Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) creators Yuga Labs are set to end support for OpenSea following the platform’s upcoming removal of its on-chain royalty enforcement tool Operator Filter.
The Operator Filter launched in November 2022, essentially allowing creators to restrict secondary nonfungible token sales only to marketplaces that implement creator royalties, thus filtering out platforms like Blur.
However, OpenSea revealed on August 17 that it will soon “sunset” the tool at the end of August, citing a lack of “opt-in across the ecosystem,” platforms capable of bypassing the tool. and push from the creators.
The next day, Yuga Labs CEO Daniel Alegre IMPARTED an announcement via X (Twitter), saying the company will gradually phase out its use of OpenSea’s Seaport marketplace smart contract:
“Yuga Labs will begin the process of discontinuing support for OpenSea’s SeaPort for all upgradeable contracts and any new collections, with the goal of this being completed by February 2024 in conjunction with OpenSea’s approach.”
“Yuga believes in protecting creator royalties so that creators are properly compensated for their work,” he added.
on @openseathe decision to set their Operator Filter. pic.twitter.com/ahc155WWkX
— Yuga Labs (@yugalabs) August 18, 2023
The post was met with a positive reaction from members of the BAYC community, while content creators/NFT project founders such as EllioTrades and Alex Becker also Praise the movement.
The CEO and co-founder of the Forgotten Runes Wizards Cult NFT project @dotta, is also supportive, saying they want to see how Yuga Labs responds to OpenSea.
“Creators have enough power in the aggregate to move into royalty-paying markets. Yuga leading the charge is the spark that’s needed.”
Yuga banned OpenSea for their choice to stop enforcing creator royalties
You will love to see it
As I mentioned yesterday, OpenSea taught us how to filter exchanges with bad behavior by providing us with the OperatorFilter registry
We who implemented it, now plan to…
– learned (@learned) August 18, 2023
Notably, Luca Netz, the CEO of the Pudgy Penguins NFT project also suggests doing the same thing as Yuga Labs, as he responded to the company’s post by calling it a “good move.”
In a separate post from Coinbase NFT on August 18 highlighting his “commitment to enforce creator royalties,” Netz also said: “Let’s talk.”
Let’s talk
— Luca Netz (@LucaNetz) August 18, 2023
Segmented market
The idea of creator royalties and whether they should be supported/enforced or not, has been a divisive topic in the NFT community for the past year or so.
In the early stages of the NFT boom around 2021, it was common practice to implement creator royalties. However, marketplaces like Blur invaded the market in October 2022 and managed to secure a significant market share by offering zero trading fees and an optional creator royalty payment model.
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As a result, trading fees and royalty percentages are starting to decline across the board as markets compete for users.
As it stands, it often appears that the NFT community is divided between those who favor a cheaper NFT trading model on platforms like Blur, and argue for different methods of creator compensation, and those who strongly advocated the need to pay royalties.
In their current form, NFT royalties are absurd
– debt for eternity
– debt even if sold at a loss
-cannot be implemented without compromising ownershipWouldn’t it be better to make them optional and incentivize compliance, while working on other monetization methods for artists?
— scriblooor (@scriblooor) August 18, 2023
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