Adam Bomb Squad Cancels OpenSea NFT Drop Over Royalty Dispute: “Artists Always in Control”

Some of NFT the world’s most prominent creators are speaks out in defense of royalties this week after OpenSea said so considering changes in enforcement– including potentially making them optional for traders. Now one brand has taken things a step further by canceling one Ethereum NFT drop scheduled on the platform this week.

Bobby “Bobby Hundreds” Kim tweeted Tuesday evening that his streetwear brand The Hundreds will not be launching its Badam Bomb Squad at OpenSea this week as originally planned, due to the company’s unclear communication around its copyright stance.

“We were waiting to see if OpenSea would take a stand to preserve royalties for creators for existing collections, especially after hearing from the artists, founders and NFT community,” the brand’s tweeted statement said. “Unfortunately, this announcement has not come in time.”

Many NFT creators put a secondary sales royalty on their work – usually a 5% to 10% fee paid by the retailer. OpenSea and other prominent marketplaces have previously honored the royalty setting specified by creators, but upstart rivals have recently clawed away market share by rejecting royalties, and getting more established platforms to also make changes.

The Hundreds planned to launch the new NFT collection on Thursday through OpenSea, but will instead highlight the project through its own website “in the coming weeks”. The brand wrote that the move was made “in solidarity with the individuals who built this culture and give reason why marketplaces like OpenSea exist in the first place.”

Bobby Hundreds has been one of the most outspoken Web3 creators yet press back on OpenSea since the marketplace announced its changed stance on royalties to creators on Saturday. The Hundreds’ move to cancel the planned drop is a sharper rebuttal to what many creators see as OpenSea’s rejection of Web3 norms regarding ongoing participation in secondary markets.

“We hope this statement puts pressure on all marketplaces to uphold the Web3 ethos,” the statement said. “But most of all, it must be a reminder to them, to you and to the world that the artists are always in control.”

The Hundreds — which Kim co-founded with Ben “Ben Hundreds” Shenassafar in 2003 — launched its first Ethereum NFT pool, Adam Bomb Squad, in 2021. The pool has generated over $73 million worth of secondary trades to date, per data from CryptoSlam.

Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs and pseudonymous Deadfellaz co-founder Betty are among those who have also publicly criticized OpenSea’s recent shift around creates royalties.

OpenSea has not yet said it will make royalty payments optional on its platform. The marketplace said Saturday that it is considering various options ahead of a self-imposed deadline of December 8 – options that include making royalties optional, enforcing royalties only on “some subset” of collections and/or using new options for enforcement in the chain.

What happens to existing NFT collections on OpenSea is still unclear. However, for newly launched projects, the marketplace has launched an optional royalty enforcement tool that allows creators to blacklist competing marketplaces that don’t respect royalties, which critics have dismissed as a monopolistic and anti-competitive approach.