Blur, once the largest Ethereum NFT marketplace, will shut down its website on Nov. 12 after monthly trading volume collapsed more than 99.5% from its March 2023 peak, the marketplace said Monday — the second shutdown in ten days for projects built by crypto entrepreneur Tieshun Roquerre.

The closure means Blur will stop arranging new loans through Blend, its NFT lending service. Borrowers must repay their loans before Nov. 12 or let them default. Blur plans to release a separate tool afterward so users can withdraw assets from Blend.

The marketplace's underlying Ethereum smart contracts will remain operational, so the shutdown does not eliminate the on-chain trading system. BLUR tokenholders will retain control of the fee switch, the mechanism that lets them vote on whether the marketplace should begin charging trading fees.

What drove the collapse?

The numbers describe one of the steepest declines in the sector. DefiLlama data shows Blur processed approximately $1.43 billion in monthly trading volume in March 2023, when it captured more than 70% of Ethereum NFT trading activity. By March 2026, monthly volume had fallen below $7 million.

Put differently: a marketplace that once cleared roughly $47 million in trades per day now clears under $230,000 per day — a decline of more than 99.5%.

Blur reached that position by charging nothing. Launched in 2022, it challenged the then-leader OpenSea with faster transactions, low fees and token rewards aimed at professional traders. Token Terminal records $0 in protocol revenue over the past three years, despite billions of dollars in trades flowing through the platform. The data does not establish whether Blur earned money from Blend or other activities.

What does this change for practitioners?

Three operational consequences follow the Nov. 12 deadline:

• Blend borrowers must repay or accept default before the website closes; a separate withdrawal tool will follow.
• Traders relying on Blur's zero-fee model must migrate to other venues, most likely back to OpenSea or newer marketplaces.
• NFT creators and royalty advocates lose the main counterparty that had pressured royalty payments, though Blur's incentive programs had also drawn criticism for encouraging speculative, reward-seeking trading.

The shutdown follows the Oct. 2 closure announcement from Blast, the Ethereum scaling network also created by Roquerre, better known as Pacman, and developed by the Blur team. Blast once held more than $2 billion in user assets, partly through deposit rewards; that figure had fallen to approximately $32 million by the time developers announced the closure, citing operating costs that exceeded revenue. Blast users have until Oct. 26 to withdraw through the network's regular interface.

Unlike the Blast team, Blur has not publicly attributed its shutdown to operating losses. Its website still advertises zero marketplace fees and more than $7.4 billion in lifetime trading volume.

The BLUR token fell more than 20% after Monday's announcement, trading around $0.015. Tokenholders now face a governance question with a shrinking asset: whether the fee switch they retain control of retains any value once the front-end disappears.

For market participants, the immediate deadlines are concrete: Blast withdrawals close Oct. 26, Blend loan resolution ends Nov. 12, and the marketplace front-end goes dark the same day.