Magic Eden Sparks a Split on Crypto Twitter NFT Community

• NFT marketplace, Magic Eden is the first to dare shift to an optional royalties model.
• The move by Magic Eden has split opinions from the Twitter NFT community. 

The leading marketplace for non-fungible tokens on Solana said in an announcement on Friday it would make artist royalty payments optional. The marketplace has shifted to an elective royalties mannequin, following the lead of X2Y2 in August, albeit reluctantly. Earlier this year, X2Y2, an NFT marketplace on Ethereum, said it would let users decide whether to pay royalties or not.

Magic Eden is the leading NFT Marketplace on Solana, Home to the next generation of digital creators. The marketplace noted that the decision came after difficult reflection and discussions as the market has been shifting towards optional creator royalties for a while.

Investors now have the privilege of setting the royalties of their choice, this means that there’s a likelihood that some creators might not obtain royalties when their artworks are bought. Magic Eden will still have full royalties set by default for all collections and listings.

The content creator of the NFT earns royalties through subsequent sales in the secondary market. For example, after the original artist has the NFT, the buyer may then sell the NFT to another investor in the secondary market.

Magic Eden has teamed up with Solana-based NFT aggregator platform Coral Cube to accelerate the expansion of its ecosystem offerings. Sadly, royalties will not be enforceable on a protocol stage, hence Magic Eden sought the need to adapt to shifting market dynamics.

The marketplace shared a graph displaying the variety of cumulative wallets utilizing elective royalty marketplaces to purchase or promote NFTs skyrocketed in late September.

The decision by Eden has been met with jitters and shivers of equal weight. Some have labeled skipping Royalties as akin to “theft”, others have seen the transfer as optimistic for the long-term well-being of the business.