Yuga Labs To Delist Its NFTs On OpenSea

On Aug 19, 2023

Join Our Telegram channel to stay up to date on breaking news coverage

Yuga Labs, the digital asset incubation studio and the team behind the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club non-fungible token collection, has threatened to delist all its NFT collections on the NFT Market platform, OpenSea. The move appeared just a few days after the platform disabled creator royalty enforcement.

On @opensea‘s decision to sunset their Operator Filter. pic.twitter.com/ahc155WWkX
— Yuga Labs (@yugalabs) August 18, 2023

Yuga Labs To Delist Its NFTs On OpenSea

In an August 18 blog post, Daniel Alegre, the chief executive officer of Yuga Labs, shared that his digital asset firm will start gradually winding down the use of OpenSea’s Seaport market platform smart contract. The Yuga Labs Boss remarked:

“Yuga Labs will begin the process of sunsetting support for OpenSea’s SeaPort for all upgradable contracts and any new collections, with the aim of this being complete in February 2024 in tandem with OpenSea’s approach.”

Launched in 2021, Yuga Labs is home to a series of NFTs collections, including Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Bored Ape Kennel Club, Otherdeed for Otherside, Sewer Pass, Twelvefold and Bored Ape Yacht Club. The digital asset firm also owns the intellectual property for CryptoPunks and Meebits NFTs.

By description, a non-fungible token royalty is a percentage of the sale price of an NFT that is pre-defined and paid to the creator or original owner each time their artwork is resold. This feature allows creators to continue profiting from their NFTs, even after the initial sale.

The Operator Filter was launched in November 2022, enabling creators to restrict secondary non-fungible token sales only to marketplaces that enforce creator royalties, thus filtering out platforms like Blur,the now leading NFT market platform.

On August 17, the OpenSea NFT market platform revealed that it will soon disable the Operators Filter on its platform, citing a lack of “opt-in by the entire ecosystem.”The marketplace added that platforms can bypass the tool and push back from creators.

Starting Aug 31, we’ll:
– Sunset the OpenSea Operator Filter
– Move to optional creator fees on all secondary sales for new collections
– Improve visibility of creator fee settings and listings on buyer & seller side
More below:
— OpenSea (@opensea) August 17, 2023

The Creator Royalty Debate Heats Up

The NFT marketplace’s bearish move has attracted a heated debate within the crypto and non-fungible token community, including the Bored Ape Yacht Club community. Notable creators and project founders such as Ellio Trades and Alex Becky have praised Yuga Labs’ bold move to fight for creators.

The heated debate has also attracted the attention of Luca Netz, the chief executive of the Pudgy Penguins NFT project, who has also seemingly hinted towards doing the same thing as Yuga Labs. OpenSea’s halting creator royalties is a bad move as it’s anticipated to impact its trading performance even more.

Let’s talk
— Luca Netz 🐧 (@LucaNetz) August 18, 2023

Data computed By Beanie, a renowned NFT influencer, indicates that more than 80% OpenSea revenue in the past 30 days comes from Yuga Labs. In that context, Yuga Labs and other NFT projects pulling out of OpenSea will massively impact its trading performance.

80% of OpenSea revenue in the past 30d has come from Yuga NFTs. So the move from Yuga to pull its collections from OpenSea is a black swan event for the industry leading marketplace. Massive capitulation to follow. And then there will be an epic buy opportunity into the next run.
— Beanie (@beaniemaxi) August 19, 2023