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Solana’s Anatoly Yakovenko Shares Thoughts on Ecosystem’s Biggest NFT Projects Leaving for Ethereum and Polygon

Solana’s Anatoly Yakovenko Shares Thoughts on Ecosystem’s Biggest NFT Projects Leaving for Ethereum and Polygon

Solana (SOL) co-creator Anatoly Yakovenko has chimed in on the expansion of some of the blockchain’s biggest projects to other chains. In November, Solana’s largest marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Magic Eden, announced it was expanding to its third chain, Polygon (MATIC). Magic Eden also operates on Ethereum (ETH). Later that month, Solana crypto wallet […]

The post Solana’s Anatoly Yakovenko Shares Thoughts on Ecosystem’s Biggest NFT Projects Leaving for Ethereum and Polygon appeared first on The Daily Hodl.

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Nifty News: Trump’s NFTs tank, NBA star’s collection gone in 77 seconds and more…

NFT gaming is at a similar stage to the early mobile gaming days, says a Magic Eden exec, while an analyst from Dune Analytics claims 58% of NFT trading volume this year has been wash trades.

After a sell-out launch that pocketed roughly $4.45 million from primary sales, former United States president Donald Trump’s NFT collection is already on a crash course towards earth.

Trump rolled out his odd-ball self-themed 45,000 NFT trading card collection on Dec. 16 for $99 a pop. The NFTs were all gobbled up within a couple hours of launch, and within the next two days the floor price shot up to an all-time-high of around 0.83 Ether (ETH), or $1,006 on OpenSea.

Since then however, the floor price has been volatile, while some in the community have highlighted that the NFT artwork may been plagiarized from other sources.

According to OpenSea data at the time of writing, the floor price sits at 0.2 ETH ($242), marking a hefty retracement of roughly 75%.

24-hour trading volumes have also dried up significantly, going from around 1,541 ETH ($1.8 million) on Dec. 18, to just 14.37 ETH ($17,402) by Dec. 21.

Gone in 77 Seconds

Another big celebrity name jumped on the NFT bandwagon this week. NBA hall of famer and Chicago Bulls great Scottie Pippen launched a NFproject that sold out in just 77 seconds.

The drop dubbed “Scottie Pippen SP33” consists of 1,000 unique NFT Metaverse wearable sneakers which went for a mint price of 0.2 ETH ($241). The NFTs are Ethereum-based and said to be compatible with “just about any ecosystem.”

The floor price has since risen to 0.42 ETH ($507) according to OpenSea data, and the project has generated 211 ETH ($255,000) worth of trading volume since Dec. 21.

A limited number of randomly chosen hodlers will also receive bonus benefits, with 33 receiving a physical pair of sneakers, two getting the chance to play golf with Pippen and one lucky person getting a tour of Pippen’s home town plus a dinner afterwards.

The NFTs were developed in partnership with Web3 entertainment firm Orange Comet, which seems to have a solid format down pat given that it also produced a collection for Sir Anthony Hopkins that sold out in just seven minutes.

NFT gaming akin to early mobile gaming days

Chris Akhavan, the chief gaming officer of Solana-based NFT marketplace Magic Eden, believes thaNFT/blockchain gaming is at a similar stage to the early days of mobile gaming.

“I was around in the very early days of mobile gaming, right after the iPhone came out, the App Store came out,” he told TechCrunch on Dec. 21, adding that “I remember the attitude back then amongst traditional gaming companies was that mobile games were stupid.”

Despite facing much skepticism in its early days, mobile gaming has gone on to become the most popular method of gaming across the globe. A report from New Zoo in Jun.2020 in particular, highlighted that there were 2.5 billion mobile gamers compared to 1.3 billion PC gamers and 800,000 million console gamers that year.

As such, Akhavan is not fazed by the criticism of the Web3gaming space and tips it to boom over the next few years.

“We think the same journey is going to happen in Web3,” he said, emphasizing that billions of dollars have already been invested in the Web3 gaming studios to build out a new avenue for gaming.

NFT wash trading on Ethereum

The impressive trading volumes of Ethereum NFTs may be a “mirage” according to a recent Dune Analytics blog post from pseudonymous NFT market analyst hildobby. 

This is because NFT trading volumes on Ethereum may have been skewed by significant NFT wash trading, which hildobby says made up of around 80% of total trading activity in January this year duringnits

Looking more broadly at the entirety of 2022, that figure sits at around 58% according to hildobby’s data, highlighting that the issue is still rampant and that trading volumes may not necessarily be the best indicator of a NFT marketplace’s usage.

“In a nutshell, the most common method is trading your own NFTs between two wallets you control for the highest amount of ETH possible. The goal is to accrue token rewards with a value in excess of the gas fees you pay,” hildobby wrote, adding that:

“The boom in wash trading really made life tough for us data analysts, since it skews basic statistics that we use to track marketplace usage.”

Limit Break CEO and Web3 game designer Gabriel Leydon highlighted via Twitter on Dec. 20 that the removal of royalty fees by a number of NFT marketplaces may have significantly contributed to this issue.

“Exchange incentivized wash trading will destroy NFTs. It’s amazing how many different ways royalties were important for the space,” he wrote, while suggesting that royalty fees had previously “tamed the exchanges and prevented washtrading on the scale we’re seeing now.”

Various data platforms such as CryptoSlam have since developed their own methods to filter out potential wash trades, and in their post, hildobby outlined how they are filtering out such trades from their analyses moving forward.

Related: What is the relationship between blockchain and Web3?

In particular, hildobby is now flagging trades where the buyer and seller have the same wallet address, NFTs that are sent back and forth between two wallets, addresses that buy three of more of the same NFT, and wallets in which the buyer and seller were first funded by the same initial wallet.

“When we apply all these filters, the results are eye-opening. On Ethereum, wash trades are only 1.5% of all trades, but…….Over $30B of NFT trading volume - almost 45% of the total - is from wash trading.”

Other Nifty News:

Independent game developer Metaverse Game Studios, which boasts a host of developers that have worked on various AAA titles such Far Cry and Diablo Immortal, has announced a partnership with Web3 development platform ImmutableX to continue building its upcoming RPG Angelic.

Blockchain entertainment firm Coda Labs commissioned a survey targeting game developers to have a peek into their thoughts on Web3. The researchers found that a majority of the respondents believe Web3 gaming is on its way to their firms, with 75% expecting to work on Web3 projects in the future.

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Drones, Fertility, and Defi — A Look at Alameda Research’s Massive $5.4 Billion Portfolio of Investments

Drones, Fertility, and Defi — A Look at Alameda Research’s Massive .4 Billion Portfolio of InvestmentsOver the last few weeks, there’s been a lot of information revealed surrounding the recent FTX and Alameda Research disaster. On Dec. 6, the Financial Times (FT) published documentation that shows Alameda’s investment portfolio, which alleges the company spent more than $5 billion on hundreds of investments. Some of the funds went to odd investments […]

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Magic Eden follows OpenSea with NFT royalty enforcement tool

The open-source Open Creator Protocol of the NFT marketplace will enforce NFT creator royalties for new collections that opt-in to the tool.

Magic Eden, a Solana-based nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace, has become the latest platform to release a tool allowing creators to enforce royalties on their collections.

It follows the announcement of a similar tool from rival NFT marketplace OpenSea in early November.

According to a Dec. 1 statement, the open-source royalty enforcement tool is built on top of Solana's SPL token standard and is called the Open Creator Protocol (OCP). This will allow royalty enforcement for new collections that opt-in to the standard starting Dec. 2.

Lu previously floated the idea of NFTs designed to enforce royalties at Solana’s Breakpoint 2022 conference on Nov. 5, citing the need for NFT creators to have a “sustained revenue model.”

Creators who use OCP will also be able to ban marketplaces that have not enforced royalties on their collections. Magic Eden will still maintain optional royalties on its platform for collections that do not adopt OCP.

In a Dec. 1 Twitter thread, Magic Eden said it “can't retroactively apply OCP to existing collections,” telling creators they will have to conduct “burn [and] re-mints” where the NFTs are sent to an unrecoverable wallet address and re-issued by the collection.

"We have been in active conversations with multiple ecosystem partners to identify solutions for creators in a timely manner,” Lu said in the statement. He added the marketplace's intention with OCP was to “immediately support royalties” for new collections while it coordinates with other partners for more solutions.

Related: Coinbase claims Apple blocked wallet app release over gas fees

An additional feature of the protocol touted by Magic Eden is the ability for creators to introduce dynamic royalties — that could reduce the value of royalties of buyers who pay higher prices — and customizable token transferability which could see, for example, NFTs limited to a number of trades or be subject to a trade freeze for a set period of time.

Magic Eden moved to an optional royalties model in October allowing buyers the option to set the royalties they wish to contribute to projects, which split opinions in Twitter’s NFT community.

The OCP tool follows a similar on-chain tool launched in early November by OpenSea that restricted NFT sales to only marketplaces enforcing royalties.

Magic Eden created a similar royalty enforcement tool, MetaShield, in partnership with peer marketplace and aggregator Coral Cube in September before its move to optional royalties.

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Nifty News: Royalty-enforcing NFTs a ‘new asset class,’ South Korea buys NFTs with CBDC, and more

The CEO of NFT marketplace Magic Eden said NFT creators “need a sustained revenue model” and with “no way” of currently enforcing royalties a “new asset class” could emerge to enforce them.

Royalty enforcing NFTs to be a ‘new asset class’: Magic Eden CEO

Jack Lu, the CEO of Solana-based nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace Magic Eden has floated the idea of NFTs designed to enforce royalties.

Lu said in an address at Solana’s Breakpoint 2022 conference on Nov. 5 that these NFTs could “give rise to a new asset class” as the space grapples with the debate around opt-in royalties.

He added that “creators need a sustained revenue model” and while royalties were one of those models there is “no way” to enforce them with the “current design” but added there are “many new innovations that could be made available to them.”

Lu noted that over the past months, Magic Eden had spoken to “dozens, if not 100” NFT creators across differing NFT use case and that they found their needs “actually are very, very divergent.”

“There is a real opportunity to give rise to a new asset class, and this asset class will have special properties but also have special trade-offs. So it could enforce royalties at a technological high technological level.”

Those “trade-offs” would mean NFT creators would have “some level of control” Lu explained but added in the talks Magic Eden had with creators and holders that they were “willing to accept some of these trade-offs” in order to ensure that they could bring their business models to fruition.

According to Lu, Magic Eden is set to launch an asset “next week” that can enforce royalties in partnership with Cardinal, a protocol enabling NFT conditional ownership and the privacy-oriented browser Brave.

Jack Lu at Solana Breakpoint conference. Source: YouTube

South Korea tests buying NFTs with CBDC

The Bank of Korea (BOK) — South Korea’s central bank — has reportedly tested buying NFTs with its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) according to a Nov. 7 report from Yonhap News.

The BOK said it had completed a simulation and research project carried out over the past ten months since Aug. 2021, creating a simulated environment for its CBDC using distributed ledger technology (DLT).

The project tested the usual functions needed for a digital currency, including issuing, transacting and remittances using the digital won, while the report also noted that “the process of purchasing NFTs with CBDCs was also implemented.”

It’s reported that this process was done through the simulated environment and a “digital asset system” built using differing DLT platforms with smart contract functionality, without going into further detail.

The BOK also tested the possibility of applying Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) to strengthen the protection of personal information. ZKP protocols can be used for forms of digital identities with some iterations using NFTs as a digital ID solution, although it's unknown if the NFTs transacted in the project were related to digital identities.

South Korea has stated its plan to allow its citizens access to blockchain-powered digital IDs in 2024 that could be used in finance, healthcare, taxes, and transportation.

TinyTap NFTs sell out giving over $100K to teachers

An NFT project by Animoca Brands in conjunction with its subsidiary TinyTap has seen six NFTs featuring a children’s educational course sell at auction for a total of around 138 Ether (ETH) — around $228,000, Animoca said on Nov. 7.

The project was created as a way for educators to create content and receive a share of revenues when their course is purchased and used by learners according to Animoca.

The six teachers who created the courses were given a 50% cut of thes sale of the NFT, generating them around $111,000 in ETH, while the teachers will also receive a 10% ongoing share of revenue by their course.

The teachers, courses, and sale price of the six NFTs sold at auction. Image: Animoca Brands

Animoca calls the NFTs “Publisher NFTs” with each representing co-publishing rights to a course — which is a bundle of education-based games on a specific subject created by a teacher.

The NFT owner is expected to promote their course and share the revenue and is entitled to keep up to 80% of future revenue generated by their own marketing and publishing of the course.

Trademark filings show Rolex is timing a Metaverse play

Rolex isn’t wasting any time gearing up to launch a Web3 play with trademark filings showing the luxury watch brand is ready to tick over into the Metaverse.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) filings shared by trademark attorney Mike Kondoudis on Twitter show Rolex is ticking off a list of crypto and NFT-related trademarks to protect its brand across virtual realms.

The filings suggest Rolex wants to offer NFTs, crypto wallets, crypto transactions and hints at a potential metaverse as it wishes to provide an “online space for buyers and sellers” and hold “virtual interactive auctions” although time will tell what type of online space Rolex may build.

More Nifty News:

Companies are showing a big appetite for trademark applications as crypto, Web3, and related filings have soared in 2022, reaching 4,708 at the end of October compared to the 3,547 filed in all of 2021.

Related: NFTs still in ‘great demand’ as unique traders rise 18% in Oct: DappRadar

The Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 breakout, has reportedly axed its NFT plans aimed to boost its economy ruined by the pandemic amid increasing regulatory uncertainty on crypto and Web3 technologies in the country.

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NFTs still in ‘great demand’ as unique traders rise 18% in Oct: DappRadar

A DappRadar report found that despite a fall in NFT trading volumes and sales counts throughout October, monthly unique traders increased.

October may have seen a decline in nonfungible token (NFT) trading volume and sales, but analytics firm DappRadar says an 18% growth in monthly unique NFT traders shows the market is still in “great demand.”

According to a Nov. 3 report from DappRadar, the number of monthly unique NFT traders in October reached 1.11 million, increasing 18% from September, of approximately 950,000. 

This is despite trading volumes falling 30% to $662 million in October, the lowest registered in 2022, while the sales count decreased by 30% to 6.13 million, the firm said, adding:

“The rise in the unique traders’ count indicates that new people are entering the NFT market, and it is still in great demand.”
Number of monthly unique NFT traders (millions). Source: DappRadar

The month was a busy one for the NFT community.

At least two more NFT marketplaces shift to an optional royalty model, including Solana-based Magic Eden and Ethereum-based LooksRare.

The report also highlighted that Yuga Labs has continued to dominate the NFT market, with seven of the top ten sales for the month coming from CryptoPunk and Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Of these sales, CryptoPunk#924 was the most valuable, selling for a whopping 475 ETH on Oct. 27, which is valued at $731,435 at the time of writing.

Meanwhile, Ethereum’s NFT trading volume continued to decline for the second straight quarter, falling 21% over the last month to $324 million, which represents the lowest volume registered by DappRadar since June 2021.

In brighter news, Polygon’s NFT trading volume has spiked 770% over the last month, driven by the success of the Reddit NFT collections as the main driver behind the surge, according to Dappradar.

Since their launch in July, more than 2.9 million Reddit avatars have been minted which have found their way into more than 2.8 million wallets, with Dune analytics data suggesting October finished with the collection having a sales volume of $10.1 million.

The trading volume seems likely to continue increasing for the layer-2 solution over the next month, with Meta announcing on Nov. 2 that Polygon would be its initial partner for its upcoming NFT tools.

Related: NFTs bridge music communities across genres and blockchain ecosystems

The report also mentioned that Dogecoin had been the best-performing token of the month, closing the month 50% higher than when it began and citing Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover and the announcement of Dogechain’s future roadmap as the drivers.

It also highlighted an increase in the average number of unique active wallets, up 6.84% from the previous month. DappRadar pointed to staking provider Lido being incorporated within Arbitrum and Optimism as well as a partnership between the NEAR Foundation and Google Cloud as the drivers for this increase.

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The Top 5 NFT Marketplaces Surpass $40 Billion in All-Time Sales

The Top 5 NFT Marketplaces Surpass  Billion in All-Time SalesWhile non-fungible token (NFT) sales have slipped since the start of the year, the top five marketplaces, in terms of the largest number of all-time sales, have reached more than $40 billion. Moreover, the NFT marketplace platform Opensea captured over $32 billion worth of sales as the NFT market platform currently dominates the top five […]

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Twitter Reveals ‘NFT Tweet Tiles’ in Order to ‘Impact’ the Social Media Experience

Twitter Reveals ‘NFT Tweet Tiles’ in Order to ‘Impact’ the Social Media ExperienceAccording to the social media company Twitter, the firm plans to launch a new feature called “NFT Tweet Tiles,” a segregated panel within a tweet that showcases non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and the marketplaces that list the specific NFT shared. The new NFT concept is expected to drop soon, in order to “impact the Tweet experience,” […]

Gone in 12 Seconds: Two MIT-Educated Brothers Arrested for Alleged Lightning-Fast $25,000,000 Crypto Exploit

Nifty News: OpenSea dominance fades, Azuki skateboards fetch $2.5M and more

The largest NFT marketplace is facing headwinds from its competition as OpenSea sees its market share slip whilst its rivals gain significant ground.

Opensea’s dominance begins to waiver

Nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace Opensea has seen its competitors chomping at its ankles this year as they gain market share — turning the market from a “monopoly” into an “oligopoly," a new report states. 

Binance Market Pulse released on Oct. 20 says there has been a slow and steady change in market leadership, noting that while OpenSea is still the dominant marketplace in terms of users and volume, Ethereum (ETH)-based exchanges X2Y2 and Looksrare have been gaining their share of the market over 2022. 

The report also pointed out that OpenSea is facing stiff competition when it comes to Solana (SOL)-based NFTs, its most used native marketplace Magic Eden is a “close second” to the multi-chain OpenSea exchange.

OpenSea’s market dominance in terms of volume peaked in May 2022 but has seen a decline since. Image: Binance

It comes amid a possible sea-change across NFT marketplaces.

On Oct.14, the Solana-native NFT market Magic Eden opted to introduce optional royalties on its platform, following a similar move by the Ethereum-based marketplace X2Y2 in August.

It noted that the “market has been shifting towards optional creator royalties for awhile.”

Binance's Q3 report added that Ethereum overall still dominates holding 65% of the NFT volume market share at the end of the third quarter, but NFT buyers may be moving blockchains in search of profits or following the latest trends.

The data also shows Solana’s NFT sales volume increased by 13% in Q3 and Ethereum’s dropped by 16% since the end of the second quarter.

Record-breaking bids on first wave of ‘Physical Backed Tokens’

The Azuki NFT project has broken the record for the most expensive skateboard ever sold, with the highest bid for a limited-edition 24-karat gold-plated skateboard fetching 309 ETH, or $400,000. 

A total of eight skateboards were sold through its new Physical Backed Token (PBT) technology, netting the project a total of $2.5 million worth of ETH.

The highest bid far surpassed the previous record holder, the over $38,000 “Blowin’ in the Wind Skateboard” created by skateboarder Jamie Thomas which included handwritten lyrics from singer Bob Dylan.

It was the first time the project implemented its Physical Backed Token (PBT) technology standard.

PBT is a token standard created by the project that uses a cryptographic chip to authenticate ownership of a physical item, generating an NFT in a user's crypto wallet after its scanned with a mobile phone.

MLB players union seeks NFT licensing manager

The union representing all Major League Baseball (MLB) players appears to be looking at expanding its members' presence in Web3, as it looks to hire a licensing manager to help expand its portfolio across NFT, Metaverse, digital games and augmented and virtual reality technology.

The job posting by the MLB Players Association states that “NFTs, the Metaverse, wearable technology, and AR/VR are part of our expanding business model” with the role requiring the person to create “strong relationships” with “crypto projects”.

A major role of the MLB Players Association is assisting sponsors seeking to associate their brand or product with players, the association holds the rights to license and use the names, nicknames, likenesses, and other indicating information of MLB players for use to that end.

Warner Bros launches NFT-gated exclusive films

Entertainment company Warner Bros is looking to use NFTs to distribute exclusive content and films after announcing on Oct. 20 that it partnered with Web3 firm Eluvio to launch its NFT-backed “WB Movieverse.”

The “movieverse” is essentially Warner Bros-owned films available online using NFTs as authentication for users to access the film along with related exclusive content such as behind-the-scenes videos and images.

The first offering in its movieverse sees a 4K resolution extended edition of one if its Lord of The Rings titles along with bonus material made available through two tiers of NFTs. 

Related: Magic Eden defends launch of NFT royalty enforcement tool

The sold-out upper tier of 999 NFTs was priced at $100 but now sees an average listing price of $2,500 according to the official secondary listings page, while the lower tier of 10,000 NFTs is priced at $30.

Warner Bros has delved into the NFT space before, recently licensing characters from its DC Comics-owned properties to pop culture brand Funko to sell Walmart-exclusive NFTs.

More Nifty News:

Metaverse casino Slotie has been hit with multiple cease and desist orders from state-level authorities in the United States who allege Slotie hasn’t registered as a broker-dealer, failed to provide the proper disclosures as a gambling platform and consider its NFTs to be unregistered securities.

Ethereum-based NFT marketplace Rarible upgraded its platform on Oct. 20 adding an aggregation tool that allows users to browse and purchase Ethereum NFTs from other marketplaces such as Rarible, OpenSea, LooksRare, X2Y2, and Sudoswap.

Gone in 12 Seconds: Two MIT-Educated Brothers Arrested for Alleged Lightning-Fast $25,000,000 Crypto Exploit

Crypto Twitter split as another NFT platform moves to opt-in royalties

Despite the change to an optional royalties model, Magic Eden will still have full royalties set by default for all collections and listings.

Solana-based Magic Eden has become the latest NFT marketplace to shift to an optional royalties model, following in the footsteps of X2Y2 in August, albeit reluctantly. 

Under the optional royalties model, buyers are given the power to set the royalties they want to contribute to an NFT project, meaning there is a chance that some creators may not receive royalties when their artworks are sold.

In an Oct. 14 post, the NFT marketplace noted that the decision came after "difficult reflection and discussions with many creators” and came as the “market has been shifting towards optional creator royalties for awhile.”

The NFT marketplace shared a graph showing that the number of cumulative wallets using optional royalty marketplaces to buy or sell NFTs skyrocketed in late September.

However, the move has been met with split opinions from Twitter's NFT community, with some seeing the move as positive for the long-term health of the industry, while others have labeled skipping royalties as akin to "theft." 

Well-known NFT artist Mike “Beeple” Winkleman pointed out to his 700,000 followers on Oct. 15 that while he doesn’t love what Magic Eden and others are doing, the switch from a seller’s fee to a buyer’s premium could be better for the industry long term.

Another Twitter user named CaptainFuego, behind Fuego Labs told their nearly 10,000 followers that “Royalties are stupid and shouldn't exist. Glad to see platforms taking this approach.”

Others were more critical of the change. Brocolli DAO argued that “royalties are needed in an immature ecosystem," noting that as per their calculations, they've already lost as much as $27,000 in royalties due to 0% purchases on other marketplaces. 

“In future we will be blocking anyone who hasn't paid royalties from accessing our Discord channels. Not paying royalties is theft. We will treat it as such," they said. 

Cozy the Caller, a self-proclaimed analyst, made a grim prediction to their 108,000 followers, stating “I can see a scenario in which Magic Eden goes 0% and loses their market share to a marketplace enforcing royalties in an innovative way."

Magic Eden said the change was not taken lightly, and they "have actively been trying to avoid this outcome and spent the last few weeks exploring different alternatives."

Last month, the NFT marketplace attempted to bring forth a royalty enforcement tool called Meta Shield, aimed at deterring NFT buyers trying to skirt creator royalties by giving creators a tool that could flag and blur NFTs that sold bypassing royalties.

Magic Eden noted in its latest post that: “Unfortunately, royalties are not enforceable on a protocol level, so we have had to adapt to shifting market dynamics."

In August, NFT marketplace X2Y2 announced they were introducing a similar option that allows buyers to set the royalty fee when buying an NFT.

The move doesn't appear to have affected the platform's usage; according to data on NFTGo, in the last three months, X2Y2's trading volume is ranked first, surpassing OpenSea.

NFT marketplace trading volume data. Source: NFTGO

Cointelegraph has reached out to Magic Eden for further comment but has not received an immediate response at the time of publication. 

Gone in 12 Seconds: Two MIT-Educated Brothers Arrested for Alleged Lightning-Fast $25,000,000 Crypto Exploit