OpenSea says NFT creators earned $1 billion in royalties this year
In a year of heated royalty debates, power to the creators!
joshyote ✌️👽
December 01, 2022
gm ✌️
While marketplaces are debating the future of creator royalties, OpenSea reveals that 2022 was the year of the artists!
OpenSea has reported that creators who sold NFTs on the platform earned $1.1 billion this year. Around 80% of that amount was allocated to collections outside of the top 10.
That's a lot of cheddar!
It seems like most people in the NFT space agree that artists should receive compensation for their work — that's actually one of the best parts about NFTs!
So why are marketplaces trying to pull the plug on royalties? Let's take a look and see how we got here.
But first, this week's top collections by volume:
Otherdeeds and Valhalla reign supreme this week, capturing most of the NFT trading volume. There was also a successful drop from Art Blocks — Pre-Process by Casey REAS, Pre-Process is currently sitting at a 7.3 ETH floor, so someone is still out here buying!
The Billion Dollar Question: Royalties?
Artist royalties on NFT projects were the standard — until they weren't.
In an effort to compete with each other and capture trader engagement, some marketplaces and aggregators have recently decided to ditch creator royalties or minimize them.
Here's the TL;DR timeline from The Block article on creator royalties:
Why royalties matter:
from FEWOCIOUS:
Dear @opensea
— FEWOCiOUS (@fewocious)
Nov 7, 2022
One of the biggest draws towards NFTs for creators is that they finally have ownership over their work and their communities.
The art world has long functioned in a way that provided no benefit to the original artist if a work becomes popular and gets traded or sold.
We like the artists!
NFT royalties are “simply the best alignment of incentives between founders and holders (right now),” Frank, the founder of the Solana-based NFT project DeGods, wrote on Twitter. “If you want to remove royalties, that’s fine. Just don’t be mad when mints become more expensive and more projects rug.”
The history of artist royalties
In the medieval period, the guilds that controlled the production and sale of art and other goods were powerful organizations that played a major role in the economy of European cities. These guilds were made up of craftsmen and artists who had trained in a particular trade, and they were granted the exclusive right to produce and sell their work in a particular city or region. This meant that only members of the guild were allowed to produce and sell goods in that area, and non-guild members were not allowed to compete with them.
One of the ways that the guilds ensured the quality of the goods produced by their members was by requiring artists and craftsmen to pay a fee in order to sell their work. This fee was known as a "royalty," and it was used to support the guild and its members. The guild would use the money from the royalties to pay for things like materials, tools, and training for its members.
In addition to the royalty, the guild would also set the prices for the goods produced by its members. This helped to ensure that the goods were sold at a fair price, and it also helped to prevent price competition between guild members.
While the concept of royalties has evolved over time, the basic idea of artists being paid a portion of the sale price of their work in exchange for the exclusive right to produce and sell that work has remained constant throughout history.
Coinbase gets burned by the Apple
Users were upset to find out that they could no longer transfer NFTs from their Coinbase iOS wallets.
What gives, Apple?
You might have noticed you can't send NFTs on Coinbase Wallet iOS anymore. This is because Apple blocked our last app release until we disabled the feature. 🧵
— Coinbase Wallet (@CoinbaseWallet)
Dec 1, 2022
Have you been scoping out the icy.tools Learn section?
We have some stellar guides and resources for learning about all things NFTs. New guides are added weekly.
Pretty sweet, we know.
Have fun out there at Art Basel
BASEL 2022
— beeple (@beeple)
Dec 1, 2022
Want to see something else from our newsletter, let us know! dm us on Twitter @icy_tools
And if you want to share this newsletter with a friend, that would be super duper! Just send them this link: