Blur Bid Farming Wreaks Havoc on NFT Market This Weekend

Blur's newest bid feature has seemingly caused a roller coaster weekend in the NFT market, with several notable collections seeing 10-20 percent swings in both directions.

The weekend started with a bang, as yesterday's market was full of green. Several collections saw significant gains in their floor prices, including:

• Pudgy Penguins (+22% to 4.94 ETH)
• Azukis (+15% to 13.9 ETH)
• Otherdeeds (+15% to 1.36 ETH)
• Clone X (+10% to 7.4 ETH)
• MAYC (+5% to 14.8 ETH)

Several notable community members and traders noticed the price action and connected it to the new Blur "bid walls" on Twitter this weekend. As a part of their new Bid feature rollout, Blur has included new analytics allowing traders to see exactly where the bids are coming, by who, and in what amounts.

Infamous BAYC trader Franklin had this to say:

Another notable NFT trader, Cirrus, noted:

The increase in bid activity spiked volume in the market to levels not seen since May 2021, as reported on by NFT Statistics (@punk9059). Of the 30,000 ETH volume, 70 percent was recorded on Blur with a large contribution from Blur airdrop 3 farmers.

Regarding the "farming,", this was the typical mechanic spotted in the Blur market on Saturday: 

1) Farmers submitted bids at or near the floor for top-volume NFT collections like Azuki and MAYC, 2) bought NFT(s) via those bids, 3) immediately sold the NFTs to the highest bid on Blur, and 4) then rinsed and repeated.

This farming temporarily spiked floor prices for those collections, but those bid walls have since fallen and most gains have been erased.

Here are today's numbers, for those same collections (using floor prices on Blur):

• Pudgy Penguins (-25% to 4 ETH)
• Azukis (-20% to 11.4 ETH)
• Otherdeeds (-19% to 1.1 ETH)
• Clone X (-15% to 6.45 ETH)
• MAYC (-8% to 13.6 ETH)

Let's take a look at Pudgy Penguins, for example. The current "bid wall" is now 1,038 ETH at the 3.75 ETH level. Compare this to Friday, when there was over 2,000 ETH of bid pressure on the Pudgy Penguins collection, and one will notice a significant reduction in liquidity and buy levels. It is a similar story for each of the collections noted here.

With bidding still earning rewards through the rest of the month, it will be interesting to see how this NFT market continues to react to this latest incentive.