We Need to Talk About OpenSea and Creator Royalties

On Nov 8, 2022

The Alpha:

On November 6, OpenSea announced in a blog post and on Twitter that it would introduce a tool for new collections to enforce creator fees (artist royalties) on its platform.

The tool is a snippet of code that represents OpenSea’s first attempt at on-chain enforcement of royalties in NFT transactions. Starting at 12:00 p.m. ET on November 8, the platform is enforcing creator fees for new collections that use an on-chain enforcement tool like the one it’s now offering.

OpenSea gave itself a deadline of December 8, 2022, to come out with a firm stance regarding how it will address royalties enforcement for existing collections. The platform is considering several options, including optional royalties — and 0 percent royalties.

Why it matters

The royalties debate in the NFT community is one of the space’s most important and consequential discussions. Widely considered to be one of the founding tenets of Web3, royalties have allowed artists to sustain themselves in a way previously not possible in the traditional art world. Via a combination of earning money through primary sales and taking a small cut every time their NFT changes hands, royalties lend credence to the Web3 community’s claim that NFTs help chip away at the “starving artist” trope that has robbed artists of dignity for centuries. They have helped lift people out of poverty, pay off loans, and gain economic independence. That’s to say nothing of the countless NFT projects involved in building and sustaining entire sub-communities on the back of such fees.

Gm @opensea don’t deprive independent artists from royalties.
Royalties are door openers for creators, a way to make regular income from their craft, something that did not exist until Web3. They give power & autonomy to artists like never before. Don’t take that away.
— Yam (@YKarkai) November 8, 2022

According to a late October study by crypto firm Galaxy Digital, more than $1.8 billion in royalties have been paid out to the creators of Ethereum-based NFT collections. Notably, OpenSea has paid out the most royalties to creators by a wide margin. But creator royalties aren’t enforceable at a technical level. Ultimately, it’s up to marketplaces to offer and honor them or not. For example, marketplaces like sudoswap and X2Y2 have planted themselves firmly in the zero-royalty camp.

If @opensea decide to take the 0% road, you can be sure that every artist I know will get together bring their collectors anywhere else, artists are smart and they adapt, thats what they do everyday.
— FVCKRENDER (@fvckrender) November 8, 2022

OpenSea’s announcement has resulted in an explosion of commentary from just about every prominent figure in the NFT space. Many are happy that OpenSea is taking a stand to support artists and new collections by introducing a tool that restricts NFT sales to marketplaces that enforce creator fees. However, OpenSea has admitted that this will not apply to existing collections that aren’t built on upgradable contracts.

The platform also stated that after its self-imposed December 8 deadline, it will decide how existing collections can engage with royalty enforcement. As such, it seems likely that creator fees for these collections will either drop to zero percent or the platform will give buyers the option to pay royalties as they see fit. The question that remains for those collections is just how they will replace a revenue stream that will likely disappear — or at least be significantly reduced.

I have opened my DMs. If you’re a project founder please message me and I will provide you with a form to register your interest for a group call to discuss the implications of what @opensea is proposing as well as our moves together as leaders in the space.
— BETTY (@betty_nft) November 7, 2022

“Unfortunately, the bitter pill is that, to the best of our knowledge, the only way to achieve on-chain creator fee enforcement for existing collections with non-upgradeable smart contracts is to take drastic measures with their communities, like shifting the canonical collection to a new smart contract,” wrote OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer in the blog post. “In our opinion, by far the better option is for existing creators to explore new forms of monetization and alternative ways of incentivizing buyers and sellers to pay creator fees, and to ensure that future collections enforce creator fees on-chain.”

What’s next

OpenSea has been taking the temperature in the space since its announcement and has issued several clarifications and responses since the news reignited the controversy surrounding the creator fees debate on Sunday. To his credit, Finzer has likewise been making the rounds in Twitter Spaces in the past few days, fielding questions from an understandably agitated community. However, neither Finzer nor the platform’s Twitter handle has been particularly helpful in addressing the specter of a zero-royalty system for existing projects come December 8.

3/ To be *super* clear, this means that OpenSea will continue enforcing creator fees for any collections created using the “Create” button on OpenSea until at least December 8, 2022.
— OpenSea (@opensea) November 7, 2022

Granted, the team has given themselves a month to sort their official position on the matter, but meanwhile, the zero-creator fee shadow looms large in the community’s collective mind — and rightfully so. With calls for artists to pool together and take their work to more royalty-friendly pastures in the event of such an implementation, OpenSea could find itself in a perilous position come December.

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