Yuga Labs’ Sewer Pass NFT Collection Nets Over $6M in Sales in Just Hours

Holders of a Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) or Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) NFT were eligible to claim a free Sewer Pass on Wednesday, which serves as the key to play a skill-based game called Dookey Dash. Those with a Sewer Pass (whether minted or purchased on the secondary marketplace) can play Dookey Dash from January 19th to February 8th. Points accumulated from gameplay will be part of a broader narrative experience called “Chapter 1” at a later date.

The sewer passes were divided into four levels, based on whether the holder of a BAYC or MAYC NFT also has a Bored Ape Kennel Club NFT in their wallet. At the time of writing, the floor price for a Tier 1 Sewer Pass on the secondary NFT marketplace OpenSea was 1.3 ETH (about $1,970), while Tier 4 passes were listed for up to 420 ETH (about $640,000).

Bored Ape Yacht Club tweeted that the official Sewer Pass collection was listed for secondary resale on OpenSea. In particular, Sewer Passes had certain conditions coded into its smart contract, including a blocklist of certain wallet addresses, which sparked conversations on Twitter about the move. Some of the addresses blocked belong to other major secondary marketplaces such as LooksRare and NFTX.

However, this may get more notice than warranted, as it reflects Yuga Labs’ decision to enforce a 5% royalty fee on OpenSea.

Per OpenSea’s developer guide: “OpenSea supports on-chain enforcement of creator fees if you wish to enable them for your new project. The way this works is by adding a simple piece of code to NFT contracts that restricts NFT sales of your project to only marketplaces that enforce creator fees.”

LooksRare, one of the platforms apparently blocked by the move, chose to make royalties optional in October. Several other major platforms, including X2Y2, have also opted for this structure, as part of a larger movement by platforms to justify sellers looking to get the best deal for their NFT purchase. Meanwhile, the creators have pushed back against the shift, saying it harms their ability to continually profit from their artistic creations.

In a statement to CoinDesk, a spokesperson for Yuga Labs confirmed its belief in protecting the royalties of creators. “We’ve always been a creative company, and we believe that royalties to creators must be protected.”

“The Sewer Pass free claim will only be traded on platforms that respect creator royalties,” they added.

Yuga Labs co-founder Wylie Aronow, also known as Gordon Goner, has been outspoken about protecting royalties to creators, noting in November that the company was looking at using approval lists encoded into smart contracts to determine which wallet addresses could transfer NFTs . He noted that Externally Owned Accounts, or EOAs, are a type of crypto wallet not used by marketplaces, making it easier to separate trading between private users and marketplaces.

“Coding something like this into your NFT smart contract will make it so that creators can make sure they collect royalties,” he wrote.