Yuga Labs slams OpenSea's shift to optional royalties

Yuga Labs intends to sever ties with OpenSea over the NFT platform's shift to a royalty-optional model. 

"In light of OpenSea’s announcement yesterday that they will be sunsetting the OpenSea Operator Filter they introduced and moving to an optional creator fees on all secondary sales for all collections by February 2024, Yuga Labs will begin the process of sunsetting support for OpenSea’s SeaPort for all upgradable contracts and any new collections, with the aim of this being complete in February 2024 in tandem with OpenSea’s approach," Yuga Labs CEO Daniel Alegre wrote in a statement on social media. 

"For as much as NFTs have been about users truly owning their digital assets, they’ve also been about empowering creators," he added. "Yuga believes in protecting creator royalties so creators are properly compensated for their work."

OpenSea Seaport is the marketplace contract for ERC-721 and ERC-1155 sales, two Ethereum token standards for NFTs.

Yuga Labs royalties

In 2022, Yuga Labs's blue-chip NFT projects Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Otherside brought in around $148 million in royalties, The Block previously reported. 

Yuga Labs has been known to block marketplaces that do not enforce creator royalties. For instance, Yuga Labs blacklisted royalty-optional platforms like Blur and SudoSwap when it launched its Sewer Pass mint in January.