this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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Yeah NFTs themselves don't guarantee royalties, but most publicly advertised NFTs are based on unique or limited run graphics that include such contract terms. When artists started getting sketched out by the idea, one of the biggest arguments in favor of them was that artists could receive royalties on every sale, something that became a major selling point for marketplaces aimed at laymen who didn't really know anything about crypto.
It's not surprising, then, that this feature being taken away seems to negate one of biggest supposed benefits that NFTs provided. This was supposed to be the thing that balanced concerns about art theft and the value of quantity over quality that haunt NFTs to this day.
The general opinion of crypto isn't going to improve until people feel it's stable and safe enough to actually trust their money with, and moves like this certainly aren't helping that image of volatility.
I don't know much about NFTs, but can't the "give original artist a cut of royalties" clause be coded into the smart contracts? Why does it depend on a particular platform?
It doesn't depend on the platform, but the venn diagram of artists trying to get paid and people who know how to write a smart contract doesn't overlap much. Marketplaces were built to ease the former into the space by taking care of all that for them. The artists, for their part, just had to trust that the contracts actually did what they said they did and watch for the money to hit their accounts as proof.
People who were depending on the platform to sort that out are now stuck with either finding another platform or figuring out how to write the contracts themselves on top of their other business duties. Even if they do so, they're likely going to lose a good portion of their following and brand precense in the move.