Solana Protocol Metaplex To Enable Royalty Enforcement - The Defiant - DeFi News

Solana Protocol Metaplex To Enable Royalty Enforcement – The Defiant – DeFi News

NFT creators on Solana will soon be able to enforce royalty payments on secondary sales of their work, a big win for artists who have decried the rise of marketplaces that have made such payments optional.

Metaplex Foundation, a key player in Solana’s NFT ecosystem, will release an upgrade to its Metaplex protocol on Feb. 6 that will enable royalty enforcement.

“We’re excited to ship this new upgrade tool for creators to help bring back royalties,” Metaplex tweeted last month.

Many artists were drawn into the NFT space due to the possibility of earning royalty payments on secondary sales. But the feature, widely believed to be mandatory, is easily circumvented. And some marketplaces have left it up to buyers to decide whether to pay creator-requested royalties in a bid to gain market share from competitors.

Royalty Debate

But pushback has been severe. Several marketplaces that initially succumbed to competitive pressure later reversed their decision under fire from angry artists.

“The optional royalties thing kind of started on Solana,” Tiffany Huang, Magic Eden’s head of marketing, told The Defiant. “We tried our best to sandbag and really stand by the creator for as long as possible.”  

Magic Eden created a tool that would allow creators to blur NFTs sold on royalty-free platforms.  

“Unfortunately, nobody used the tool, and so while we kept trying to innovate our way out of it, this thing just kept raging like a wildfire,” Huang said. “By the time October rolled around, we were like, ‘Man, we really have to do something because it’s actually having a really negative impact on our business.’”

nftroyalties

Solana NFT Marketplace Magic Eden To Make Royalties Optional

Artists