• NFT marketplace OpenSea is turning off its royalty enforcement tool, Operator Filter, at the end of August.
• The feature had limited success due to lack of support from the NFT ecosystem and pushback from creators.
• OpenSea is now focusing on alternative revenue streams for creators that don’t rely on restrictive measures.
OpenSea Disables Operator Filter Tool
NFT marketplace OpenSea is disabling its on-chain royalty enforcement tool — Operator Filter — at the end of this month, according to a statement by OpenSea founder and CEO Devin Finzer. The feature was first introduced in November 2022 but didn’t have the needed support from the NFT ecosystem or approval from creators who felt it encroached upon their control over where their collections were sold.
What Is The Operator Filter?
Operator Filter was a code snippet that allowed creators to blacklist NFT marketplaces that didn’t enforce royalties on sales of their collections. This would restrict these collections to being sold only on marketplaces that did enforce creator fees. However, some marketplaces such as Blur, Dew and LooksRare integrated the Seaport Protocol which allowed them to bypass OpenSea’s blacklist and avoid paying creator fees altogether.
Why Is It Being Turned Off?
As OpenSea’s Operator Filter wasn’t achieving what they had hoped it would, they decided to turn it off in order to focus more on other use cases for NFT technology and alternative revenue streams for creators that don’t rely on restrictive measures like creator fees. This would also give creators more control over where their collections are sold without limiting decentralized ownership of these assets.
When Does It Take Effect?
The change will take effect on Aug 31st as outlined in Finzer’s statement, giving creators enough time to adjust accordingly before then if need be..
Conclusion
OpenSea’s decision to turn off its royalty enforcement tool — Operator Filter — shows an interesting shift in focus for the platform towards supporting new use cases for NFTs with alternative revenue streams for creators instead of using restrictive measures like enforcing creator fees across all secondary sales.