Despite its recent success, Blur (BLUR), an NFT-focused altcoin project, is said to be manipulating the market. A recent report by CryptoSlam offered some solid evidence on this.
Altcoin investors beware: Suspicious activity allegedly on Blur (BLUR)
Blur outperformed OpenSea in total sales through its platform, but the data has sparked debate about its true significance.
One of the factors contributing to Blur’s success is its rewards program, which rewards investors for listing and bidding on NFTs. These points can be exchanged for BLUR with the number of tokens received based on the number of points accumulated.
Hey! Here are some fun facts about NFT volume:
20% of Blur's volume comes from only 15 wallets.
50% of Blur's volume comes from less than 300 wallets.
Watch the top 500 farmers drive artificial volume live over any timeframe with source below ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/chDM6B7uMv
— poof (@poof_eth) February 22, 2023
Since Blur does not charge rental costs or royalties for NFTs, the gas fee is the only obstacle for users to play the system and earn tokens by purchasing their listings with a separate wallet.
But last month, CryptoSlam, which tracks NFT sales data, claimed that’s exactly what happened with Blur. CryptoSlam said in an email to clients that only 1% of high-value investors are responsible for large amounts of trading activity on the platform.
Is the volume of Blur real? Are NFTs manipulated?
In the period from February 14 to February 25, CryptoSlam detected over $577 million Wash-Trading NFT transactions on the platform.
According to its report, sales data from Blur “misrepresents” the NFT market. A potentially artificial increase in sales put the industry’s overall sales volume to its highest level since January 2022, leading some to believe the market is about to recover after a significant drop in activity last year.
CryptoSlam has detected at least $577 million worth of wash traded related to Blur, since the airdropping on Feb. 14, such as NFT resales within a short period at prices close to the assets’ initial transactions. https://t.co/yyqJl0xXBz
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) February 26, 2023
“What we found is that this is artificially inflating sales volume for the entire NFT market in a very fraudulent way,” CryptoSlam data engineer Scott Hawkins said in an interview with Forecast.
Also, OpenSea has more users than Blur and a user base that includes a smaller group of active traders. Compared to OpenSea’s 294,146 users, Blur has only 113,886 users in the last 30 days. Critics also claim that a small percentage of wallets on Blur are responsible for most transactions.
The future of Blur
As quoted by Kriptokoin.com, Blur recently announced its mobile access for NFT purchases, and its price gained double digits. In light of the allegations about it, the details of how the altcoin price will appreciate in the future remain in the dark.
BLUR currently serves as a management token, but as BLUR is a centralized entity, newly established DAOs will gradually need to hand over control to their token holders. This may be why US users are excluded from the airdrop, despite being available on major US exchanges like Coinbase.
Blur DAO will be responsible for controlling critical aspects of the platform, such as setting up the protocol’s value storage and distribution. This may include setting a protocol fee rate (up to 2.5%) after 180 days and providing Treasury grants to further develop the market. These choices will play an important role in shaping the future development of the platform and whether Blur can compete effectively in the market now and in the near future.
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