NFT marketplace Blur announced a provocative policy change, it is framed as a defensive survival tactic

NFT marketplaces have become extremely competitive, resulting in a battle between words and wills. The most recent marketplace to make headlines, BLUR has announced a policy change that will require full creator royalties for any collection that prevents trading on OpenSea.

Blur’s latest move is presented as a defensive survival strategy in response to OpenSea’s anti-competitive practices. The company argued that creators who whitelist both OpenSea and Blur should be able to earn royalties on both platforms and that OpenSea should stop setting royalties to optional when trading on Blur is detected. OpenSea is a US$13.3 billion company and the most important marketplace in the Ethereum NFT ecosystem, whereas Blur has been riding high after airdropping its long-awaited BLUR token, which has propelled it to its current position as OpenSea’s most viable threat in recent months, and some are even excited that there is a challenge to Opensea’s supremacy.

Blur will be able to maintain its current popularity following its recent token launch, but the company is seizing the opportunity to challenge its most powerful competitor. Regardless of Blur’s efforts to gain an advantage, it should be noted that OpenSea’s policies carry a lot of weight and are still the industry standard. Furthermore, the idea of not honoring creator royalties was widely rejected by the NFT community, prompting OpenSea to release a blocklist tool that allowed creators to prevent their NFTs from being traded on any marketplace that did not honor creator royalties. In recent weeks, it has reportedly been able to bypass OpenSea’s blocklist tool. BLUR does not fully honor creator royalty settings because the platform does not levy a fee on secondary sales of NFT creators’ works. This is a risky move for BLUR, as royalty fees can generate millions of dollars in revenue, especially for dominant collections. The BLUR move is framed as a zero-sum game between two of the top players in the NFT ecosystem. BLUR’s move serves as a reminder that NFT marketplace policies can change at any time. To summarise, the NFT marketplace is extremely competitive, resulting in a battle of words and wills among the marketplaces. The decision by BLUR to levy full creator royalties on any collection that prevents trading on OpenSea is risky, but it serves as a reminder that NFT marketplaces can change their policies at any time.