Goblintown Creator discards NFT artwork, disables trading in royalty mode

Truth Labs, the creator of the Goblintown Ethereum NFT collection that went viral as the NFT market tumbled last year, has been accused of having “tough” holders this week by changing all of the project’s artwork to animated GIFs of a middle finger holding three up. additional the middle fingers.

“Fan royalties. Damn that supports the build and creativity. Flipping is the heart of what makes Web3 special. Honor the swimmer, screw the community. Long live the slow carpet,” all 10,000 animated NFTs now read.

The change comes amid an ongoing stance by Truth Labs in favor of enforcing royalties for creators, following recent changes by top marketplaces Blur and OpenSea to only enforce a minimum 0.5% creator royalty fee for many projects. A creator royalty is a fee associated with a secondary market sale of an NFT, and typically ranges between 5% and 10% of the sale price.

The sarcastic and facetious tone appears to represent the company’s view of a broad shift among some traders who no longer respect full royalty amounts for creators when selling NFTs – and perhaps also the marketplaces that enable such behavior.

In addition to the artwork change, Truth Labs announced Thursday that it had disabled any bidding, listing, or trading of Goblintown NFTs on OpenSea and Blur as the company prepares to move its NFTs to a new smart contract that fully enforces royalty payments for creators on the chain. Smart contracts contain the code that powers autonomous decentralized apps (dapps), as well as NFT projects.

Truth Labs said it will automatically send a new version of each affected NFT — with the original artwork — to its holder’s wallets by the end of the day on Sunday.

“Rugs” are typically described as projects whose creators have abandoned or failed to live up to their promises. Truth Labs hasn’t, but the sudden art change and trading limits don’t sit well with all holders. The company also did the same with its other, less prominent NFT collections, including IlluminatiNFT, The 187 and Grumpls.

Truth Labs did not immediately respond Decryptits request for comment.

Why does this matter? Truth Labs wants to preserve royalties for creators and continue to receive its chosen percentage of revenue from all secondary sales of its NFTs – a sentiment echoed by many other creators, projects, industry figures and even NFT marketplaces in recent months amidst disturbances in NFT. room.

Starting last summer, new marketplaces ditched the long-standing practice of charging full royalty fees to creators, taking market share by luring away users with cheaper deals. As a result, more established marketplaces followed as their once-dominant market share disappeared.

Royalties can be a significant source of income for NFT creators, especially in once-trendy collections like Goblintown. The project has seen $101 million worth of trading volume to date per data from CryptoSlam, although the vast majority of this came in May and June 2022 shortly after the initial free NFT coin.

“We as a team are committed to enforcing a royalty level that makes farming an unprofitable activity. All Truth collections will have a 5% royalty going forward,” Truth Labs wrote on Tuesday. “Farming” is a reference to Blur’s NFT marketplace, which rewards traders for flipping NFTs, but is seen by some in the industry as a form of market manipulation.

Although the royalty debate is contentious among NFT creators and collectors, Truth’s move to support royalties has not been well received by many Goblintown holders. Some have accused the team of not providing “value“to Goblintown owners, as well as engage in”centralized decision-making.”

“Don’t give the holders the chance [make] this decision goes against the ethos of this space,” ArtsDAO co-founder Rahim Mahtab tweeted in response to the news. Another Twitter user called the trading halt “unacceptable,” and adds, “Return to Web2.”

Goblintown began as a blasé, devil-may-care project designed to embrace toilet humor as well as the degeneracy and debauchery of NFT traders and the subculture that has sprung up around it. But today’s move has some collectors wondering why the creators expect them to play by their rules.