Which creators have made the most money from NFT tokens, and how much money are we talking about?
Creators of unique tokens based on Etherium have earned over $1.8 billion in royalties, or royalties paid to creators on the resale of NFTs. That’s the data published by Galaxy Digital researchers in their latest report. In doing so, royalty rates for NFT creators on the largest trading platform, OpenSea, have doubled on average over the past year, rising from 3 percent to 6 percent. Most interestingly, a significant proportion of the revenue from these payments is concentrated in the hands of just ten NFT issuers, which suggests a fairly high centralisation of the sphere. We tell you more about what is happening.
To recap, an NFT royalty is a percentage of the amount of each resale transaction of a unique token received by its creator. Royalty payments are indefinite and are made automatically by smart contracts. This mechanism allows for guaranteed monetisation of unique content, essentially providing a reliable source of passive income - and perpetual income at that.
We have clarified the current data: today the three most popular NFT-collections are Bored Ape Yacht Club, CryptoPunks and Mutant Ape Yacht Club. There have been 35 trades with them in the last 24 hours for the equivalent of 1,243 ether. And this shows that investors are willing to buy NFT, including during the current bearish trend, when the cryptocurrency industry and decentralised assets in general are traditionally not in the best demand.
Ranking the most popular NFT collections
How much is being earned from NFTs
The aforementioned top ten issuers by royalty income earned almost half a billion dollars or 27 per cent of the total from these payments. In doing so, 482 NFT collections received 80 per cent of all payments. It is easy to guess which series of unique tokens we are talking about: you can get the most payments if the value of NFTs is high, or the number of transactions with them is high.
482 NFT collections received about 80 percent of all royalty income
According to Decrypt’s sources, the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection from Yuga Labs studio ranked first in terms of royalty revenue – we’re talking about $147 million since the tokens were released. BAYC itself has rapidly gained popularity in the past year, topping the rankings for the most expensive tokens within the collection.
BAYC ranks third in terms of volume of all transactions
The brainchild of Yuga Labs has boosted the startup’s capitalisation to $4 billion. Meanwhile, the BAYC universe has expanded with the addition of new linked collections and even blockchain games within meta-villages. The sale of virtual venues in just one game called Otherside by Yuga Labs brought the startup’s creators $561 million in the first 24 hours of trading.
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The NFT field remains centralised in terms of the number of major trading platforms. New such platforms are still emerging in the market, but OpenSea holds the palm on almost all metrics, with over 80 per cent of transactions involving all unique Etherium-based tokens completed here.
Growth in the percentage of royalty payments on OpenSea
When issuing NFT collections through OpenSea, you can choose the royalty percentage that content creators would like to receive from secondary sales. To date, they have earned $76.7 million in royalties. Individual content creators as a group were ranked third in the revenue rankings for this category by analysts at Galaxy Digital. Other rankings include startups Chiru Labs (Azuki NFT collection), Proof (Moonbirds and Proof Collective NFT collections), as well as The Sandbox, Doodles and VeeFriends teams.
Top 10 NFT creators by royalty income
Popular brands also entered the NFT space last year. In terms of royalty revenue, Nike had the most success. The company gets an average of 6.98 per cent on secondary deals with its NFTs, which has earned them more than $91.6 million over the whole time. The second and third most successful brands in this ranking category were Dolce & Gabanna and Gucci, respectively.
Top brands earning royalties
Seven-figure sums aside, the concept of royalties does have its downsides. For example, most of these payments go to NFT creators through centralised platforms, and most often it is OpenSea. And some of these platforms may ignore the concept altogether – currently this is especially true for a platform called Magic Eden based on Solana.
We believe that the royalty concept is an important part of the NFT token ecosystem. It is a great incentive mechanism for content creators to monetise their creations specifically with blockchain-based products. And statistics show that this area does provide a good source of passive income. And it is a great reason to get in touch with NFT for those who haven't done it yet and essentially missed the hype train last year.
What do you think about it? Share your opinion in our millionaires cryptochat. There, we’ll discuss other important developments related to the concept of the Internet of Value – and blockchain, respectively.
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