Nansen: payouts to NFT creators fell 98% from a peak of $269M in January 2022 to $4.3M in July 2023, as OpenSea and Blur cut royalty rates amid a bear market
- Payouts to NFT content creators sank 98% from a peak in 2022 — Exchanges for NFTs chopped royalty rates amid a bear market Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to . Bluesky: @blueheronhollow.bsky.social . X: @keithdsouza and @mdudas Mastodon: Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life@mas.to : Payouts to NFT creators fell 98% from a peak of $269M in January 2022 to $4.3M in July 2023. — Even though I lived through it, it's still mind blowing to me that trading receipts saying you own a JPEG was generating a quarter of a billion dollars in revenue per month for sellers of said JPEGs. … Bluesky: @blueheronhollow.bsky.social : Oh, you mean people started to realize it is a scam?! X: Keith / @keithdsouza : Lol, bear market? Are there still gullible people buying NFTs? Mike Dudas / @mdudas : “NFT royalties peaked in January 2022 at $269 million but were just $4.3 million in July 2023 as the rates paid fell to 0.6% per transaction from as much as 5%” https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
NFT creator economics had already been weakening: marketplaces began stopping or reducing enforcement of secondary-sale royalties in late 2022, undermining the fee model that had tied creators’ income to resale activity.
The drop also follows a prolonged retreat in marketplace demand, including an early collapse in OpenSea trading volumes and sharply lower sales at generative-art venue Art Blocks. July’s payout figure shows that lower trading and lower royalty rates compounded rather than offset one another.
First-order effects
- Creators whose income depended on secondary NFT sales face a much smaller revenue stream as OpenSea and Blur reduce royalty rates to about 0.6% per transaction.
- OpenSea and Blur make trading cheaper for buyers and sellers, but shift more of the economics of each resale away from original creators.
Second-order effects
- Collections and creator-led projects have less financial support for ongoing work, community management, and incentives, making primary-sale revenue more important than resale royalties.
- Marketplaces competing on transaction costs gain an advantage over venues that preserve higher creator fees, reinforcing the royalty-optional model highlighted by June’s two-year low for NFT royalty payouts.
Third-order effects
- If low or optional royalties persist, NFT platforms may treat creator compensation less as a default protocol feature and more as a competitive pricing choice.
- The episode tests whether digital-asset marketplaces can sustain creator ecosystems when resale fees are vulnerable to venue competition and falling trading activity.
The trend: NFT marketplaces are moving from creator-funded resale economics toward fee competition, especially when market liquidity contracts.