OpenSea, the most prominent NFT marketplace, has significantly improved recently. The price and royalty structure changes announced by OpenSea through their official Twitter account will have far-reaching consequences for the NFT platform’s users, collectors, and creators.
The Open Sea Project Is About To Make Some Major Adjustments
OpenSea announced (1) its upcoming 0% transaction fee policy in a post on Friday, February 17. A significant percentage of OpenSea’s revenue comes from a 2.5% trade levy, which was in place before the announcement.
To coincide with this news, OpenSea tweeted that it would be implementing “optional creator earnings,” requiring a mere 0.5% royalty charge to be paid by collectors for legacy and future NFT projects that lacked an on-chain enforcement mechanism. Users can, however, pay a higher percentage if they like.
We’re making some big changes today:
1) OpenSea fee → 0% for a limited time
2) Moving to optional creator earnings (0.5% min) for all collections without on-chain enforcement (old & new)
3) Marketplaces with the same policies will not be blocked by the operator filter— OpenSea (@opensea) February 17, 2023
One of the most appealing aspects of OpenSea’s recent improvements is that authors will now get a royalty charge of between 5 and 10 percent of the sale price, which will be the primary source of ongoing revenue for NFT compilations long after they have been released.
OpenSea’s new strategy aligns with many other NFT marketplaces, which have shifted their focus to reward traders rather than collectors.
OpenSea began its justification of its activities by saying:
Most volume (even when considering inorganic activity) has shifted to a zero-fee atmosphere, and today, 80% of the overall ecosystem volume does not pay full creator earnings. We are changing our fee structure to reflect the modern ecosystem’s needs better while maintaining on-chain enforcement via the operator filter.
Moreover, OpenSea claimed that its operator filter would enable sales on NFT marketplaces with these same restrictions, such as Blur’s rapidly growing NFT marketplace, enabling creators to earn full royalties across these platforms.
Competition is Heating UP in NFT Marketplace
Blur, a new NFT marketplace launched in November 2022, has quickly become one of the most successful blockchain initiatives. Blur is the second biggest NFT platform based on daily trade volume, trailing only OpenSea despite only being in operation for three months.
Blur has recently been in the spotlight as OpenSea’s main opponent due to its increasing user base. Specifically, Nansen.ai data shows Blur experienced its first-ever day with a bigger trading volume than OpenSea.
Although this growth was mostly fueled by the launch of Blur’s native token, BLUR, the network has demonstrated enough promise to displace OpenSea as the world’s leading NFT marketplace.
Blur has issued an official blog post recommending its customers avoid OpenSea because of the platform’s earlier policy that forbade authors from collecting royalties on two trading platforms, sparking an open war of words between the two organizations.
However, there looks to be progress due to OpenSea’s new operator filter policy that does not prevent operations with platforms with analogous restrictions (like Blur).
Even said, OpenSea is still the primary NFT exchange where you may buy and sell Blur’s tremendous progress over the past few months. OpenSea has shown aspirations to keep or increase its 23% market domination following its exciting statement from yesterday.
