Last night, I came across an NFT project team arguing again about secondary royalties. Basically, it comes down to this: the platform doesn’t want to collect them, creators feel like they’re being exploited for free, and buyers complain about an extra layer of tax. I used to be on the side of “creators must get paid,” but after the market educated me a few times, I realized royalties are like sentiment in a bull market—and in a bear market, they turn into friction for liquidity… Everyone talks about supporting creation, but when it’s time to place an order, their most honest side shows up.

More subtly, if the creator economy depends entirely on “moral self-awareness,” it’s basically like going out in the open with no clothes on; but if it relies entirely on enforcement, it’s easy to drive trades to wilder places. Either way, when I see people saying things like “we will use royalties for buybacks/building the community,” I take it first as a vision, not as a source of cash flow.

By the way, in the group these days, people are again circulating stuff about stablecoin regulation, reserve audits, and all kinds of screenshots about “de-pegging.” Once the emotions kick in, it’s just like the royalty controversy: everyone wants certainty, but the on-chain world somehow is the least willing to provide it. My approach is a bit simple and a little dumb: I don’t bet on single-point narratives. If it can be written into rules, I look to the rules. If it can’t be written in… then I treat it as noise and stay less impulsive.