Today, creators can’t earn royalties on Blur and OpenSea at the same time. Instead, they can only earn full royalties on OpenSea, or Blur, but not both together.

OpenSea’s current royalty policy prevents collections from being able to earn royalties everywhere. They have cited various reasons for this (see FAQ), but the end result is that creators are limited to earning royalties on only one platform at a time.

Blur is a marketplace that’s driven by the community. That’s why we airdropped $BLUR to Creators in our Season 1 airdrop, in order to welcome them into the community. We’re working to help creators earn full royalties everywhere, and in this article we’ll walk through the options Creators have today, and how we can enable full royalty enforcement on both OpenSea and Blur.

Here’s a quick look at the choices:

Option 1 - No block

New collections without filters are maximally decentralized, but at the same time they do not have the ability to block zero or optional royalty marketplaces. OpenSea sets royalties to optional on these collections, and Blur enforces minimum 0.5% royalties (the seller can opt-in to higher royalties as well).

Option 2 - Block Blur

OpenSea does not set optional royalties when collections filter marketplaces on their blocklist, which includes Blur. It’s important to note that the blocklist disables bidding on Blur, but does not disable trading/listing. For these collections, OpenSea enforces royalties and Blur enforces minimum 0.5% royalties.

Blur bids provide floor support, increased volume, and royalty revenue for creators. Disabling bids does not improve a creator’s ability to earn royalties. It only harms it. We think there’s a better way.

Option 3 (RECOMMENDED) - Block OpenSea

Our preference is that creators should be able to earn royalties on all marketplaces that they whitelist, rather than being forced to choose. To encourage this, Blur enforces full royalties on collections that block trading on OpenSea.

This option will only be recommended until Option 4 becomes available. Learn how to implement Option 3 for your new collection, existing collection, or using Manifold.

It’s important to note that Creators who implement the recommended option will be eligible to receive Season 2 rewards.

Option 4 - Don’t block either

Creators that whitelist both OpenSea and Blur should be able to earn royalties on both platforms. Today, OpenSea automatically sets royalties to optional when they detect trading on Blur. We would like to welcome OpenSea to stop this policy, so that new collections can earn royalties everywhere.

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In addition to earning full royalties on Blur, you can partner with us to be featured on our homepage, Twitter (150k followers), and Discord (110k members) for your upcoming launches. Reach out now.

FAQ

Why doesn’t Blur enforce full royalties on collections without filters?

When marketplaces try to enforce royalties on collections without filters, traders tend to shift to zero royalty marketplaces. This already happened in the past when Sudo launched in July 2022, and since then new marketplaces have sprung up with a zero royalty approach. There is no on-chain filtering solution that can solve the royalty issue for existing collections.

Blur is working to maximize royalties for these collections by increasing minimum royalties while maintaining price competitiveness. Maintaining price competitiveness is critical to prevent traders from shifting to fully zero royalty marketplaces. To that end, Blur has started enforcing a minimum royalty of 0.5% on collections without filters. The goal is to increase the minimum royalty over time.

Why does OpenSea set royalties to optional when Blur is whitelisted?

OpenSea’s business benefits from having creators block Blur. However, we would like to believe that that is not the primary motivation behind their policy. At the end of the day, we believe OpenSea wants to do right by creators too, and they have a different view on what a proper solution looks like.

OpenSea has primarily cited Blur’s policy on old collections without filters as the reason for why Blur should still be filtered by new collections. Their proposed solution, however, has serious flaws (see first FAQ above), which is why Blur has taken a different approach that has a better chance of solving the issue for good. We’d like to invite OpenSea to collaborate with Blur and enable full royalties on new collections, as well as continue to explore solutions for all collections, with or without filters.