launchpad, and a GameFi NFT section for gaming-related NFTs. With the recent surge in NFT activity, NFTb’s token NFTB experienced a 4x price increase on January 30, outperforming similar products.

NFTrade (NFTD)

NFTrade is a multi-chain NFT marketplace, platform, and indexer offering decentralized, non-custodial solutions for all NFT interactions. In March 2022, the BNB Chain Foundation strategically acquired NFTrade Token (NFTD) to support its growth within the BNB Chain ecosystem. NFTrade integrates seven blockchains, including Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, ImmutableX, Moonbeam, and SKALE.

NFT Lending Protocols

NFT lending protocols are critical infrastructure within the NFT ecosystem, providing liquidity and enhancing capital efficiency for NFT assets.

BendDAO (BEND)

BendDAO is a peer-to-pool NFT liquidity protocol similar to Aave, tailored for NFTs. It supports instant NFT loans, collateral listings, and NFT down payments. Currently, BendDAO accepts eight NFTs as collateral: BAYC, CryptoPunks, MAYC, Azuki, Moonbirds, Doodles, Space Doodles, and Clone X. Initially, the protocol employed a 48-hour liquidation protection mechanism, but after a liquidity crisis in 2022, the DAO community voted to reduce the auction lock-up period to 4 hours.

JPEG’d (JPEG)

JPEG’d is another peer-to-pool NFT liquidity protocol that allows users to borrow the platform’s native stablecoin pUSD or derivative pETH by collateralizing their NFTs, resembling MakerDAO. It supports 11 NFT collections as collateral, with borrowing rates of 2% for pUSD and 5% for pETH. Moreover, JPEG’d DAO is among the top 10 holders of CVX, leveraging its voting power to earn CRV and CVX rewards from Curve Finance and Convex Finance, enhancing the profitability of JPEG’d pools.

Summary

Blur, as a new competitor in the NFT marketplace, has captured one-third of the market share within just a few months, showing potential to surpass OpenSea. The airdrop of Blur tokens has also reignited hope among NFT traders. After enduring the challenges of a bear market, many innovative and promising NFT projects continue to incubate opportunities. When the time is right, they may usher in another grand wave of growth and excitement.

All the assets mentioned above can be explored in the CoinEx NFT section. This does not constitute investment advice.