OpenSea to End Royalty Enforcement Tool Amid Weak Backing

On Aug 18, 2023

The prominent NFT marketplace, OpenSea, has unveiled that it’s bringing its on-chain royalty enforcement tool, Operator Filter, to a close on August 31, following lousy support within the NFT ecosystem.

Introduced in November 2022, the main aim of Operator Filter was to enable curators to blocklist NFT marketplaces that don’t enforce royalty payments — a major industry issue. However, competitor marketplaces, like Blur, LooksRare, and Drew, cleverly outmaneuvered the tool through the Seaport Protocol, making OpenSea’s royalty and blocklist requirements powerless.

On top of that, creators raised concerns about the tool hindering their dominance over platforms whereby they sell their collections, conflicting expectations of full ownership.

OpenSea’s new roadmap, however, is devoted to empowering new use cases for digital and physical collectibles. It ensures to all NFTs on the marketplace are effectively promoted across both primary and secondary platforms. Creator fees also “aren’t going away”.

The Operator Filter depended on support from everyone in the ecosystem to be successful. And unfortunately that didn’t happen.
Additionally, creator fees are just one of many revenue streams available to creators in Web3. We’ve dedicated a large part of our roadmap to power new…
— OpenSea (@opensea) August 17, 2023

The Aftermath and an Ongoing Fee Enforcement

Although the Operator Filter will end the obstruction of all marketplaces on August 31, current collections leveraging the tool and ones not held on Ethereum blockchains will have their fees enforced until February 29, 2024.

OpenSea’s announcement garnered mixed reviews. NFT community members seeking passive income shared their disapproval of the platform’s choice, proposing support for NFT creators on platforms that require creator fees. Conversely, others believe the cease is reasonable, suggesting that the business model was overly profit-orientated regarding hype trading anyway.

Ultimately, the decision to retire the OpenSea Royalty Tool and the marketplace’s subsequent steps spotlight the complexities of navigating an evolving NFT landscape. As the ecosystem grows, striking the correct balance between revenue generation, innovation, and creator empowerment sustains an ongoing challenge for not only OpenSea but the global NFT community.

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