Royalties

NFT royalties were designed to route a slice of secondary sales back to creators. The idea feels simple: if a collection keeps trading, the artist or studio keeps participating in the value they helped create.

In practice, royalties are not purely a technical rule. They sit between smart contract settings, marketplace policies, and buyer behavior, which is why the topic became one of the biggest debates in the NFT market.

Supporters of creator royalties argue that recurring income helps artists fund long-lived communities instead of relying only on the first mint. Critics reply that marketplaces compete on lower fees and that rigid enforcement can push trading volume elsewhere.

That tension reveals a broader Web3 theme: even when ownership is on-chain, the user experience is still shaped by off-chain platforms, social expectations, and business models competing around the asset.