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One major part of the equation that Blur and OpenSea ignored in their quest for market dominance was Content Creators.  For without Content Creators what do Blur and OpenSea really have to offer that can be monetized?

OpenSea left the door open for Blur to come in and disrupt not only its business, but the entire industry.  Tone deaf to Content Creators, OpenSea refused to verify artist collections with a blue checkmark to provide a stamp of authenticity and ward off fake collections.  Pretty much any moderately successful NFT project listed on OpenSea has a host of scammers launching fake collections and OpenSea moves at a snail’s pace to stop it.

Despite all of its flaws, OpenSea offered two key ingredients for Content Creators which was a robust marketplace in terms of liquidity provided by eager NFT buyers and a consistent stream of royalties payable to Content Creators on all secondary sales.  Then along came Blur which drew in a lot of liquidity by throwing tokens at NFT buyers for trying out their new marketplace.  BUT, in the biggest sin against Content Creators, Blur essentially made royalties optional.  Shortly thereafter, OpenSea followed the same course of action by making royalties optional as well in fear of losing marketshare to Blur.  Basically, Blur and OpenSea are stealing Content Creator royalties in order to incentivize NFT traders in their marketplaces.

Eventually, Blur and OpenSea settled on a tit for tat demanding that their marketplace NFT traders block the other marketplace.  When that did not work, there was somewhat of a truce and both marketplaces decided to settle on offering Content Creators a royalty of 0.5% when the average was around 5%.  Essentially, Content Creators have to sell 10 times more NFTs to make the same amount of money.  The irony is that if Blur and OpenSea can agree on a royalty percentage, why not 5% the average when it is the NFT buyers who pays for it, not the marketplace?

Let us also not forget that OpenSea initially said that all NFT projects launched prior to January 2, 2023 would have the royalty rate set by Content Creators enforced by OpenSea on all sales.  OpenSea quickly broke this promise as pressure mounted from Blur and OpenSea saw its market dominance slipping.  Then, OpenSea came up with another scheme that only NEW smart contracts, the underlying instrument of NFTs, with the OpenSea registry code programmed into the smart contract would be eligible for royalty enforcement.  How long will it take for OpenSea to break its word on this scheme?  Notice the word “NEW?”  You guessed it, older smart contracts cannot benefit from the new bogus OpenSea registry.  Bogus in that OpenSea can easily elect to enforce Content Creator royalties without the use of a registry programmed into the smart contract.

Remember the part about Content Creators not being factored into Blur’s and OpenSea’s market dominance equation?  Well, Content Creators are mounting a resistance and are beginning to block Blur and OpenSea and seeking new NFT marketplaces that do enforce Content Creator royalties such as X2Y2.io and RARIBLE.com.  One clever method and an industry first response by Content Creators is led by the NFT project called Legends of Atlantis which is disabling the NFT image on new listings of their project on Blur and replacing it with a notice to delist from Blur and OpenSea and to relist on X2Y2.io and RARIBLE.com.  More and more Content Creators are looking into this method and giving it some serious consideration.  Now, it is the turn for Content Creators to speak up and impose their own rules on NFT marketplaces!

 

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