Morning Minute | A 'Blur'ry Future
GM!
Take a minute to catch up on the latest in the Web3 space with today's NFT market analysis, top movers, and upcoming mints.
TylerD's Market Summary
Blur rewards aren't ending time soon, based on their latest major update. What is changing, and how will it impact the market?
📉 Blur's Latest Update
If you were hopeful that Blur farming may be coming to an end soon, you got some bad news yesterday.
Leading NFT marketplace and financialization platform Blur dropped a major update outlining changes and much more coming for Season 2 of Blur farming.
Which means - Season 2 and its rewards likely aren't ending any time soon.
The update kickstarted a firestorm of feedback and controversy, leading some farmers to withdraw millions from the program and starting a debate regarding Blur's role in the NFT market downturn.
What Happened?
The primary components of the update included:
- Gas optimization, claiming 50% less gas fees for trading
- New trait bidding functionality, allowing bids on mid-tier and rare NFTs (on all collections)
- Trait bidding points, rewarding those who bid on traits above floor for 12 specific collections
- A teaser of 3 key developments still to come in Season 2
Bullets 1 and 2 above are very nice features which no one could complain about.
The controversy has come around bullets 3 and 4.
For a quick download on how trait bidding works, see this math from the Blur blog:
Trait bid score = (Trait bid/Top collection bid) x (# of NFTs with that Trait)
They also add that the higher the trait bid is and the more items in that trait, the more points received.
Why Does It Matter?
Early reactions to the announcement swirled around NFT Twitter, with polar takes on how this would impact mid-tier and rare traits.
But the reality is, it might not have much of an impact at all.
The trait bidding points are not dilutive and are just a component of the larger bidding pool that already existed. For them to matter and be impactful, we'd have to see a relatively large amount of trait bids compared to floor bids.
From the Blur blog: "In practice, the majority of points will go to collection bids because there are typically a lot more floors than mids and rares."
So unless farmers really go after trait bidding, this update might not have a major market impact.
The bigger impact? The fact that Season 2 looks to be continuing for much longer.
With 3 key development left to come, one would assume there is likely at least 3 months left in Season 2 if not more.
The longer it goes, the longer Blur farmers are forced to keep farming.
And the longer the effects of Blur farming continue to impact the PFP market (i.e. continued downtrend).
Won't farmers just quit at some point?
The answer is no, it doesn't seem so.
One prominent farmer "rage quit" yesterday, removed $15M from the Blur pool. But he has already returned.
Blur TVL is still at $141M, in line with levels from most of March through May and down only about 20% from ATH.
And the Blur team doesn't seem to have any incentive to end Season 2 and distribute the 300M token rewards.
When those tokens hit the market, it's hard to imagine a scenario where $BLUR ($0.337) doesn't take a hit. Meaning the team and investor equity takes a hit as well.
In yesterday's post, I share that the NFT market will continue its downtrend until we see a major potential catalyst, one like Blur ending season 2 or a major change in farming.
This update is not that.
So expect more of the past few months - slow trend down with occasional rallies in specific projects.
Don't shoot the messenger.
🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?
Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:
- Trading volume came in around 10k ETH on Wednesday, down significantly from prior levels and likely tied to the Blur updates; NFTs saw a mix of red and green on the day
- Yuga's Chief Creative Officer Figge shared new teasers of The Otherside along with hints of the Clubhouse
- An Azuki Golden Skateboard sold on the secondary market for 135 ETH yesterday to Pimp Capital; it was the 1st Skateboard to sell since the auction last October
- 5 Fidenzas were sold from the Sotheby's wallet yesterday in an apparent OTC deal
- Lending protocol NFTfi updated its reward program so that higher APR loans will receive more rewards points (which they think will lead to inclusion of more projects); they also reminded users that the top 500 wallets at SZN 1 end will get a 2.5x multiplier
- Leading BTC NFTs have seen a rally in the past week, with OMB holding at 0.312 BTC on over 200 BTC trading volume, BTC DeGods up 20% to 1.35 BTC and OCM Dimensions up 10% to 0.499 BTC
- Sorare Football, LaLiga, and Post United are offering European Sorare managers the opportunity to join LaLiga clubs on their summer preseason tour in Mexico and the U.S.; apps open July 5-12, open to those 18+
🌎 Around Crypto and Web3
A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:
- The crypto market was up overnight; BTC +2.6%% to $31,180; ETH +1.4% at $1,940
- BlackRock's CEO Larry Funk said that Bitcoin could "revolutionize finance, compared it to digital gold and said that "Bitcoin is an international asset" in an interview on Fox Business
- Steve McQueen NFTs are coming to the ThetaDrop platform, featuring virtual motorcycles and providing utility such as token-gated content, events and games
🚀 NFT Total Volume
- BAYC (5,757 ETH, 29.6 ETH Floor)
- Azuki (2,172 ETH, 6.87 ETH)
- MAYC (1,560 ETH, 6.24 ETH)
- DeGods (924 ETH, 8.2 ETH)
- Azuki Elementals (296 ETH, 0.99 ETH)
📈 NFT Floor Price Increase
- Edenhorde (62%, 0.16 ETH Floor)
- Primera (46%, 1.74 ETH)
- CyberBrokers (35%, 0.29 ETH)
- Cool Cats (29%, 0.75 ETH)
- World of Women (25%, 0.75 ETH)
🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals
Today is another slow day of drops but with some big names in the mix.
Dior drops their B33 Sneakers this AM, and Parallel is back with the Manifest today as well.
The Dimensional ecosystem is adding Eve, though it seems to have lost some steam in the past week.
Perhaps the biggest event of the day is out of Taproot Wizards, who are hosting Vitalik in a major Spaces today. That's about as big of a guest as it gets. Expect the Taproots fandom to increase even more after that event.
If you want more, see the full list of today's drops from Swizzy's daily mint monitor.
- Dior - B33 Sneakers (4:00 a.m. ET)
- Taproot Wizards spaces with Vitalik (12:30 p.m. ET)
- Dimensionals RPG - EVE (1:00 p.m. ET)
- Parallel - The Manifest (TBD)
Enjoy this write-up? Follow along with me on Twitter @tyler_did_it or reach out via email tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.
For all volume and floor price data, see Lucky Trader's Project Rankings page.
For all upcoming mints, see Lucky Trader's NFT Calendar page.
