Blur, Once Largest Ethereum NFT Marketplace, to Shut Down as Volume Collapses 99%

Blur's website is scheduled to close on Nov. 12, and its Blend lending service will no longer arrange new loans, the marketplace said Monday. Borrowers have until that date to repay or let their loans default, with Blur planning to offer a separate tool for withdrawing assets from Blend afterward. The underlying smart contracts will stay live on Ethereum, and holders of the BLUR token will keep control of a fee switch that lets them decide whether the marketplace charges trading fees.

The move marks a second major pullback in roughly ten days for projects tied to Tieshun Roquerre, the entrepreneur known as Pacman. Blast, an Ethereum scaling network he created with the team behind Blur, announced its own closure on Oct. 2 after assets on the network slid from more than $2 billion to about $32 million. Developers said Blast cost more to run than it earned in revenue, and users have until Oct. 26 to withdraw funds through its regular interface.

Blur entered the market in 2022 and quickly took on OpenSea by courting professional traders with faster transactions, low fees and token incentives. That approach helped it capture over 70% of Ethereum NFT trading volume in March 2023, when monthly activity reached about $1.43 billion, DefiLlama data shows. By March 2026, monthly volume had dropped below $7 million — a decline of more than 99.5%.

Despite handling billions of dollars in NFT trades, Blur charged no transaction fees, and Token Terminal records $0 in protocol revenue over the past three years. That measure does not show whether the marketplace made money from Blend or other services. Blur's incentive programs drew criticism for fueling speculative trading and pressuring royalties paid to NFT creators; the volume figures alone do not reveal how much activity came from genuine buyers rather than reward-seeking traders.

BLUR fell more than 20% after Monday's announcement and traded around $0.015. Unlike Blast, Blur has not publicly blamed operating losses for its decision. Its website still promotes zero marketplace fees and more than $7.4 billion in lifetime trading volume, underscoring how rapidly the business grew before its collapse.