By
Andy Watson
April 26th, 2024
The change will take effect from August 31, meaning that creators may no longer blacklist NFT marketplaces that don’t enforce royalties.
Popular non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea is planning to turn off its royalty enforcement tool – Operator Filter. The idea, according to a recent blog post is to stop creators from receiving additional fees from secondary trades. That is every time their work exchanges hands following the initial sale.
In a statement by OpenSea founder and CEO Devin Finzer, the change will take effect from August 31, meaning that creators may no longer blacklist NFT marketplaces that don’t enforce royalties.
Recall that the Operator Filter feature launched in November 2022. With the tool, artists required buyers to continue paying them creator fees, typically ranging from 2.5% to 10% of the transaction fee. However, the tool wasn’t nearly as successful as OpenSea had hoped it would be.
Firstly, the NFT ecosystem was not as supportive as expected. Also, some NFT marketplaces such as Blur, Dew and LooksRare sabotaged their prospects by bypassing Operator Filter to avoid OpenSea’s blacklist and ultimately avoid creator fees.
Lastly, some creators also kicked. This set of creators claimed that the tool was impeding their control over where their collections were sold.
‘Creator Fees Not Going Away’, OpenSea CEO Says
Even though OpenSea will be ditching Operator Filter from August 31, the tool is currently being used by some existing collections on non-Ethereum blockchains and other projects. Interestingly, despite that some of these platforms themselves made creator fees optional, using OpenSea’s Operator Filter means that they will continue to guarantee creator fees up until February 29, 2024. And only then, can NFT creator fees become fully optional, albeit on all platforms.
Finzer also noted that creator fees are not going away. He suggested that creators and artists have every right to make gains from their works. However, enforcement is not the way to go, he added. Part of his statement reads:
“To be clear, creator fees aren’t going away – simply the ineffective, unilateral enforcement of them.”
Essentially, once Operator Filter shuts down in the next two weeks, creators will no longer be able to enforce fees. However, they may still indicate what amount they would love to charge as fees, while buyers can also choose to pay (as a tip) or not.