Lately, in the secondary market, royalty rates are being squeezed lower and lower. Everyone keeps shouting “free market,” but I just feel like this is something we need to slow down and look at for a bit. If the creator economy ends up only living off that initial burst at launch, and everything afterward relies on passion to keep it alive, then in the data you’re looking at a cliff-like pullback in cash flow—pretty scary.

Not to mention the on-chain sorting/MEV setup: miners/validators are getting more and more comfortable with it. Retailers complain, “I just posted my order and it got sandwiched,” and this kind of sentiment can spill over into NFTs too. If you already think the order of transactions is unfair, how can you expect people to voluntarily pay royalties? Put simply, the cost of trust is being driven up.

I’d rather be half a beat slower now, chase less hype, and focus on whether the project team has written royalties into the protocol, and whether there are other designs for ongoing revenue… Fast is easy to get carried away by, but if you slow down, at least you can see the risks.