Blur to close trading website and Blend lending protocol in 2026

Blur’s sudden pivot

Blur will close its trading website and stop matching new loans through Blend on November 12, 2026, even though the on-chain marketplace protocol will continue to operate. Borrowers must repay outstanding loans before November 12 or they will enter default. I find the lack of explanation regarding this sudden front-end closure frustrating. The BLUR token fell 15.31% to $0.01548 after the announcement. However, the token previously surged 150% after hitting an all-time low of $0.15 on October 12. Season 2 of the airdrop campaign ends November 20. This will cause selling pressure as participants cash in rewards. Currently, 38% of the 3 billion total BLUR tokens remain in circulation with 2 million tokens unlocking daily. Blur changed market dynamics by charging zero fees and airdropping $400 million in BLUR tokens in 2022, effectively changing how traders interact with assets. This aggression helped Blur capture over 70% of daily NFT trades, eating away the market share of OpenSea. OpenSea raised $300 million at a $13 billion valuation in January 2022, yet a major investor wrote down its stake in the marketplace by 90%.

Sotheby’s Metaverse enters the market

Sotheby’s Metaverse acts as a secondary marketplace for digital art to solve fragmentation in the 1/1 market. The auction house launched the platform on October 15 and started its first sale on October 19. It aggregates artists from multiple marketplaces using a 2.5% fee and fully enforced royalties. The "Natively Digital 1.2: The Collectors" auction ran from October 18 to 26 and included 53 pieces from 19 collectors. These pieces include works by Bored Ape Yacht Club and Kevin Abosch. The curated selection contains artists like Steve Aoki, Paris Hilton, Pranksy, and straybits.

The Metaverse website exhibits NFTs in a fashion comparable to Nifty Gateway, so that viewers can readily observe the transaction history of every component. The platform uses Seaport protocol integration to allow traders to access listings from competing marketplaces within its own interface, which helps to improve price discovery and execution efficiency for all users.

Collectors joining the Metaverse receive a profile image drawn by Pak. Sotheby’s first entered the NFT realm in June 2021. They previously collaborated with Pak in April 2021 to auction "The Fungible Collection." Can these traditional auction houses maintain interest among the digitally native youth?

Ongoing security vulnerabilities

Security remains a massive problem for NFT traders. Flooring Protocol lost 36 Pudgy Penguins and 14 Bored Apes, with the loss totaling between $1.60 million and $1.68 million. A hacker dumped $815,000 in Bored Apes and $867,000 in Pudgy Penguins into Blur bids. You should check your own wallet approvals if you use older platforms. NFT Trader also lost assets due to malicious code execution on two older smart contracts. On-chain experts recovered 5 OCM, 11 Hashmasks, and 1 Game Disease. OpenSea still processes $1.2 billion in monthly volume. OpenSea lost market share to Blur, which processes $800 million monthly. OpenSea laid off half its staff after its market dominance slipped. Transit Finance lost $1.9 million in DAI because of a vulnerability in a contract on TRON. In May, Huma Finance lost $100,000 on Polygon. Ink Finance lost $140,000 on Polygon. TAC lost $3 million in USDT and BLUM tokens. Aurellion lost $455,000 and BoostHook lost $200,000. FOX Colony lost $130,000 to a hack and $50,000 to a copycat. OKX DEX lost $2.76 million after an upgrade allowed direct invocation of the claimTokens function. The Ledger Connect Kit supply chain attack by Angel Drainer stole at least $600,000 from several dApps. Peapods Finance also suffered an attack, but the project called it a white hat hack because it returned 90% of lost funds.