- Yuga Labs announced a new policy to only work with NFT marketplaces that properly pay royalties to creators, in response to declining royalty rates at places like OpenSea.
- This policy currently does not impact trading of Bored Ape Yacht Club or Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFTs, Yuga Lab’s biggest collections.
- The policy signals Yuga Labs’ intent to protect creator royalties as they build out their metaverse, pushing back against declining royalty rates in the NFT space.
Yuga Labs, the creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, has announced a new policy to protect creator royalties in the NFT space. This policy change comes right before the launch of Magic Eden‘s new Ethereum NFT marketplace.
Yuga Labs Stops Support for Royalty-Skirting Marketplaces
Yuga Labs made an announcement that they will no longer work with NFT marketplaces that do not properly pay royalties to creators. The company stated that “In sync with the marketplace launch tomorrow, we will be sunsetting our support for marketplaces that don’t support royalties for all creators.”
This is a direct response to marketplaces like Blur and OpenSea lowering royalty rates over the past year in order to attract more trading volume and users. By enacting this policy, Yuga Labs is trying to bring attention back to honoring original royalty structures.
Bored Apes Not Impacted…For Now
Interestingly, Yuga’s new policy does not currently impact trading of their biggest NFT collections – Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club. As analyst Steven Zheng of The Block Research pointed out, “The vast majority of royalty generating NFTs from Yuga Labs collection fall under the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club brand which are not impacted by this change.”
So in the short term, this policy change may not have a huge financial impact for Yuga Labs. However, it does signal the company’s intent to protect royalties as it builds out its Otherside metaverse and NFT collections.
The bigger picture here is that Yuga Labs is drawing a line in the sand on NFT royalties. They are pushing back against declining royalty rates and sending a message about properly compensating creators in web3. This may be the beginning of a broader movement to refocus the NFT market on creator rights.
