Sadly for us creatives, some marketplaces are starting to remove the requirement to pay royalties on NFTs!
For those unfamiliar, most blockchains, until now, give a cut to creatives every time their NFT is sold—often between 5% and 10% of the sale price. For creatives this is great because no matter what turn your career takes, you’ll always make money from resales.
However, last month, popular Solana-based marketplace Magic Eden made paying royalties optional, which struck fear into the wallets of NFT creators. They now have more reason to worry after OpenSea’s cryptic message on Monday. The marketplace wrote in a Twitter thread that its team is still thinking about whether it will add on-chain enforcement for royalty payments to existing NFTs and plans to announce plans on December 8th.
With OpenSea being one of the largest marketplaces, it is only natural that decisions will likely influence how other smaller marketplaces respond. On the one hand, if OpenSea doesn’t implement its royalty mandate, more traders might flock to its marketplace. But on the other hand, creators could move their art to other startups that let them earn more. OpenSea already plans to give creators the option to mandate those payments in new collections and noted that the voluntary payment rate to creators was less than 20% when those royalties were not necessary.
However, this isn’t the case for platforms such as Pianity, a marketplace for musicians to create and sell limited edition songs, where creatives receive 8% every time their collectible sells on the secondary market. The company does not currently have plans to change its policy on royalties. Others like MakersPlace, Bubblehouse and SuperRare also have not changed policies but did not respond to requests for comment.
