OpenSea to enforce creator royalties on all collections after community outcry

NFT marketplace OpenSea has announced it will continue to enforce royalties across all collections going forward, following an outcry from creators earlier this week for considering otherwise. 

On Nov. 7, OpenSea announced they were launching an on-chain tool allowing creators to enforce royalties for any new collections on the platform but stopped short of offering the same to existing collections.

At the time, the marketplace said it would be considering options ranging from enforcing off-chain fees for “some subsets of collections,” to “allowing optional creator fees,” to “collaborating with other on-chain enforcement options for creators.”

The announcement saw significant pushback from the community, urging OpenSea to clarify its stance, noting the messaging was unclear, while others took issue with its “optional creator fee” suggestion.

Some NFT creators such as Bobby Kim, co-founder of The Hundreds, on Nov. 9 said they had decided to cancel the release of their upcoming nonfungible token (NFT) collection on OpenSea, noting they were “waiting to see if OpenSea would take a stand to preserve creator royalties for existing collections.”

“Unfortunately, that announcement has not arrived in time,” he said. 

On Nov. 8, Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) founders including Wylie Aronow, Greg Solano and Kerem Atalay chimed in on the debate in a blog post, sharing that the move from OpenSea was “not great” and shows its intent “to move with the rest of the herd and remove creator royalties for legacy collections from their platform.”

Related: Magic Eden defends launch of NFT royalty enforcement tool

OpenSea appears to have heard the criticisms and as part of a Nov. 9 post on Twitter, confirmed it will “continue to enforce creator fees on all existing collections” as well.

OpenSea said it was “awed by the passion we’ve seen from creators and collectors alike this week. We were looking for your feedback, and we heard it, loud and clear.”

According to the marketplace, they “will start open-sourcing our data on creator fees in the upcoming weeks for everyone to use.”

12/ 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.

— OpenSea (@opensea) November 9, 2022