These days, there's been a lot of debate about whether NFT secondary royalties should be mandatory, and I'm a bit tired of it. Frankly, royalties are originally meant to provide a livelihood for creators, but once it enters trading, it becomes a friction cost. The moment you place an order, you have to consider whether it can be bypassed, split up, or exploited by MEV… In the end, liquidity tends to flee first, leaving behind only the emotional frustration.

Right now, this setup feels like a toll booth that’s also like a streetlamp: if it charges, everyone complains about congestion; if it doesn’t, people say creators are unregulated. On top of that, with the recent wave of privacy coins/mixing services and regulatory crackdowns, I’ve become more cautious — when rules are unclear, the first to be targeted are often not the big players, but ordinary creators and small investors. Anyway, I now place my orders more fragmented, willing to earn less, just to ensure execution certainty.