On OpenSea, creator earnings are either optional or enforced. If they’re optional, this means creators can specify their preferred creator earnings in their collection settings, but the NFT owner will ultimately choose whether to pay the suggested earnings when selling the item.
Optional creator earnings are surfaced at multiple points in-product, so sellers can easily select the creator's preferred earnings when creating a listing or accepting an offer, and buyers can easily search for listings that pay the creator’s suggested earnings.
If you created your collection using OpenSea Studio, creator earnings are enforced for your collection through February 29, 2024. This means listings created on or before February 29, 2024, will include enforced creator earnings, even if the listings are fulfilled at a later date. You can set creator earnings percentages and recipient addresses directly in your collection settings. The same is true for collections created using the former "Create" button (lazy minting).
Creator earnings are also enforced on OpenSea for existing collections that included on-chain enforcement methods on or before August 31, 2023.
We will continue to enforce creator earnings for these collections through February 29, 2024. After that time, creator earnings will be optional on all collections.
All other collections created after August 31, 2023, will have default optional creator earnings. To set default optional creator earnings at the collection level, you can follow the steps below.
Setting creator earnings if you created your collection using OpenSea Studio tools
If you created your collection using OpenSea Studio tools, you can follow these steps to edit the creator earnings percentage and recipient addresses directly on OpenSea.
- On OpenSea, navigate to the upper right corner and hover over your Profile icon.
- Select Studio.
- Click on the collection you'd like to edit, or select Edit details, to navigate to your Edit collection page.
- On the left side, click the Earnings section and enter the earnings wallet address or ENS domain.
- Set a percentage of up to 10% total. You can split creator earnings between multiple addresses and you can change the percentages at any time. Changes will only apply to new listings.
- If you’re entering multiple addresses, you’ll also need to specify what percentage each address will receive. For example, you can set Wallet A to receive a 3.0%, and Wallet B to receive an additional 2.5%.
- Scroll down and click Save collection. You may need to complete a signature request in your wallet to finalize your changes.
Setting creator earnings if you created your collection using a custom smart contract
Whether your creator earnings are optional or enforced, you’ll need to do one of the following to have your preferred creator earnings automatically detected on OpenSea:
- In your contract, implement ERC-2981 to return the creator earnings percentage in basis points. To set this, call
setRoyaltyInfo(yourRoyaltyAddress, bps)withbpsbeing basis points out of 10,000. For example, 5% creator earnings on secondary sales would be 500 bps. - Set your creator earnings manually using OpenSea. This will initially prompt you to deploy a contract compatible with Royalty Registry. Your creator earnings will be set once the contract is registered. Updating the registry or your contract will overwrite any creator earnings you set directly on OpenSea's website.
Creator earnings on OpenSea are enforced on the collection level; we don’t currently support setting different creator earnings for individual tokens in the same collection.
OpenSea will reflect your preferred creator earnings based on what you have set in either your NFT contract or the Royalty Engine. The creator earnings percentage for the lowest token ID found in your collection will apply to your whole collection. If your collection does not have NFTs minted yet, OpenSea will query the relevant contract (NFT contract or Royalty Engine) using a token ID of 1.
Viewing your creator earnings on OpenSea
To view your creator earnings for your collection, navigate to OpenSea Studio, hover over the "More" dropdown, and select View earnings.
You'll be able to see your creator earnings history by item.
Creator earnings are paid out in the cryptocurrency of the sale. You can learn more about the cryptocurrencies that can be used on OpenSea in our help guide.
Error 401
Only the owner of a collection can edit creator earnings percentages. If you're seeing an error message when editing creator earnings, you'll need to ask the collection owner to make the change.
FAQs
Q: What will optional creator earnings look like?
When a seller lists an item with optional creator earnings, they’ll see the creator’s recommended earning percentage and have the option to adjust it. They’ll see the same option when accepting an offer for an item with optional creator earnings. This means the seller of the NFT will determine whether or not creator earnings will be paid for a transaction.
Q: Is the creator earnings policy enforced in Testnets? If it works on my smart contract in Testnets, will it work in mainnet?
Yes, our updated approach to creator earnings is live in the Ethereum Testnets environment. If you add on-chain sales enforcement to your test collection, you can also expect it to work in mainnet when you launch your collection.
Q: Does the creator earnings policy apply to other chains as well?
Yes, the creator earnings policy applies across all chains that are compatible with buying and selling NFTs using OpenSea.
Q: Will creator earnings be paid out if I list an NFT using OpenSea and it’s purchased using OpenSea Pro?
Yes, if you created your listing using OpenSea and the item sells using OpenSea Pro, then the creator will receive the creator earnings you set when you created the listing. Fees are determined by the marketplace at the time a listing is created or an offer is accepted.
