Key facts
- Blur's website frontend will permanently close on November 12, 2026.
- The on-chain Blur marketplace protocol will continue to operate.
- Blend, Blur's NFT lending protocol, will cease new loan matching on November 12, 2026.
- Some NFT collectors celebrated the shutdown, citing criticism of Blur's impact on creator royalties.
- Blur's strategy of optional creator royalties and token rewards contributed to its rise but also to lower royalty fees.
- Blur's monthly trading volume collapsed by over 99% from its peak in March 2023.
NFT marketplace Blur announced on October 12, 2026, that it will permanently close its website frontend on November 12, 2026. The on-chain marketplace protocol will remain operational, and the BLUR token will continue to govern its fee switch. However, the practical user interface will be gone for most retail users.
Alongside the frontend shutdown, Blend, Blur’s peer-to-peer NFT lending protocol, will stop matching new loans on November 12. Borrowers must repay outstanding loans by that date or allow them to default. Blur will provide a tool for users to withdraw assets from Blend after the deadline.
The announcement was met with cheers from some NFT collectors who had criticized Blur's policies for negatively impacting creator royalties. "Good riddance. You destroyed NFTs. Please shut down and never come back," commented NFT collector Cryptobscure. Another collector, starfruit, stated, "You may not have been able to complete your mission to destroy NFTs. But you acted with extreme determination and tried everything. Congratulations to us for surviving you."
Blur's strategy involved optional creator royalties and token rewards, which helped it overtake OpenSea in trading volume. However, this approach also contributed to a significant decline in effective creator royalty fees. Blockchain analytics platform Nansen reported that effective creator royalty fees dropped to 0.6% in July 2023 from an average of 2.5% in 2022, attributing much of this decline to Blur's policies.
The shutdown follows a dramatic collapse in Blur's trading volume, falling by over 99% from its peak of approximately $1.43 billion in March 2023 to below $7 million by March 2026. The BLUR token itself crashed as much as 29% on the news, falling to around $0.015 from a peak above $5 in early 2023. This marks one of the clearest exits from the 2022-2023 NFT cycle.