Yuga Labs, the creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), have announced their intention to reduce their support for OpenSea in response to the imminent removal of OpenSea’s on-chain royalty enforcement tool, known as Operator Filter.
Launched in November 2022, the Operator Filter provided creators the ability to limit secondary sales of nonfungible tokens exclusively to marketplaces that upheld creator royalties. This mechanism effectively excluded platforms like Blur.
Nevertheless, OpenSea’s recent disclosure on August 17 highlighted their plans to phase out the Operator Filter by the end of August. This decision was attributed to a lack of comprehensive adoption within the ecosystem, the capability of platforms to circumvent the tool, and resistance from creators.
On @opensea's decision to sunset their Operator Filter. pic.twitter.com/ahc155WWkX
— Yuga Labs (@yugalabs) August 18, 2023
The announcement received a favorable reception from the BAYC community, with content creators and founders of NFT projects such as EllioTrades and Alex Becker also expressing approval of the step.
Yuga is banning OpenSea in light of their choice to stop enforcing creator royalties
You love to see it
Like I mentioned yesterday, OpenSea taught us how to filter exchanges with bad behavior by giving us the OperatorFilter registry
Those of us that implemented it, now plan on…
— dotta (@dotta) August 18, 2023
Luca Netz, the CEO of the Pudgy Penguins NFT project also supported this move by Yuga Labs by calling it a “great move”. On August 18th, Coinbase NFT also tweeted about enforcing creator royalties and Luca Netz replied back to them with a “Let’s talk” tweet.
Not collecting and paying royalties on NFT sales is a HUGE mistake by @opensea. It diminished trust in the platform and hurts the industry. And I say this as an @opensea investor @DevinFinzer
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) August 18, 2023
Opensea’s move to end royalty enforcements was done only after Blur started taking a major share in the market and even Blur had optional royalties, but Opensea was the chosen marketplace for the larger collections and market leaders, making this move one open for discussions and criticism.
