OpenSea, one of the leading NFT marketplaces, has announced some big changes in response to a massive shift in the NFT ecosystem — a “temporary” move to 0% royalties.

The changes are said to be aimed at finding “the right balance of incentives and motivations for all ecosystem participants – creators, collectors, and power buyers and sellers.”

8/ First and foremost – We’re dropping our OpenSea fee to 0% for a promotional period of time.

— OpenSea (@opensea) February 17, 2023

While many artists and creators have argued in the past that a 0% fee approach is only damaging to the ecosystem, OpenSea, from a business perspective has been seemingly forced to make this move. This is because a majority of the volume in the NFT ecosystem has moved to a zero-fee environment, or to platforms that provide incentivized trading like Blur.

OpenSea is also shifting to a minimum 0.5% creator earnings model, with the option for sellers to pay more. This applies to all collections that do not use on-chain enforcement, both old and new.

In the last of its major changes, the platform is updating its operator filter to allow sales using NFT marketplaces with the same policies. This means that creators will no longer have to make a “false choice” between receiving earnings on OpenSea or another marketplace like Blur, which had recently rolled back creator earnings.

With some commenters confused or concerned about the on-chain enforcement aspects, OpenSea did tweet “yes, we will continue to respect any method of on-chain enforcement – including the operator filter – on new and existing collections.”

While most had hoped the platform would stay true to royalty enforcement across the board, it seems to be an unobtainable goal with current standards. Others have asked when OpenSea might release a rewards token, though that will likely never happen simply due to the regulatory nature of such an airdrop and the current lack of definition surrounding such tokens.

At the very least, if a drop like that were to take place, it would likely exclude U.S. participants, much like the recent Blur airdrop that saw “US Persons” ineligible to claim.

Reading the comments under the announcement, it is clear that some users think it is too little too late, that OpenSea will need to stay 0% forever to compete, and that everyone wins except for creators.

That being said, there are still tools that can be utilized to maintain enforcement, as well as emerging marketplace aggregators that allow creators to make their own marketplaces.

As for the long-term effect this “temporary” change may have, that remains to be seen. At the time of writing, a majority of creators seem unsatisfied with the move, some participants indifferent, and a small faction of partner creators supportive.

In other news, Blur NFT marketplace delivers highly-anticipated rewards airdrop with one big catch.