The world’s top NFT marketplace has tough competition from popular zero-fee marketplace Blur, contributing to its policy shift. OpenSea, amongst the largest non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces, has undergone a huge change: with marketplace fees now temporarily waived.
In a Twitter thread posted Friday, the official OpenSea account has listed a number of changes to its services in response to market trends where users are now favouring no-fee marketplaces.
No-fee marketplaces like Blur have become popular as of recent, making a worthy competitor for OpenSea’s market share.
We’re making some big changes today:
1) OpenSea fee → 0% for a limited time
2) Moving to optional creator earnings (0.5% min) for all collections without on-chain enforcement (old & new)
3) Marketplaces with the same policies will not be blocked by the operator filter— OpenSea (@opensea) February 17, 2023
In the tweet thread, OpenSea said that it will charge 0% in marketplace fees, and will default all collections that do not enforce royalties on-chain to an optional creator royalty starting at 0.5% “for a limited time.”
OpenSea has also adjusted its marketplace blocklist to allow sales on NFT marketplaces that have the same policies, no longer forcing NFT creators to choose between platforms to earn full royalties on its collections.
“This is the start of a new era for OpenSea,” wrote OpenSea. “We’re excited to test this model and find the right balance of incentives and motivations for all ecosystem participants – creators, collectors, and power buyers and sellers.”
OpenSea has been forced to respond following increased tension from Blur’s release of their native token. On Wednesday, Blur’s trading volume had surpassed their competitor’s for the first time since its launch in October.
6/ Today, ~80% of total ecosystem volume does not pay full creator earnings, and the majority of volume (even accounting for inorganic activity) has moved to a zero-fee environment.
Source: https://t.co/8tLN035cGp
This requires a change.
— OpenSea (@opensea) February 17, 2023
Before, OpenSea was quite hardlined in their approach to creator royalties, having launched a royalty enforcement tool in November that allowed new collections to delegate royalties on-chain. The same tool also prevents such collections to be resold on marketplaces that don’t enforce royalties, like Blur and X2Y2.
But in January, Blur reportedly discovered a loophole around the tool, letting the zero-fee marketplace list collections that have enforced royalties on OpenSea to keep their percentages on Blur.
Last week, Blur uploaded a blog post aimed at NFT creators detailing the differences between its own and OpenSea’s, encouraging creators to block the latter for full royalties on Blur – escalating the NFT marketplace war.
