Magic Eden and Metaplex Enable New Royalty Enforcement
Magic Eden and Metaplex both release new protocols that enable royalty enforcement so that creators can continue to generate revenue. The move comes after Magic Eden removed royalty enforcement, coming back with their own tool for creators.
Solana marketplace Magic Eden released a new protocol to enforce royalties on collections that opt-in to their tool. Creators launching collections can have royalties protected by using the Open Creator Protocol (OCP), while collections that enable OCP would have their royalties enforced by Magic Eden.
Creators using OCP to ensure their royalties would also be given the choice to ban buying/selling on marketplaces that don't enforce royalties.
"The Solana community has been waiting for solutions to NFT royalties,” Jack Lu, CEO and co-founder of Magic Eden, said in a press release. "Our intention with Open Creator Protocol is to immediately support royalties for creators launching new collections while continuing to coordinate with ecosystem partners for more solutions.”
Metaplex also announced on Twitter their own solution for creators to enforce royalties by upgrading the NFT asset class to a new form of NFTs, named Programmable NFTs (pNFTs). These new pNFTs would include transfer restrictions that could be used by creators to enforce royalties.
These releases follow after Magic Eden switched to optional royalties following Yawww, where they also waived platform fees.
This saw NFT collections struggle with revenue, including GenesysGO, where they removed their free RPC network since royalties for Shadowy Super Coders (SSC) could no longer sustain it.
"Unfortunately, royalties are not enforceable on a protocol level, so we have had to adapt to shifting market dynamics," Magic said in their Twitter thread about the change.