GM! It's been another exciting week in web3. Welcome to your Monday digest from Layer3, and here's what we'll cover:

• MagicEden makes decision to move to optional royalties

• 0age from OpenSea: On the topic of creator fees and their enforceability

• Hacker drains Mango Markets of over $100m in funds

• Our latest bounty for Lens Protocol fans

Sarah at Layer3

P.S. Welcome to the 3000+ new subscribers who have joined our newsletter since last week! The referral program is currently on pause, as we are discussing internally on how to make this newsletter experience better for you all. Please stay tuned and only rely on official Layer3 channels for updates!

Your Web3 Briefing 📝

An analysis of what you missed in web3 over the past week

MagicEden makes royalties optional, temporarily cuts down on marketplace fees

The discourse on creator royalties continues.

MagicEden, the largest NFT marketplace on Solana, recently announced that it would be making all creator royalties on NFT purchases optional. In a Twitter announcement, MagicEden said that they would be moving to a tip-like royalty system: buyers will be able to make the decision on how much royalties to pay, and whether they want to honor the original royalties of each NFT during the purchase.

For many in the NFT community, this is a somewhat....interesting move. While it's understandable in current market conditions that MagicEden's market share has largely waned due to competing marketplaces (e.g. X2Y2, Hadeswap) that offer 0% creator royalties, it brings into question who and what exactly these marketplaces are for.

For traders and speculatoooors, it's obvious why fees are not ideal. And maybe you don't want to be paying a creator royalty when the Fiverr PFP art you're trying to flip is essential to your day-to-day trades.

But for many artists and NFT creators who produce high-quality art and have relied on NFT infrastructure like creator royalties to support their own creative development and community, how would you feel if the value of your work was just reduced to an optional tip?

Lots to think about in the realm of royalties and its grander implications for NFT artists in particular - but that's a whole other Pandora's Box that I won't be getting into for this issue.

Sarah's Recommended Reads: On the topic of creator fees and their enforceability

Welcome to Sarah's Recommended Reads! Here, I'll be summarizing well-written articles or threads by web3 thinkers and builders that you should know about.

Up today is 0age's (Head of Protocol Development @ OpenSea) thread on creator fees and their enforceability. Fresh off the topic of MagicEden's recent creator royalties decision, let's get into it.

0age makes the observation that collectors will generally pay creator fees if the said fee drives value back to themselves or the collection. In most cases, collections where creators and collectors are properly aligned will thrive.

As a solution to the creator royalties issue, they suggest that every owner supply a valuation for NFTs they own, which can be used to derive both the transfer fee and the acquisition price. Ultimately, collectors should go for collections with reasonable creator fees, and creators should find ways to reward collectors that honor their creator fees, and/or get creative with additional funding resources.

You can read more in his thread here! 

What else you should know

• Mango Markets was hacked for over $100m

• FTX and SBF under investigation by Texas regulators

• MakerDAO revenue tumbles 86% on Ether and Wrapped BTC woes

• MasterCard to help banks with crypto trading abilities

What we've been BUIDLing 🏗️

We just launched a Bounty for everyone who has a .lens handle!

Take a look at our latest NFT Bounty, where you can share your Lens handle for a commemorative "Little Lenster" NFT. We've already seen 16,312 (at the moment of writing) Bounty Hunters claim their NFT so far!

What else is possible with a Lens NFT? 👀 We'll see...

🛣️ Stay up to speed on what we're building: Take a look at our roadmap to see what we've been cooking at Layer3, and a preview of what’s to come.

🚢 And if you want to help decide what we ship next: You can submit a feature request here and vote on your favorites! Some top community requests have already made it onto our roadmap.

Join our next community call: Wednesday, Oct 19

By popular request, we're bringing back our monthly community calls.

Join us in Discord this Wednesday @ 11:30 AM EST to chat all things Layer3 community, product, and growth. We'll be starting an AMA thread in the server for you to shoot all your questions at us, and we'll also select three top questions for a merch prize.

Thanks for reading!

Join our Discord and follow us on Twitter to stay up-to-date on the latest Bounties, communities, and more!

That's all for this week! Until next time, frens.

Cheers,

Sarah at Layer3

Let us know how we did👇