Art Blocks debuts NFT Marketplace with enforced royalties

Art blocks has led the charge for blockchain-based generative art, but more than 1.4 billion dollars value of the secondary market NFT sales registered across the collections have taken place on external platforms. But that may no longer be the case going forward, as the company today announced the launch of its own specialized secondary marketplace.

Now integrated into the existing Art Blocks website, the marketplace allows art collectors to browse listed NFTs across all existing Art Blocks collections, whether listed on the marketplace or aggregated from other major platforms such as OpenSea and X2Y2.

Art Blocks does not charge any platform fees for secondary trades that occur via the marketplace, and artists’ own specified creator royalty settings are fully respected.

A screenshot of Art Block’s marketplace listings. Image: Art Blocks

There is a clear difference from how Ethereum NFT marketplaces such as Blur and OpenSea are processing royalties for creators today, making them optional for traders above a nominal minimum of 0.5%. A royalty is a percentage of the secondary sales price paid to the original creator, and usually ranges between 5% and 10%.

Erick “Snowfro” Calderon, founder and CEO of Art Blocks and creator of his “Chromie Squiggle” collection, has been outspoken about the need for royalties for creators in the NFT world, as well as moves from market leaders such as OpenSea to reduce them. He said the recent trend of declining royalties is hurting artists’ ability to make digital art for a living.

“We’re here to support the artists and the artists’ practice,” Calderon said. “How many artists had quit their jobs to be full-time artists because they were just excited by the idea of ​​pursuing this?”

Although that’s a potential key benefit of the marketplace, Calderon said Decrypt that the timing of the launch was not specifically requested by the NFT market deduct royalties from the creatorwhich started last summer but really took hold in late 2022.

Art Block’s CTO Jake Rockland said the timing of the launch amid the royalty debate was “fortuitous” and that it came down to managing team resources and finding the right technology to enable a native marketplace that also aggregates listings. Ultimately, it is built on OpenSea’s open source Seaport protocol with aggregation facilitated by Reservoir.

Art Blocks is the leading generative art NFT project, and has generated $1.4 billion in sales – including many individual art sales over 1 million dollars each.

With Art Blocks, artists create and deploy custom-designed algorithms to the Ethereum blockchain that generate a unique piece of tokenized artwork with each new coin. Leading projects in Art Blocks include Calderon’s own “Chromie Squiggles” along with Tyler Hobbs “Fidenza” and Dmitri Cherniak’s “Ringers”.

In addition to honoring royalties, the goal of Art Blocks’ marketplace was to better spotlight the projects and individual embossed pieces, and provide a safe platform free of scam projects and knockoffs.

Rockland described the core experience of Art Blocks as “the transcendence of coinage—getting to pull coins out of the ether.” However, he acknowledged that some people would rather choose from already minted pieces, or may eventually discover projects after the mint.

Part of the appeal of integrating marketplace listings is giving Art Blocks artists a hub to showcase their work after the mint. Calderon said some artists had asked for the ability to share their work without pointing to a broad NFT marketplace like OpenSea.

What you won’t find in the Art Blocks market, however, is a symbol. Calderon pointed to the “liquidity grab that happens” when a platform debuts — Blur, which recently took OpenSea as the leading NFT marketplace in terms of trading volume, did this with their BLUR token. But Art Blocks has “always fought against having a token just because it was a shiny thing,” he said.

Rockland also sees an opportunity to use “more carrots than sticks in terms of encouraging behaviors we want to see,” adding that the marketplace could put “the power directly in the creator’s hands” over time to reward collectors who pay royalties.

What that ultimately looks like remains unclear, but Calderon clarified that he has “zero interest in anyone ever feeling penalized for not participating” in a patronage model by paying royalties on NFT sales. But he’s excited about the idea of ​​positive reinforcement instead, to ensure creators are compensated and potentially reward those collectors.

“The creator economy puts the creator in control of their own creation,” Calderon said. “And I think the most compelling thing that’s going to happen is a creator that ultimately provides a meaningful reward.”