Research on the Survival Status of NFT Trading Platforms (1): The Battle for the Leader in the Post-Royalty War Era

特邀专栏作者

2023-04-26 05:49

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Under the downturn of the general environment, the NFT Marketplace is struggling, and the related trading platform Token is also falling

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Under the downturn of the general environment, the NFT Marketplace is struggling, and the related trading platform Token is also falling

Original author: nobody (Twitter: @defioasis)

Research on the Survival Status of NFT Trading Platforms (2): The Dead End of Trading Mining

Disclosure: The author holds NFT platform tokens and other related assets as an individual investor, and has no interest in any platform or project party.

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Data source: https://dune.com/sealaunch/NFT? undefined=&Select+Timeframe_ef 4 aff= 365+days

As the strongest challenger of OpenSea, Blur's strategic thinking has been very clear since its birth. As a transaction aggregator, aggregate other people's, but not allow others to aggregate, exchange time for market quarrels for action space. Points run through the three phases of airdrops. The first phase rewards historical users - capture competitors' users and use the advantages of aggregators to convert them into their own users; the second phase incentives - stimulate the liquidity of sellers on their own platforms, Attract user retention, harvest platform word-of-mouth, and show off in the royalty war; the third phase of bidding rewards - after obtaining good seller liquidity, in turn stimulate buyer liquidity, pioneering the launch of Bid Pool, from peer-to-peer transactions Moved towards more efficient peer-to-pool transactions, and continued to expand brand influence outwards, leading the royalty war. From the second to the third airdrop, from motivating sellers to motivating buyers, from participating in wars to leading wars, it also reflects the changes in Blur's market position in different stages. Of course, an excellent UI/UX and a smooth experience for professional traders are the premise and guarantee for Blur to act around strategies. Even in my opinion, Blur should have planned the specific path of the three airdrops since its establishment and operation. Pro Trading is a very prescient execution point.

Around the royalty war, Blur has at least two important milestones:

2. (Continuing to promote bid rewards around Bid Pool) After releasing the airdrop, Blur officially declared war on OpenSea. At that time, Blur had already achieved a prominent position in the NFT market by virtue of the bidding blind box airdrop incentive and Bid Pool innovation, and users were no longer surprised that Blur's transaction volume exceeded OpenSea. User sentiment at this point is somewhat on the same side as Blur. On the day after the BLUR airdrop was received, Blur published a blog post for NFT creators, explaining the difference in royalty payment options between it and OpenSea, and since creators cannot earn royalties on Blur and OpenSea at the same time, Blur recommends creating or disable OpenSea, and full royalties will be enforced for any NFT projects that do not use OpenSea. It was thought that OpenSea would resist, but within two days, OpenSea announced that it would reduce the platform fee to 0, and at the same time switch to a 0.5% creator income model. OpenSea's changes basically copied Blur's fee structure, which was completely defeated in the royalty war. Blur almost declared itself as the victory and king of this war in a way of dimensionality reduction. According to The Block Pro data, Blur surpassed OpenSea in royalties paid to creators in March, reaching $12.6 million, a month-on-month increase of 12.5%; by contrast, OpenSea's royalties fell from $17.3 million to $9.9 million, This means that Blur brings stronger profitability than OpenSea to the NFT project parties or creators it serves.

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Data source: https://twitter.com/TheBlockPro__/status/1645792435237429250?s=20

Of course, there are many wonderful details in the royalty war. For example, Blur used Seaport launched by OpenSea to bypass the Yuga series NFT of its transaction blacklist, and it is not limited to both Blur and OpenSea. In a way, Blur's eventual victory is thanks to X2Y2. When SudoSwap opened the door to zero royalties, there was not much discussion. On the contrary, X2Y2, a latecomer, undertook most of the public opinion firepower in the NFT community on the issue of zero royalties, and finally fell on Blur, who was farther behind. Not a lot, but I have to lament the subtlety of Blur's entry time. [Note: For the origin and process of the royalty war, please refer to the article I wrote last year: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Ebee 0X xplmAXdUZe 6 nN_JQ]

However, the royalty war is just a process in the development of the NFT Marketplace, and it may not matter from the long history, and there may be the next royalty war. Does Blur's victory in this royalty war mean it has succeeded? Obviously no. In each phase of Blur's incentive plan, because they are all ex post incentives, the general identification method of transaction mining and wash trading is almost useless on Blur, and it is mistaken to think that many of Blur's trading activities are organic. This has fooled many users and data analysts in the first quarter of this year. In fact, Blur's organic transaction volume may be much lower than imagined. The consequences of false prosperity are also exposed in a worse market environment-due to the lack of actual trading demand and the relatively small market value of NFT, Blur Bid Pool has gradually become a powerful tool for large players to manipulate the market, especially in Season 2. The credits have continued to this day and have not ended yet. In order to obtain points and the narrow profit margins under liquidity, large investors rely on stronger financial strength than retail investors, set up mobile and false Bid Walls to conduct NFT transactions back and forth to play with retail investors, and earn meager profits from it, but based on small profits Big players are happy with the multi-sales and the considerable subsidies based on future airdrops. The final result is that big players control the NFT market price, and the floor price falls and fluctuates violently.

Also, Blur's roadmap is worth mentioning. When I first saw Blur's IDEA MAP, I seemed to see the shadow of BAYC. As we all know, BAYC has excellent storytelling capabilities, and its roadmap is shown by a cartoon, but neither the starting point nor the end point can be seen from it, and it is not even known where it will go next. The road map only tells you where you might go. As for when and how to go, the officials will bury these clues in tweets and videos, and guide the community to speculate and explore in a certain aspect in the form of Easter eggs. Going back to Blur, the author also feels that the similar behind-the-scenes teams are adopting similar behaviors, and hope that Blur will launch more powerful tools later.

The above-mentioned whole is developed around the perspective of Blur, let's talk about OpenSea. As the big brother of the market, OpenSea has survived for more than 2 years before NFT exploded in 2021, and even now it is much better than 2020 and before, so OpenSea should be the most calm about the current bad environment. The history of OpenSea must not be unfamiliar. The first NFT purchased by most users is in OpenSea, so I won’t describe it here. The advantage of OpenSea lies in the expandable brand effect under the first-mover advantage, and the trustworthiness that has been tested for a long time. Unlike Blur, Blur's short-term motivation is very clear, to defeat OpenSea and grab OpenSea's users. Although it has won a lot of market share from OpenSea with its excellent operating strategy, its increment to the entire NFT market is very limited, and it does not break away from the scope of involution. In addition to the growth of new users, the expansion effect of OpenSea is also reflected in the partnership with traditional art markets/auction houses. The cooperation between Sotheby's and Christie's and OpenSea has brought digital art into the real world.

Despite bowing its head in the royalty war and losing some market share, OpenSea's strong first-mover advantage wasn't enough for Blur to gain ground, still leading by at least 2x in day-trading users. In response to the growing professional trading needs of NFT Traders and the community's voice for airdrops, OpenSea upgraded the brand of Gem, which was acquired in April last year and had been idle for a long time, and became OpenSea Pro. As a professional trader, OpenSea Pro largely borrows ideas from Blur, adopts a zero-fee model, conducts transaction aggregation, and has an Offer Wall (Bid Wall). In addition, after the brand upgrade was successful, OpenSea Pro also airdropped NFTs to Gem historical users for free, which is considered to have complied with the long-standing voice of the OpenSea community for airdrops, although it is fundamentally different from the expected OpenSea Token.

Going back to OpenSea Pro itself, as OpenSea's counterattack, it has also achieved good performance after rebranding, and has become one of the highlights of the post-royalty era. According to @hildobby_ data panel, since the launch of OpenSea Pro, its aggregated transaction volume and users as a transaction aggregator can be roughly equal to Blur in the near future. Of course, the aggregated transaction volume of OpenSea Pro also mainly comes from Blur and OpenSea. In direct perception On the Blur may also occupy some more. However, even if the undeduplicated transaction volume of OpenSea + OpenSea Pro still does not account for 50% of Blur, OpenSea Pro still has a lot of room to play.