Yuga Labs announces a phased withdrawal from OpenSea in response to the NFT marketplace’s decision to discontinue its royalty collection feature.
Yuga Labs, the creators behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), are set to withdraw their support from OpenSea following the upcoming removal of the Operator Filter tool, responsible for on-chain royalty collections on the platform.
Introduced in November 2022, the Operator Filter allowed creators to limit secondary sales of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to marketplaces that uphold royalty collections for creators, effectively filtering out platforms like Blur.
However, on August 17th, OpenSea disclosed its decision to “deprecate” the tool by the end of August, citing reasons such as lack of “widespread ecosystem adoption”, platforms bypassing the tool, and creator pushback.
The following day, Yuga Labs’ CEO, Daniel Alegre, shared an announcement via X (formerly Twitter), stating the company’s intent to gradually reduce its reliance on OpenSea’s SeaPort smart contract: “Yuga Labs will begin the process of sunsetting support for OpenSea’s SeaPort for all upgradable contracts and any new collections, aiming for this to be complete by February 2024 in line with OpenSea’s focus.”
“Yuga stands firm in its belief in upholding copyright protections to ensure creators are fairly compensated for their work,” he added.