One of the most potentially powerful tools to attract artists, musicians and other creators to embrace blockchain-based NFTs as a way of distributing their work is in jeopardy.
Royalties are a big draw for artists, who value the ability of most non-fungible tokens to allow the creator to add a royalty collection feature on each resale at the time it is minted. So, each time an NFT is sold, a percentage of the price — generally 5% to 10% — is sent to the person who made it.
On Oct. 27, LooksRare, the second-largest NFT marketplace on the Ethereum blockchain according to DappRadar, announced that it would no longer collect and distribute artist royalties. Instead, it’s turning a quarter of the 2% protocol fee it collects on transactions, so the creators will get a 0.5% cut of sales. Which is better than nothing but a small fraction of the royalty fee that artists generally choose to levy.
LooksRare is the latest in a growing line of NFT marketplaces that are wiping out a tool that has been lauded as a way to attract artists to the NFT market in the first place and…
