Over these past two days, I’ve been watching the secondary market go after that familiar strategy—cutting royalties thinner and thinner. Put simply: the moment of the trade is the sweetest part; after that, nobody bothers about how creators are supposed to keep going. The tendrils of the agreements keep stretching farther and farther, and in the end, nobody can even say clearly whose rules you should follow— the market says it wants liquidity, creators say it should respect labor, and buyers say, “I paid once already—why am I still getting deducted…?” It all sounds reasonable, but it’s also all pretty awkward.

Airdrop season is the same. The task platforms’ anti-sybil efforts turn the whole thing into a points-based system that feels like clocking in for work. Everyone competes more fiercely than they would in a real job, yet the people who actually produce content end up feeling like they’re just being swept along as an afterthought. Not long ago, a new market came up with “self-selected royalties + points rewards.” I stared at it for a while and still couldn’t quite make sense of it—so forget it; I won’t move for now. I’d rather earn a little less than shove myself into a tentacle-web of rules that can be changed at any time. Risk, as it turns out, often hides in the phrase, “Anyway, everyone is using it.”