OpenSea, a major platform for hosting non-fungible tokens (NFTs), announced in a series of tweets it would continue enforcing royalties for its collections after major backlash from content creators.
OpenSea’s press release on 7 November initially stated it would ensure new and upcoming content creators would receive royalty payments but failed to cover existing NFT collections.
NFT communities slammed the unclear regulations after OpenSea failed to include all collections and allowed “optional creator fees,” among others.
Some thoughts on creator royaltieshttps://t.co/hKB5eQKZ93
— GordonGoner.eth (Wylie Aronow) (@GordonGoner) November 8, 2022
Founders of one of the biggest NFT creators in the world, the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), said in a joint blog post they would create an alternative system to guarantee creatives would receive royalty payments.
BAYC co-founder Wylie Aranow lambasted OpenSea for softening its stance on royalty commitments and “outright ditching them in a race to the bottom in an attempt to gain market share.”
Additionally, several prominent NFT creators, including Bobby Kim of The Hundreds, stated they would not drop their NFTs on the platform to wait on whether “OpenSea would take a stand to preserve creator royalties for existing collections.”
OpenSea’s Open Response to NFT Community
Responding, OpenSea’s leadership confirmed in a 9 November tweet it would “continue to enforce creator fees on all existing collections.” It added it had been “awed by the passion” from creators and collectors, and would listen “loud and clear” to feedback from the NFT community.
13/ We will start open sourcing our data on creator fees in the upcoming weeks for everyone to use. In the meantime, we encourage you to check out @punk9059’s tweets on this topic.
— OpenSea (@opensea) November 9, 2022
To accommodate creatives, it said it would open-source data on creator fees “in the upcoming weeks.”
OpenSea said: “In short, we’re at a collective inflection point: if everyone left in this ecosystem who believes that creator fees are important to our future links arms on this, we WILL ensure that fees are durable”
The news comes after BAYC’s scathing blog post, where the platform stated it would provide users with a system “approve list” for each user, based on their classification a regular wallet (EOA) or smart contract.
EOAs would pass as normal transactions while BAYC would check smart contracts for “an oracle of contracts” known to respect royalties.
