We’re far from the heyday of non-fungible tokens, but NFTs remain a bustling suburb of the crypto community, the image-based digital assets embraced by artists, collectors, and traders alike. But one of the foundational promises of NFTs appears to be going extinct.
Despite the hype, NFTs did not transform digital art or the creator economy, and total sales volume so far this year isĀ lukewarm at best. On the other hand, $1 billion in sales a month is nothing to sneeze at, even if that threshold becomes more elusive.
One of the most compelling features of NFTsāor at least NFT marketplacesāwas the support for secondary sales royalties. These royalties meant artists and creators would continue to get a cut of the funds every time an NFT featuring their work changed hands. A perpetual revenue stream was touted as a pathway to sustainable independent art.
This week, however, that vision was all but squelched by OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace, when it announced it was making royalties optional, not mandatory.
It was not a huge surprise, as OpenSea had wrestled with royalties before, especially as rival marketplaces touted the lack of royalty payments as they chipped away at OpenSea’s market share. Still, more than a few prominent crypto community members slammed OpenSea for the move.
Billionaire tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban, an investor in OpenSea, called the move “a huge mistake.” And top NFT purveyor Yuga Labs said it will stop supporting OpenSea’s platform.
šŖ Coin of the moment
There was no silver lining to be found in the heavy gray crypto clouds this week, with both giants Bitcoin and Ethereum sharply shedding value as well as smaller coins,
Most other leading cryptocurrencies posted losses of between 10% and 20%, including BNB, XRP, Dogecoin (DOGE), Solana (SOL), Polkadot (DOT), Polygon (MATIC), and Avalanche (AVAX).
Thus, Tron (TRX) takes the crown this week for the simple reason that it didn’t slide as far as its peersādown just over 4% for the week, according to CoinGecko.
šļø Read Around the Web
Stories we recommendĀ from outside Decrypt this week.
–Ā When Hackers Descended to Test A.I., They Found Flaws Aplenty (New York Times)
Angelic is a sci-fi roleplay game in development that will be free-to-play and offer optional, opt-in crypto features on Solana and Ethereum and a governance token. Metaverse Game Studios CEO and Founder Erkan Bayol tells Decrypt‘s Jason Nelson about how he sees AAA traditional games as Angelic’s main competitors and shares his vision for the game.
