Reduce Story marketplace fees on native transactions to 0% until June 1, 2023

Since launching its branded marketplace platform in 2022, dozens of popular NFT collections (including Pudgy Penguins, 0n1Force, Moonrunners, Karafuru, 247 Comics, and many more) with vibrant communities have launched and operated their official marketplaces through Origin Story. Communities and creators have praised the marketplace product for its security, user experience, innovative features, and creator-friendly approach. Transaction volume has been growing – including landmark transactions like the record 400 ETH sale of a rare Pudgy Penguin (facilitated through our marketplace aggregator) and sales of real-world properties in partnership with Roofstock onChain – which is a testament to the growing interest and trust in the platform. However, trading market share is low relative to the huge potential of this platform. We believe there is a huge opportunity to gain market share for Story, as a creator- and collector-friendly NFT marketplace platform that is a compelling alternative to general marketplaces like OpenSea and Blur.

Over the last few months, NFT marketplaces have been aggressively cutting fees (including marketplace fees and creator royalties) as they compete for market share. Notably, marketplace aggregator Blur has significantly grown market share by charging 0% marketplace fees and 0.5% minimum creator royalty (with user option to increase). In response, OpenSea announced they would change marketplace fee to 0% for a limited time and make full creator royalties optional. Many NFT creators’ businesses have been disrupted by these decisions by centralized NFT marketplaces. Many NFT creators have spoken out against the move to optional royalties, and have cited Origin Story as an attractive alternative for web3 brands to create their own official marketplaces (examples: https://twitter.com/RooTroopNFT/status/1629265617399459840 and https://twitter.com/notalexlin/status/1628924150218919939). There is no better time to double down on our approach. The Story Core Team is fielding an increasing number of conversations with NFT creators (many of whom have top volume collections) that are excited by Story’s marketplace solution. We believe creators will be increasingly incentivized to use Story to enforce creator royalties and drive their audience to transact on Story marketplaces.

This proposal’s objective is to grow adoption, reach, and usage of Story’s branded marketplace platform by simplifying pricing structure and reducing pricing for a limited period of time. This promotional pricing will apply to large scale web3 NFT collections (e.g., 10K PFP collections) using the Story platform.

Current marketplace transaction fees:

• Marketplace fees: 1.25% (Story’s fee) + additional fees (defined by the creator)
• Creator royalties: fully honored (defined by the creator)

Proposed marketplace transaction fees:

• Marketplace fees: 0% (until June 1, 2023)
• Creator royalties: fully honored (defined by the creator)

We believe this promotional pricing will drive more creators to launch marketplaces with Story, and drive more end users to transact on Story.

If this proposal passes, the Story platform will implement this promotional pricing, work with creator teams to promote usage of the marketplace, and facilitate increased marketplace launches with new partners.

This proposal would mean a reduction in Story platform fees going to the OGN staking rewards pool during the promotional period. A separate community proposal to be published soon will recommend incentives and bonus rewards to OGN stakers to compensate for the expected reduction in OGN staking rewards. We encourage the community to put forward ideas on additional incentives and token utility.

We believe Story should focus on creating long-term, sustainable value for the platform and token holders, instead of focusing on near-term fee generation. We have seen industry examples of successful token performance for marketplace protocols despite the lack of protocol fee generation. Notable examples include Uniswap and Blur ($BLUR token), both of whom currently have 0% protocol fees.

In upcoming proposals and announcements, we will share more detailed proposals for increasing usage of the marketplace through major features and trading incentives, as well as proposals for new OGN token utility and sinks.