Collectors Are Bored of Apes, Don’t Want to Pay Royalties

Royal pain: NFT creators are making less money from secondary sales than they have in two years, according to a report from data analytics platform Nansen. Royalty payments hit their peak in April 2022, reaching 28,000 ETH (nearly $76 million) for creators in one week. Meanwhile, June’s best week saw creators collectively earn 2,000 ETH, or about $3.8 million. As competition amongst NFT marketplaces has heated up, many of the most popular platforms changed their policies on enforcing royalty payments to stay afloat. Two of the largest NFT marketplaces, Blur and OpenSea, went tit-for-tat earlier this year but settled on enforcing a minimum royalty payment of 0.5%. In both cases, collectors have the option to pay more royalties, though it appears that the practice is uncommon.