Blur Shuts Its Website: Monthly NFT Volume Fell From $1.4 Billion to Under $7 Million, and One Founder Closes Two Projects in Ten Days
Blur, which once promised to become the Binance of NFTs, is shutting down its website. The frontend goes offline in November; the onchain protocol keeps running.
Three key facts
The website and the lending product close together. Blur announced on October 12 that the blur.io frontend will be deprecated in November, and its NFT lending product Blend will stop matching new loans on November 12. Borrowers must repay before then or let their loans default. Blur will later provide a tool to help users withdraw assets from Blend. The onchain marketplace protocol stays live, and BLUR keeps control of the protocol's fee switch.
Volume is down more than 99%. According to The Block's data, Blur's monthly trading volume peaked at about $1.43 billion in March 2023 and had fallen below $7 million by March 2026. After the announcement, the BLUR token dropped more than 20% to about $0.015, for a market cap of roughly $44 million. In early 2023 it traded above $5.
Same founder, two projects wound down in ten days. Blur founder Tieshun "Pacman" Roquerre also created Ethereum layer 2 Blast, built by the same core team. Blast announced its wind-down on October 2, and Abstract, the layer 2 backed by Pudgy Penguins, followed on October 6.
Wang Dou's Take
Monthly volume went from $1.43 billion to $7 million, a more than 200x drop. That's not a cooldown; that's someone pulling the plug. Critics long said the "Binance of NFTs" pitch ran on airdrop points that fed an army of volume farmers. When the points ran out, the crowd left.
The best part is how it closes: the website goes dark, but "the protocol keeps running," and the fee switch stays with the token. It's a restaurant owner saying the dining room is closed, but the kitchen is still there, so help yourselves to the menu. Two projects shut in ten days — Pacman's most polished product right now may be the graceful exit.
Source: The Block / Blur to shut down frontend next month as NFT trading volume dwindles