Mark Cuban and Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs were among the major players speaking out Friday against the NFT trading platform OpenSea, on Thursday of the company advertisement that it seeks to override the enforcement of the creator’s royalties.
“Not collecting and paying royalties on NFT sales is a HUGE mistake by OpenSea,” wrote Cuban, the billionaire tech entrepreneur. Twitter Friday. “This has reduced trust in the platform and harmed the industry.”
Cuban’s words generally carry weight in the NFT space, given the public profile of the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and long involvement in the crypto industry.
But they were probably hurt more by the fact that Cuban himself was an OpenSea investor, who contributed $23 million to the company. Series A funding round in 2021. The NFT market is now worth $13.3 billion, after a Series C collection last year.
On Thursday, after months of build-up, OpenSea announced its plans to stop enforcing mandatory creator royalties — fees that typically range from 2.5% to 10%, targeted at secondary sales of NFTs. and paid by the creators.
The move is widely seen as a capitulation to competition from other NFT markets that also exist creator’s royalties are cut in efforts to attract buyers. Former OpenSea CEO and co-founder Devin Finzer strongly defended Creator fees are just as important to maintaining artists’ rights.
Joining the Cuban condemnation of the OpenSea decision on Friday are the creators of several high-profile NFT projects, including Yuga Labs. In response to the policy change, Yuga Labs plans to begin the process of ending its compatibility with OpenSea.
A Yuga Labs spokesperson confirmed that Decrypt that this means that the company, in February 2024, will not allow OpenSea to trade new Yuga projects and any with upgradeable smart contracts. To date, sales of collections owned by Yuga have generated over $9 billion worth of NFT trade across the entire NFT market, per data from CryptoSlam.
Other creators included Bettythe pseudonymous founder of the NFT project Deadfelaz, called for an industry-wide boycott of OpenSea. He criticized the company for failing artists, especially those who are not represented, by abandoning the crypto-native principle in favor of decentralization through policies such as revenue sharing.
“Emerging artists are no longer, it appears that almost every single major brand and artist received a head start before it all,” he wrote on Twitter on Friday. “Innovation will stop, reliance on VC funding should become the norm. I’ve said it a million times, but unknown creators will suffer.
While smaller markets including remarkable Taking the opportunity Friday to emphasize their unwavering commitment to creator royalties, some on Twitter lamented OpenSea’s decision as a death knell for the industry-wide practice; OpenSea represents, to date, the largest NFT trading platform that still honors the policy.
Of the fears, the digital artist Fvcrender denied with faith in consumer solidarity: “We stopped using OpenSea. We’re sinking, they’re sinking.”
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