Nonfungible (NFT) marketplace OpenSea reportedly made initiatives to play a role in the NFT royalties debate – releasing a new “on-chain” tool assisting creators in enforcing royalties. 

Specifically, the NFT marketplace, which per insights from CoinGecko, commands 66% of the market share in NFT marketplaces, has been displaying a rather silent stance towards the problems of royalties and enforcement, while others across the sphere have been carrying out implementations of their own strategies throughout the past few months. 

The Head of OpenSea Devin Finzer additionally claimed that in marketplaces where fees are optional, they’ve “watched the voluntary creator fee payment rate dwindle to less than 20%,” while in other marketplaces creator fees are “simply not paid at all.”

The Head of OpenSea disclosed details regarding the marketplace’s decision to release a new solution aimed at making it possible for creators to provide “on-chain enforcement” of their royalties. 

Finzer regarded the tool as a “simple code snippet,” which enables creators to enforce royalties on new and future NFT collection smart contracts and current upgradeable smart contracts. 

The code will also place a restriction on NFT sales to be exclusive to marketplaces that enforce creator fees.

“It’s clear that many creators want the ability to enforce fees on-chain; and fundamentally, we believe that the choice should be theirs to make — it shouldn’t be a decision made for them by marketplaces,” Finzer said.

Finzer additionally claimed that OpenSea will enforce royalties for new collections with the utilization of an on-chain enforcement tool, but will not commence such action for new collections that do not opt-in. 

“We provide a template GitHub repo that helps you use a solution that basically blocks lists marketplace that doesn’t support creator fees, you don’t have to use that solution; the requirement is that if you want creator fees, you have to enforce them on chain.” Finzer further explained.