Magic Eden is fiercely fighting against Metaplex, who will listen to the NFT royalty standard on the Solana chain?

fromdecryptOdaily Translator |

Odaily Translator |

The battle over NFT royalties has intensified, not just on Ethereum, but the question of whether to enforce royalties for NFT creators has now spread to the already problematic Solana blockchain, where a long-simmering dispute between major players in the space Metaplex and Magic Eden The dispute finally came to light and spread to social media.

On December 9, Metaplex, the creator of the NFT standard on the Solana chain, tweeted that Magic Eden, the head NFT market, was leading a "coordinated pressure campaign" and trying to control the NFT standard on the chain it created. If it is possible for Magic Eden to set token parameters and functionality, then the Solana on-chain NFT will have unique features unlike other similar tokens. As the creator of the NFT standard on the Solana chain, Metaplex wrote almost all relevant code, which means that they "control" the key of almost every NFT on the Solana chain.

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Metaplex vs. Magic Eden: The "Tearing* Battle" Begins

Metaplex has always been a supporter of NFT royalty collection on the Solana chain, while Magic Eden hopes to implement a "zero royalty" strategy. In October this year, Magic Eden announced that it would no longer strictly implement the NFT creator royalty setting authority to attract More users and avoid competitors quickly stealing market share.

According to Metaplex on social media, they have always played the role of "gatekeeper" for creators and artists on the Solana blockchain, but Magic Eden is more from a business perspective, hoping to take the NFT royalty standard out of the hands of the community. Go and force users to accept "half-baked" governance plans.

Magic Eden quickly countered, saying that Metaplex "framed" its attempt to control the NFT standard on the Solana chain, and turned around, accusing Metaplex of using its MPLX governance token launched in September this year to disguise control of the NFT standard on the Solana chain. Control can also unduly influence the standards themselves. Magic Eden also stated that they have submitted comments to Metaplex along with other builders on the Solana chain:"Metaplex holds 'God Mode' keys, they can pretty much do whatever they want, their goal is really to protect the interests of their MPLX token holders.”

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Metaplex vs. Magic Eden: A long-standing conflict

This is not the first time that Magic Eden and Metaplex have disagreed on the development direction of the Solana NFT ecosystem, but now the conflict between the two parties is spreading into the public eye in an unprecedented way.

As early as August, a source close to Metaplex revealed that Metaplex found that Magic Eden's method of hosting users to list NFTs had potential security risks, but Magic Eden rejected Metaplex's help and was unwilling to disclose its source code. It is reported that the source code for Magic Eden to build the NFT market actually comes from the early Metaplex code, but a lot of modifications have been made and it has been closed and not made public.

However, what intensified the conflict between Metaplex and Magic Eden is undoubtedly the much-concerned issue of NFT royalties in the secondary market. NFT creator royalties are a small fee, usually between 5% and 10% of the sales price, passed by the seller. The relevant marketplace automatically pays the original creator of the item. On this issue, Magic Eden and Metaplex have different views. They announced in October this year that they will enable optional royalties on their platform, allowing NFT buyers to choose full royalties, half royalties or no royalties.

It is helpless for Magic Eden to make this move. In the past year, Magic Eden has been the most important NFT market on Solana, with a market share of more than 90%. However, as competitors such as Hadeswap and Solanart launched the "zero royalty" strategy After that, Magic Eden's market share fell rapidly, and it had shrunk to 77% in mid-November. Yawww and Hadeswap are also gradually eating away at its "cake".

Perhaps because Magic Eden's "zero royalties" did not receive the support of Metaplex, they decided to start from scratch. In early November, Magic Eden co-founder and CEO Jack Lu announced the launch of a new NFT standard on the Solana chain, which will be technically mandatory. Enforcing royalties, enforcing this standard will hopefully lead to a new asset class that can support those who want to earn royalties or new business models. Last week, Magic Eden announced the launch of an agreement "Open Creator Protocol (OCP)" starting from December 2, which will collect royalties for all new collections that choose to use the tool, and creators can also choose whether to protect royalties.

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The bankruptcy of FTX hit the Solana ecosystem hard. The network’s USD-denominated DeFi TVL dropped from $1 billion on November 6 to $278.3 million, a drop of 72.1%; the market value of network stablecoins also shrank from $3.9 billion to $2.1 billion The dollar, down 46.1%.

Now, the NFT market on the chain has also become unstable, which may make Solana's ecology even worse. Metaplex and Magic Eden, who ultimately controls the on-chain NFT standard? Let us wait and see.