When deploying your own creator contract via the KnownOrigin portal, you will be given the option to block marketplaces. In this guide we have explained the reasons that creators are opting to block their work from being sold on particular platforms and explained how this works.
What is the Operator Filter Registry and why are creators having to block certain marketplaces to receive royalties?
At KnownOrigin we’re always trying to spearhead innovative ways to empower creators with the tools unlocked by blockchain technology. One of the huge benefits to moving from traditional art systems to the world of NFTs is that royalties could be received from all secondary sales.
This hasn't been possible until the invention of smart contracts, and so plenty of creators turned to NFTs because royalties were giving creators a new chance at achieving longevity in their practice.
Unfortunately, for creators to receive royalties on secondary sales, marketplaces must opt in to committing to pay them. Towards the end of 2022 we started to see NFT marketplaces emerge that were opting out of paying royalties in order to incentivise trade activity, at the expense of the creators.
The addition of a marketplace blocker to NFT contracts is the short-term solution to this problem.
The marketplaces that aim to protect royalties have come together in a cooperative effort, called CORI (Creator Ownership Research Institute). They drafted a short-term solution to protect creators’ contract royalties by building the Operator Filter Registry, a list of marketplaces a contract is required to block.
If a contract isn’t blocking the list of specific marketplaces in the Operator Filter Registry, the owner of that contract faces missing out on royalties from secondary sales on OpenSea.
Further information is available at https://corinstitute.co/ which we recommend reading to understand more about the reasons behind this move.