META MONDAY
Happy Meta Monday folks!
It was another slow weekend for NFTs, with OpenSea trading volume exploring new lows for the year (only $8.2m traded on Sunday).
Though volume was down, the drama stayed all the way up. If you missed it, fear not. We’ve got you covered:
- Magic Eden announces optional royalty model
- OpenSea demotes Solana collections
- A few other stories we think you ought to know about…
Magic Eden capitulates...
creator royalties will be optional
The royalty debate rumbles on. The latest addition to the discussion we’ve now had 1,000 times is Magic Eden’s recent decision to make creator royalties optional.
Solana’s top NFT marketplace is the latest platform to switch to a no-fee model. The decision on how much royalties to pay to the creator will now be passed to the buyer (i.e. a trader can choose to pay 0% royalties if they want to).
It is a flip-flop from Magic Eden, after stating in July that “royalties are up to creators. Not us.”
Why did Magic Eden change its mind?
Magic Eden’s move is a desperate attempt to claw back its market share.
- On-chain royalty enforcement: Give traders and marketplaces no choice!
- Reward those who pay royalties: Save some extra perks and benefits for those that are kind enough to pay royalties.
- Punish those that do not pay royalties: Restrict access to benefits for people who do not pay royalties.
Stay tuned… the royalty discussion is far from over.
OpenSea makes Solana collections ineligible for 'Top and Trending' page
The new marketplace meta of abolishing royalty fees for Solana projects has had a very sinister unintended consequence. Wash trading.
Wash trading is the act of trading NFTs back and forth between controlled wallets at highly inflated prices. The benefits for wash traders are two-fold:
- Innocent NFT enthusiasts browsing the marketplace believe the NFTs are more expensive than the true market value. This means they might buy at an artificially inflated price.
- Inflated trading volumes make the collections rank higher on leaderboards that track collection sales (OpenSea’s ‘Top and Trending’ section of their home page, for example).
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QUICK HITS
- The Genuine Undead NFT collection was the star of the show this week. It rallied over 150% to its current floor price of 0.83 ETH.
- Memeland launched its new website. It’s clean and simple. Could be more interactive IMO: 8/10.
- Azuki has announced a ‘Proof of Skate’ technology installation in Hong Kong on October 19.
We’re bullish on every reader who brightens up a degen’s day by forwarding this newsletter 😎
It would mean the world to us!
