ZetaPeakBlur will close its website on Nov. 12 after monthly trading fell from about $1.43 billion at its 2023 peak to under $7 million, ten days after sister project Blast announced its own shutdown.
Once-largest Ethereum NFT marketplace Blur is shutting down after volumes collapse 99%
Blur will close its website on Nov. 12 after monthly trading fell from about $1.43 billion at its 2023 peak to under $7 million, ten days after sister project Blast announced its own shutdown.
Blur will close its NFT marketplace website on Nov. 12 and stop arranging new loans through Blend, though its Ethereum smart contracts will remain operational. Monthly trading volume plunged more than 99.5%, from about $1.43 billion in March 2023 to less than $7 million in March 2026, while the fee-free marketplace recorded no protocol revenue over the past three years. The closure follows the shutdown announcement for Blast, another project created by Tieshun Roquerre, and sent the BLUR token down more than 20%.
Blur, once the largest marketplace for trading Ethereum NFTs, is shutting down its website next month after trading activity collapsed more than 99% from its peak, marking the second major retreat in ten days for projects built by crypto entrepreneur Tieshun Roquerre.
The marketplace said Monday that its website will close on Nov. 12, while its NFT lending service, Blend, will stop arranging new loans.
Borrowers have until that date to repay their loans or allow them to default. Blur plans to provide a separate tool afterward for withdrawing assets from Blend.
Blur’s underlying smart contracts will remain operational on Ethereum, meaning the shutdown does not eliminate the blockchain-based trading system. BLUR tokenholders will retain control of its fee switch — a mechanism that allows them to vote on whether the marketplace should start charging trading fees.
The decision follows the Oct. 2 shutdown announcement from Blast, an Ethereum scaling network also created by Roquerre, better known as Pacman, and developed by the team behind Blur.
Blast once attracted more than $2 billion in assets, partly through rewards offered to users depositing funds. That figure had fallen to approximately $32 million when developers announced the closure, saying the network cost more to operate than it generated in revenue.
Blur's rise was just as dramatic.
Launched in 2022, it challenged the-then leader OpenSea by offering professional traders faster transactions, low fees and token rewards.
The strategy helped Blur capture more than 70% of Ethereum NFT trading volume in March 2023, when activity on the platform reached approximately $1.43 billion, DefiLlama data shows
By March 2026, that monthly volume had fallen below $7 million, a decline of more than 99.5%.
But Blur's marketplace generated no revenue from transaction fees for all that trading activity. The platform charged traders nothing, and Token Terminal records $0 in protocol revenue over the past three years, despite billions of dollars in NFT trades. However, the figure does not establish whether Blur earned money from its lending service or other activities.
Blur's aggressive incentive programs had attracted criticism for encouraging speculative trading and putting pressure on royalties paid to NFT creators. The trading figures alone do not establish how much activity came from genuine buyers rather than traders seeking rewards.
Meanwhile, unlike Blast, Blur has not publicly attributed its shutdown to operating losses.
Its website still advertises zero marketplace fees and more than $7.4 billion in lifetime trading volume, a reminder of how quickly the business once grew.
BLUR fell more than 20% following Monday's announcement, trading around $0.015. Blast users have until Oct. 26 to withdraw through the network's regular interface. Blur's separate shutdown follows on Nov. 12.
1Bitcoin rebounds above $83,000 as it decouples from tumbling Korean stocks and Nasdaq futures56 minutes ago 2Palantir's Europe head warns the region is 'missing the boat' on AI just as it did with the internet12 hours ago 3Tom Lee sees $2 trillion wealth transfer fueling crypto demand as Bitmine buys more ether13 hours ago 4Tokenized catastrophe bonds target the disaster-insurance gap14 hours ago 5Standard Chartered offers RLUSD custody in Dubai and plans LMAX collateral link17 hours ago 6Ledger claims CryptoBilis cases are limited as up to $93 million is traced, $10 million frozen17 hours ago 7Bitcoin falls below $83,000 as dollar strength keeps markets on edge17 hours ago 8Global financial watchdog calls for cross-border information sharing, planning for stablecoin crisis18 hours ago 9South Korea just got its first traditional bank loans backed by bitcoin18 hours ago 10SWI raises $894 million to repurpose former FTX bitcoin miner Genesis Digital to AI18 hours ago
Beyond the Risk-Free Rate: Diversified Real World Yield in Productive Stablecoins
Beyond the Risk-Free Rate: Diversified Real World Yield in Productive Stablecoins
Diversified RWA stablecoins sustain 5-7% yield from real credit as crypto funding compresses to ~4%. GENIUS pushes yield off-chain; TAM grows to $4B in 3 years.
Diversified RWA stablecoins sustain 5-7% yield from real credit as crypto funding compresses to ~4%. GENIUS pushes yield off-chain; TAM grows to $4B in 3 years.
Why it matters:
Diversified RWA stablecoins sustain 5-7% yield from real credit as crypto funding compresses to ~4%. GENIUS pushes yield off-chain; TAM grows to $4B in 3 years.
Ledger claims CryptoBilis cases are limited as up to $93 million is traced, $10 million frozen
Why a bug that could have threatened XRP's 100 billion supply cap stayed hidden for years
Ledger says unauthorized implant found in at least one device sold by CryptoBilis