Yuga Labs Will Depart Opensea After The Marketplace Announced That It Wold Make Royalties Optional

Yuga Labs announced that the company would be lifting its anchor and departing from Opensea in search of friendlier ports following the NFT marketplace’s decision to make creator royalties optional.

On August 17th, OpenSea announced that it would make creator royalty fees optional on collections launched after August 31st. Further, the marketplace will only continue to enforce creators' preferred royalties until February 29th, 2024.

In simple terms, this change would mean that users could opt in or out of paying a royalty to an NFT's creator.

“We’ve had a few learnings since launching our Operator Filter: - It relied on opt-in from the entire ecosystem, which didn’t happen,” Opensea tweeted in a six-tweet thread. “Creator fees choice is important for collectors and creators. Creator fees are just one of many revenue streams available to creators in web3. To be clear, creator fees aren’t going away – the ineffective, unilateral enforcement of them is.”

One day after Opensea’s optional creator fee announcement, Yuga Labs’ CEO, Daniel Alegre, stated that the company would be navigating toward more welcoming shores in light of this.

At Yuga Labs, we are committed to help foster an ecosystem where new and innovative content is created and where creators are rewarded for their work, he wrote. “ In light of Opensea’s announcement yesterday that they will be sunsetting the Opensea Operator Filter they introduced and moving to optional creator fees on all secondary sales for all collection by February 2024, Yuga Labs will begin the process of sunsetting support for OpenSea’s Seaport for all upgradable contracts and any new collection, with the aim of this being complete in February 2024 in tandem with Opensea’s approach. For as much as NFTs have been about users truly owning their digital assets, they’ve also been about empowering creators. Yuga believes in protecting creator royalties so creators are properly compensated for their work.”

Following Alegre’s announcement, BAYC member and Crypto personality, JRNY Crrypto, tweeted that Yuga Labs needs its own marketplace.

“We need a Yuga marketplace,” JRNY tweeted. “It is clear none of these NFT marketplaces care about the creators. They just want to farm as much volume as possible for short-term gain.”

The Bored Ape Gazette will continue to follow Yuga Labs as the company sets sail for a place where royalties are enforced. Stay tuned for updates!