Published on: 19/01/2023
Yuga Labs raises over $7M through Sewer Pass NFT collection
Sewer Pass, the newest NFT collection from Yuga Labs, has recorded over 6,000 ETH — or more than $7.1 million — in trade volume and is currently trending at number one on OpenSea.
By owning a Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) or Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) NFT, holders can use a Sewer Pass to get into Yuga Labs’ interactive skill-based mint Dookey Dash from January 19 to February 8, 2023.
The game requires players to run for as long as possible before being eliminated. The longer they run, the greater their score is.
Based on the performance in the game, the Sewer Pass will give players some perks. Some players may want to save their Pass rather than mint another NFT with it to display it as personal art.
Four types of Sewer Passes are available, each with varied rights depending on whether the owner also has a Bored Ape Kennel Club NFT.
The Sewer Pass is the lowest tier and is only available with a Mutant Ape NFT. A Tier 2 pass can be obtained by combining a Mutant Ape and a BAKC NFT. For Tier 3, players will need a BAKC NFT. For Tier 4, players need both a BAYC NFT and a BAKC NFT.
The Sewer Pass can also be sold on the secondary market or transferred to a friend who wishes to play the game. The Pass currently has a minimum secondary marketplace price of 1.4 ETH or about $ 2,100 for tier 1. A Tier 4 Sewer Pass can cost up to 420 ETH or approximately $640,000.
Yuga Lab’s blocklist, creator royalties
The Sewer Pass has triggered a Twitter debate since their smart contract includes a blocklist of wallet addresses that cannot purchase them. Prominent secondary marketplaces like Blur, SudoSwap, LooksRare and NFTX have some of their email addresses blocklisted.
Yuga Lab’s blocklist may represent its plan to impose a five percent creator royalty fee on OpenSea. OpenSea earlier announced it would enforce creator fees when users want to use their NFTs in new projects. Per the OpenSea developer guide, this is done by adding a small piece of code to NFT contracts that will let the project be sold through NFTs on marketplaces that charge creator fees. As a result, LooksRare decided in October to make royalties optional.
Creators have spoken out against the plan, claiming that it threatens their ability to generate a sustainable income from their work. The WRVPSound founder Jeff Nicholas called the proposal “theft by the market.”
Grammy-winning producer and creator of the Web3 music project Blocktones, Gino the Ghost, has criticized OpenSea. “You either stand firm to support the ethos of Web3 as the creative revolution or you lose the trust and business of the very creatives that make you successful in the first place,” he said.
A spokesman for Yuga Labs expressed the company’s commitment to maintaining creator royalties, saying, “We’ve always been a creative-first company, and we believe that creator royalties must be protected.”
As part of his support for creator royalties, Yuga Labs co-founder Wylie “Gordon Goner” Aronow said in November that the company was considering implementing allowlists into smart contracts to control which wallet addresses may transfer NFTs.
He explained that externally owned accounts (EOAs) help distinguishes between private and marketplace transactions because they are a sort of crypto wallet not used by exchanges. The 35-year-old co-founder said that creators might ensure they get paid by incorporating this code into their NFT smart contracts.
