Someone Got $8.4 Million in Blur NFT Marketplace's Latest Airdrop

By André Beganski

As NFT marketplace Blur sets its sights on a so-called Season 3 of rewards for traders, one JPEG flipper walked away with more than $8.4 million worth of airdropped BLUR tokens from Season 2.

Factoring in how active the trader was—across NFT bids, listings, and lending activity during its months-long Season 2—Blur awarded the pseudonymous Hanwe's hanwe.eth wallet with 22.85 million BLUR tokens, according to a Dune dashboard.

The airdropped tokens were worth around $7.3 million when claimed late Monday, shortly after Blur’s Season 2 ended at 6 pm ET, but the token has risen in value since. Blur’s token is up about 8% over the past day at $0.37, according to CoinGecko.

Using the Ethereum Name Service to assign their wallet a human-readable name, the trader received a substantial slice of the 300 million BLUR earmarked for Season 2’s end. According to the Dune data, Hanwe received the largest share of rewards for Season 2.

Blur catapulted past OpenSea in terms of NFT trading volume this year, as the marketplace’s business—infused with incentives that encourage people to trade—struck a chord with crypto’s JPEG crowd. However, Blur signaled in its Season 3 announcement that its upcoming rewards period will feel somewhat different than before, thanks to the involvement of a new Ethereum layer-2 network dubbed Blast.

Backed by Paradigm, Standard Crypto, and other investors, Blur said its Season 3 will be “powered” by Blast, and that Blur’s community would be airdropped “REDACTED” in May 2024 when the new season ends. Blast, which touts a native yield on certain tokens like Ethereum and stablecoins, announced on Twitter Tuesday that it has raised $20 million.

Additionally, Blur is shaking up its reward structure. The marketplace said those who deposit BLUR into the platform will receive 50% of the season’s rewards this time around.

Punk9059, the pseudonymous director of research at NFT startup Proof, gave a shoutout to one Blur trader who turned a starting fund of 2-3 ETH (currently $3,950 to $5,925) into a $83,100 airdrop, noting the person, @ESK_NFT on Twitter, “hustles like crazy” on the platform.

Throughout Blur’s Season 2, popular NFT collections such as the Bored Ape Yacht Club came under pressure as some traders sought to maximize their airdrop. For example, notable trader Jeffrey Huang, also known as Machi Big Brother, sold more than 50 Apes over a couple of days.

According to the aforementioned Dune dashboard, Huang’s Season 2 airdrop comprised 6 million BLUR, worth around $2 million. And, levying expletives against Blur and its co-founder, Tieshun Roquerre, after its Season 2 closed, it appears Huang may have been disappointed with his eventual haul.

“Fuck [Blur] and [Roquerre],” he tweeted.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

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