Blur to shut down NFT marketplace website on Nov. 12; Blend to halt new loans

NFT marketplace Blur will shut down its website, blur.io, on Nov. 12, the company said in a post on its official X account at about 5 a.m. KST on Oct. 13, writing that "the blur.io frontend will be deprecated on November 12, 2026." Blend, its NFT-backed lending service, will stop matching new loans on the same day. On Upbit, the BLUR token fell more than 22% within an hour of the announcement.

The website goes, the contracts stay

Blur said the move "only applies to the frontend," the web interface users visit to buy and sell NFTs. The Blur marketplace protocol, the smart contracts on Ethereum that process trades behind that interface, "will remain operational on-chain, and $BLUR will continue to control its fee switch," the company said. The fee switch is the setting that decides whether the protocol collects trading fees.

Blur did not say in the post whether any official service or other marketplace integration would replace the interface. In the last post of its three-part thread, it added: "Beware of impersonators and fraudulent announcements. The only official Blur account is @blur_io."

Blur's monthly NFT trading volume peaked at about $1.43 billion in March 2023 and had fallen below $7 million by March 2026, according to data compiled by The Block, roughly 0.5% of its peak three years earlier.

Blend borrowers must repay or default by Nov. 12

Blend is an NFT-backed lending service that Blur launched with venture firm Paradigm in May 2023. Borrowers pledge NFTs to borrow ether at fixed rates with no expiry and can repay at any time. A lender who wants out starts an auction to find a new lender; if the auction fails, the lender takes the NFT collateral. "Blend will stop matching new loans on November 12, 2026," Blur said. "Borrowers have until then to repay their loans or allow them to default." Borrowers who do not repay will not get their NFT collateral back.

Blur said it will provide a frontend tool after Nov. 12 to help users withdraw their assets from Blend. The timeline is as follows.

Second wind-down in a month

Blur's creator, known as Pacman (real name Tieshun Roquerre), also founded Blast, an Ethereum layer-2 network. On Oct. 2, Blast said on its official X account that "the ongoing costs of maintaining Blast exceed the revenue generated by the L2, and we do not see a credible path to making the chain economically sustainable," and that it would wind down. Blast asked users to move their assets to Ethereum mainnet through its regular interface by Oct. 26, after which withdrawals will require interacting directly with its bridge contracts on Ethereum.

Blast was developed by the same core team as Blur, according to The Block. Blur announced its website shutdown 10 days after Blast's announcement. Blur did not give a reason for the shutdown in its post.

BLUR at 20 won on Upbit, down 22% an hour after the post

On Upbit's Korean won market, BLUR opened the 5 a.m. KST hour on Oct. 13 at 24.4 won and fell as low as 19.0 won within the hour. Trading value in that hour was about 2.04 billion won, more than 100 times the roughly 18.6 million won traded in the previous hour. As of 7:30 a.m. KST, BLUR traded at 20.2 won on Upbit, 22.0% below the previous day's close of 25.9 won. On Bithumb it traded at 20.26 won. Upbit's one-year high is 90.6 won, set on Oct. 14, 2025, and its one-year low is 18.0 won, set on Aug. 18 this year.

On Binance spot, BLUR fell 21.7% over the same hour, from $0.0180 to $0.0141, and traded at $0.01488 at 7:30 a.m. KST. The Upbit price was about 1.3% above the Binance price converted to won, a gap known as the kimchi premium (the difference between prices on Korean exchanges and global markets). On Binance futures, more traders bet on declines. The funding rate, settled every four hours, was 0.0006% at the 5 a.m. KST settlement, but the estimate for the 9 a.m. settlement had dropped to -1.05%. A negative funding rate means short positions pay longs. As of 7 a.m. KST, longs accounted for 58.3% of Binance futures accounts, down from 62.6% at 4 a.m., before the announcement.