I dragged that vote on an NFT marketplace—“Should secondary royalties be mandatory?”—to the last hour again… as I was studying and flipping through the chat history. The more I read, the more it feels like how people split money at home: you say creators should get paid, but buyers also feel like I’ve already paid once—so why is it deducted every time the asset changes hands? Even more awkward is that if you make it mandatory, liquidity just runs off to places that don’t collect; but if you don’t make it mandatory, creators end up having to “operate on love,” and in the end they still have to go do ads until their mindset finally explodes.

Recently, new L1/L2 chains have been rolling out incentives to drive TVL, and old users are complaining about “mine, sell.” Listening to it, I feel like I’ve heard it before: the excitement you create by smashing money in the short term—once it dissipates, you’re left with nothing but emotions all over the floor. If royalties here are also only held together by moral blackmail, then the truth is that, in the end, everyone will still just care about whose fees/Gas are lower. Anyway, what I personally care about more right now is: can the rules be simple, and can expectations stay stable? Otherwise, every time I vote it feels like last-minute cramming right before an exam—it’s just too exhausting.