- Bored Ape creator Yuga Labs has activated compulsory royalty payments for its latest collection dubbed Sewer Pass NFTs
- Sewer Pass NFTs can’t be natively traded on anti-royalties marketplaces such as Blur and LooksRare
- NFT creators termed the move as a win for everyone in the NFT space
Bored Ape creator Yuga Labs has activated compulsory royalties for NFTs from its newest collection, Sewer Pass. This has seen anti-royalties marketplaces such as LooksRare and Blur not able to accommodate the digital collectibles thus forced to watch millions of US dollars worth of trading volume slip away. NFT creators congratulated Yuga Labs for the bold step terming it a win for everyone involved with digital collectibles and comes a week after Yuga Labs announced a new game known as Dookey Dash powered by Sewer Pass collectibles.
$20 Million in Less Than Three Days
Sewer Pass NFTs have attracted upwards of $27 million in trading volume on X2Y2 and OpenSea combined in less than three days since their listing on January 18. Shortly after the launch, NFT supporters noted that the collection wasn’t available on LooksRare, Blur and other marketplaces that don’t take creator fees seriously.
Yuga Labs disclosed that Sewer Pass NFTs can’t be traded on anti-royalties platforms since the ability to differentiate between supported and unsupported marketplaces is embedded inside Sewer Pass NFTs’ smart contract.
Yuga scored a win for the entire ecosystem today, especially the creators that don’t have as big of a voice.@blur_io and @LooksRare are being forced to watch thousands of ETH in @BoredApeYC Sewer Pass volume that they are blocked from.
— nix.eth (Justin Kalland) (@nix_eth) January 18, 2023
Confirming the feature, Yuga Labs told Decrypt that creator fees are an essential part of a creator’s journey and “must be protected.”
Listed But Not Tradable
However, some of the blocked marketplaces have listed the NFT collection as an aggregate from platforms that are allowed to natively trade the Sewer Pass NFTs, meaning that despite being listed, the actual trade happens outside the anti-royalties marketplace.
Yuga’s move comes two months after OpenSea and X2Y2 declared their support for compulsory creator kickbacks, with OpenSea releasing an on-chain tool to enforce royalties. Despite Yuga Labs and OpenSea agreeing on royalties, the two fronted different paths to enforce it, expanding the number of ways artists benefit each time their creations change hands on the secondary market.
