OpenSea, a platform for trading nonfungible tokens (NFTs), has integrated support for the ERC-721C token standard, enabling creators to establish and enforce royalties. This update, announced on April 2, allows creators on OpenSea to easily enforce earnings with a single click.

The ERC-721C standard, introduced last May by blockchain gaming company Limit Break, addresses the issue of NFT wash trading by standardizing token transfer conditions, including royalties, across various platforms. Prior to this standard, users could circumvent creator royalty commissions on secondary markets by transferring NFTs through self-custody wallets or other NFT marketplaces that didn't honor creators' royalty requirements.

According to Limit Break, this practice incentivized zero-fee, royalty-optional trading through airdrops, essentially transforming nonfungible tokens into proxies for fungible tokens. This incentivization encouraged traders to farm tokens by wash-trading NFTs among their own wallets, negatively impacting the NFT industry.

OpenSea developers note that ERC-721C compatibility was made possible by the March 13 Dencun upgrade on the Ethereum network. By enforcing creator earnings, sales are supported solely on OpenSea and other marketplaces powered by LimitBreak’s Payment Processor. However, creators can still manually list their digital artwork on other platforms, with OpenSea matching the lowest royalties set by the creator on those platforms.

This feature is also compatible with OpenSea's Seaport 1.6, allowing NFTs to be sold under specific conditions, such as adjusting metadata in response to sale volume. While NFT royalties typically range from 2.5% to 10% per sale, the top 10 NFT collections have earned over $345 million in royalties since their inception.