Blur will shut down its website on November 12 after monthly NFT trading volume collapsed from roughly $1.43 billion at its 2023 peak to below $7 million. The announcement came ten days after its sister project, Blast, also disclosed plans to wind down operations.
Once the largest marketplace for Ethereum-based NFTs, Blur is preparing to close its website after losing more than 99% of its peak trading activity. The decision marks the second major setback in ten days for projects associated with crypto entrepreneur Tieshun Roquerre.
Blur announced on Monday that its website would cease operating on November 12. Its NFT lending platform, Blend, will also stop facilitating new loans.
Users with outstanding Blend loans must repay them by the deadline or risk default. Blur plans to release a separate withdrawal tool after the website closes, although it has not specified when the tool will become available.
The shutdown will not disable Blur’s underlying smart contracts, which will remain active on Ethereum. BLUR tokenholders will also continue to control the protocol’s fee switch, giving them the ability to vote on whether the marketplace should begin charging transaction fees.
The announcement follows Blast’s October 2 decision to shut down. Blast is an Ethereum scaling network created by Roquerre, who is also known as Pacman, and developed by the team behind Blur.
Blast previously attracted more than $2 billion in assets, supported partly by incentives for users depositing funds into the network. By the time its shutdown was announced, that figure had dropped to approximately $32 million. Developers said the network’s operating costs were higher than the revenue it generated.
Blur’s Market Dominance Gives Way to a Sharp Decline
Blur’s expansion was equally striking. Launched in 2022, the marketplace challenged OpenSea by targeting professional NFT traders with faster transactions, lower fees, and token rewards.
The approach helped Blur secure more than 70% of Ethereum NFT trading volume in March 2023, when its monthly volume reached approximately $1.43 billion, according to DefiLlama data.
By March 2026, monthly trading activity had dropped below $7 million, representing a decline of more than 99.5% from the peak.
Despite billions of dollars in NFT transactions, Blur generated no revenue from marketplace trading fees because users were not charged for trades. Token Terminal data shows zero protocol revenue over the past three years. However, this does not establish whether the platform earned revenue from Blend or other activities.
Blur’s aggressive token incentives also drew criticism for encouraging speculative behavior and putting pressure on royalties paid to NFT creators. Still, trading-volume data alone cannot determine how much activity came from genuine NFT purchases versus traders participating primarily to earn rewards.
BLUR Falls After Closure Plans Emerge
Unlike Blast, Blur has not publicly said that operating losses prompted its website closure.
The marketplace’s website continues to advertise zero trading fees and more than $7.4 billion in lifetime trading volume, reflecting its earlier prominence in the NFT market.
BLUR dropped more than 20% following Monday’s announcement, trading at approximately $0.015.
Blast users have until October 26 to withdraw assets through the network’s standard interface. Blur’s website closure follows on November 12, leaving users with a separate deadline to prepare for the loss of its main online access point.
