OpenSea Announces 0% Trading Fees, Cuts Creator Earnings

Leading NFT marketplace, OpenSea, has made some major announcements in the last few hours. Through their official Twitter account, OpenSea listed various changes to their fee and royalty structure, which are bound to have significant effects on user’s activity on the NFT platform – collectors and creators alike.

OpenSea To Introduce Some Important Changes  

In the thread published on Frirday, Feb. 17, OpenSea first stated it will be implementing a 0% transaction fee policy – albeit only for a limited time. Prior to this announcement, OpenSea usually charges a 2.5% trade levy which forms a large portion of its revenue.

Alongside this announcement, OpenSea tweeted that it will now be employing an “optional creator earnings,” mandating collectors to pay only 0.5% royalty fee on all new and old NFT projects lacking on-chain enforcement method. However, users are free to pay a higher percentage if they see fit. 

This move has been the major attraction point of OpenSea’s new changes as usually, creators enjoy a royalty fee fixed between 5%-10% of the sale price, serving as the major source of the continuous revenue for NFT collections following their initial launch.

With this recent policy change, OpenSea joins a host of other NFT marketplaces that are centering their operations around traders incentives rather than collectors. 

Explaining the reasons for their actions, OpenSea started: 

“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. While we continue to uphold on-chain enforcement through the operator filter, we’re moving to a different fee structure that reflects the needs of today’s ecosystem.” 

In addition, OpenSea also announced that its operator filter would allow sales on NFT marketplaces with these same policies – including fast rising NFT marketplace, Blur – allowing creators to earn their full royalties across these platforms. 

OpenSea’s Major Changes Come Amidst Ongoing Rivalry With Blur 

Launched in November 2022, Blur is a new NFT marketplace that has taken the web3 world by storm, becoming one of the fastest-growing projects in the blockchain space. Despite only three months of operations, Blur currently ranks as the second largest NFT marketplace based on daily trading volume – falling behind only OpenSea.

Due to its rising influx of users, Blur has occupied the news in recent weeks as OpenSea’s main competitor giving the world’s largest marketplace a run for its money. In fact, Blur temporarily recorded a daily trading volume higher than OpenSea for the first time on Wednesday, according to data by Nansen.ai.

Although this development was mainly sponsored by the recent release of Blur’s native token, BLUR, the platform has clearly shown enough potential to dislodge OpenSea as the world’s leading NFT marketplace. 

In addition, there has also been some outright battle statement between both parties, with Blur releasing an official blog post advising its users to boycott OpenSea due to the platform’s former policy which prevented creators from earning royalties on two trading platforms. 

However, following OpenSea’s new operator filter policy that will not block operations with platforms with similar policies, e.g., Blur, there appears to be some resolution. 

That said, OpenSea remains the biggest NFT marketplace for Blur’s impressive strides in the last few months. And following its buzzing announcement yesterday, OpenSea has shown intentions to maintain its 23% market dominance or even improve on it. 

In other news, the crypto market recorded significant gains last week, attaining a current market cap of $1.073 trillion.

The crypto market valued at $1.074 trillion | Source: TradingView.com

-Featured Image: DPReview, Chart from TradingView.