There is little doubt that the main attraction for NFT creators seeking to make a career from their art for the first time is creator NFT royalties. This would allow creators to benefit from this form of payment even if they are small by enabling them to get recurring income anytime their works are sold on an NFT marketplace.

Only commercially successful singers, actresses, and other creatives have had the luxury of using the word “royals” in their vocabulary for decades (albeit they prefer the term “residuals”). The typical creator now has the opportunity to experience this form of payment thanks to the growth of NFTs. OpenSea, on the other hand, came perilously close to upending that dynamic in November 2022 when, in response to a site update, it proposed eliminating all royalties on existing collections.

Thankfully, OpenSea backtracked on the adjustment after receiving criticism from the community. But then begged the question: What are the positions of other NFT markets that are widely used by the community on this matter?

UPDATE: We will continue to enforce creator fees on all existing collections.
🧵⬇️

— OpenSea (@opensea) November 9, 2022

The current situation with royalties in NFT markets

For a good cause, the NFT community criticized OpenSea vehemently for even considering taking author royalties out of existing collections. It is the busiest NFT marketplace online. This came as no surprise.

So what is OpenSea’s position on giving artists access to royalties? As they are known on OpenSea, Creator fees will continue to apply to current collections on the website until December 8 at the earliest, according to a blog post from November 6, now gone from the website. As it converts to on-chain royalty enforcement on the platform, this means that OpenSea may still change its royalty policy for existing collections.

Why? Devin Finzer, CEO of OpenSea, stated in the November blog post that he thinks that off-chain fees can eventually hurt authors. “We’ve seen the voluntary creator fee payment percentage drop to under 20% on marketplaces where these fees are optional. Additionally, according to Finzer’s blog post, creator fees are not paid in other markets. NFT marketplaces must move the royalty fees to on-chain, where it may be carried out by code instead of whoever is administering any given marketplace, in order to genuinely assure that creative money remains safeguarded by code.

And OpenSea might not be the only company that recognizes the significance of moving the enforcement of royalties onto the blockchain. The Royalty Registry is a smart contract developed in partnership with other NFT markets, including Rarible, Recur, MakersPlace, Nifty Gateway, and others, that enables creators to quickly implement on-chain royalty enforcement to their work.

The initiative, which was introduced in October 2021, hinted at some of the challenges OpenSea would face in moving toward on-chain royalty enforcement by pointing to the challenge of putting such a feature on earlier works and collections whose licensing arrangements were crafted off-chain. The Royalty Registry observed that, given that marketplaces like Rarible had already developed existing on-chain infrastructure to handle creator royalty payouts.

Finzer may also be right when it comes to how on-chain royalty enforcement would guarantee the long-term financial stability of NFT inventors. As an illustration, NFT markets like Sudoswap and X2Y2 continue to be well-liked by traders precisely because they are royalty-free. Some older NFT marketplaces have felt pressure to change in response to this perceived shift in market demand as a result of the growing popularity of this approach.

Take Magic Eden as an illustration. Weeks before OpenSea made its shocking disclosure, the top NFT market in Solana changed to making royalties optional. On Magic Eden, customers can now choose not to pay the creators this fee when they buy an NFT. On paper, this should encourage collectors to keep using the site because of the lower fees, but it sets a bad precedent for creators. Should creators be concerned as NFT marketplaces work to make their zero-fee visions a reality? While eliminating gas fees may be the top priority, some traders may regard avoiding creator royalties as the natural next step. Fortunately, not every market has responded to the trend in this manner.

Also, read – 4 Key Trends Of NFT Gaming That Will Be Big In 2023

How NFT marketplaces seek to prioritize creators

After the rekindled discussion about creator royalties, the market felt obligated to strengthen its creator-first stance in the case of SuperRare. In an interview with nft today, John Crain, co-founder and CEO of SuperRare said that one of the reasons Web3 is important is that it makes new models that were before impractical conceivable. “In this instance, there were no real-time royalties for visual work prior.”

SuperRare differs from its rivals in that it gives collectors the same opportunity to receive royalties-based rewards as artists do. To the delight of its community, SuperRare launched its collector royalty function in July 2021. Crain went on to say that not all NFT markets could be a good fit for this concept. Perhaps it’s not the best course of action for them if a marketplace is selling other kinds of assets, he said. Since we’re concentrating on art, it makes perfect sense.

Even if creator royalties are emphasized verbally, NFT marketplaces have experimented with several alternatives to this model that are more favorable to creators. As an illustration, Magic Eden released MetaShield a month before making their contentious statement and after making royalties optional. By using this tool, creators can prevent their works from appearing on sites that don’t fully honor royalties and keep track of the debt that traders who refuse to pay them have amassed against their works.

🧵/ Launching MetaShield:

Royalties are an important revenue stream that supports creators and enables them to grow their projects. These royalties are being threatened by marketplaces allowing collectors to set custom royalties. pic.twitter.com/zoSbd7W1Mf

— Magic Eden 🪄 (@MagicEden) September 13, 2022

Looks good, doesn’t it? Some people are reasonably concerned about the availability of such a tool, and their worries are unrelated to royalties. Some claim that MetaShield poses a threat to Web3’s core value of decentralization even though it is intended to help producers better monitor their creations after mint.

Ironically, OpenSea may have found a better way to prevent works from appearing on marketplaces that disregard royalties yet add a lot of fire to the royalty argument.

Magic Eden’s metashield is a threat to decentralization –

This is a real issue 🧵 🔽

— NAS ⌐◨-◨ (@100xNAS) September 13, 2022

It appears that if the NFT community wants to continue expanding, it will have to swallow a bitter pill in the form of OpenSea’s upcoming move. The future of the NFT creator community is tied to on-chain markets, regardless of what OpenSea decides to do with its older collections. It seems more reliable to trust the code to ensure that artists are paid than to rely on a single employee of an NFT marketplace.