On November 5, 2022, OpenSea tweeted that they were moving to optional royalties. However, they gave a way to enforce royalties on the platform. Their method involved changing smart contracts to block token transfers on platforms that do not have options to implement royalties.

This project was eventually given to the Creator Ownership Research Institute (CORI), a cooperative effort comprised of OpenSea, Manifold, Zora, SuperRare, Foundation, and Nifty Gateway.

You can read more about OpenSea's reasons in the tweet threads here and here, but understandably, people were very upset, and the comments reflect this.

BlockLists are smart contracts that allow creators to block marketplaces, which in turn blocks collectors from listing your artwork on blocked marketplaces. Ethically, we believe restricting token transfer functions undermines the sovereignty & ownership of digital assets, so that is why the technology only blocks people from listing on marketplaces.

In The Lab, we offer a shared CORI Compliant BlockList for creators that block major non-royalty paying marketplaces compliant with the list required by CORI/OpenSea. The blocked marketplaces on this list are:

Of course, we also offer the ability to turn off BlockList functionality on your contracts at any point, even after deployment via your contract settings.

Questions? Give us a shout! 🫡