NFT Marketplace Magic Eden Seeks New Standard to Enforce Royalties

Jack Lu, co-founder and CEO of Solana’s leading NFT marketplace Magic Eden, has advocated for a new NFT standard that would enforce royalties at a hard, technological level, Decrypt reported on October 8.

Magic Eden has spoken to dozens of creators in many industries to gauge their opinions. But Lu warned that a new standard for NFTs will have special trade-offs, adding that royalty-enforcing by necessity means that the creator has some level of control.

NFT royalties give creators a percentage of the sale price each time their NFT creation is sold on a marketplace, with 5-10% considered a standard royalty. This is different from the traditional art world, in which, once an artist has sold a work, whatever value may accrue later on as it continues to change hands does not directly benefit the artist.

NFT royalties have had a huge impact in the crypto era, including by helping to encourage artists and NFT-based art.
In October, Magic Eden decided to move to optional royalties on the platform, adding that it welcomes and hopes to see new standards that protect royalties. The company said it will also be waiving its 2% platform fee.

Given the importance of royalties, Magic Eden’s MetaShield gives creators who hold “update authority” the ability to review listings and sales of NFTs that bypassed royalties, as well as modify these same NFTs from their collection.

Another NFT marketplace, OpenSea, also launched a new tool on November 6 that will allow creators to deliver on-chain enforcement of their royalties. OpenSea described the tool as a “simple code snippet,” which allows creators to enforce royalties on new and future NFT collection smart contracts and existing upgradeable smart contracts.

SEE ALSO: Magic Eden Submits Proposal to Build NFT Marketplace for ApeCoin

Find Satoshi Lab, the creators of STEPN, a move-to-earn app that awards users with crypto for exercising, launched an NFT marketplace with mandatory royalty fees ranging from 0.5% to 10% on November 1.