Magic Eden launches NFT tool to enforce creator royalties

The Solana-based NFT marketplace Magic Eden has announced the Open Creator Protocol (OCP). OCP is an open-source tool that NFT creators on Solana can deploy to ensure that royalties are paid whenever their assets are traded on secondary marketplaces.

The tool has been built on top of Metaplex’s existing SPL token standard for NFTs on Solana.

A major feature of the Magic Eden OCP is the ability for creators to implement dynamic royalties, which could reduce the value of royalties for buyers who pay higher prices, as well as provide customizable token transferability, which could see, for example, NFTs limited to a number of trades or subject to a trade freeze for a set period of time.

Magic Eden’s OCP allows NFT creators to block marketplaces that refuse to honor royalty fees on eligible assets. If a marketplace refuses to enforce royalties for OCP-enabled NFTs, it will be added to the OCP blacklist and those NFTs will no longer be able to trade through it.

NFT royalties under attack?

The concept of creator royalties in the NFT space is under attack now. All the NFT marketplaces on Solana with any significant share have stopped requiring traders to pay the fees. It’s a breath of fresh air now that Magic Eden, the largest NFT marketplace on Solana, has put in place a tool to enforce creator royalties.

Magic Eden will keep a list of blocked marketplaces; creators can also customize the list of blocked platforms. Any Solana NFT marketplace that wishes to pay off royalties on OCP projects can support the OCP. Magic Eden, on the other hand, will continue to offer optional royalties on its platform for collections that do not use OCP.

It was in mid-October that Magic Eden announced that it would be moving to an optional royalties model. It was around the same time that its rival marketplaces on Solana were moving to the said model or making them optional.

The largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, was also contemplating moving to the optional royalties model but decided against it following a creator backlash on Twitter.