Recently, there’s been more and more noise in the secondary market about royalties, and my mind keeps returning to that old question: what do creators rely on to make a living? The platform says users want lower fees, while creators say, “You’ve smashed up my paycheck”… I thought after the arguing everyone would reach some kind of compromise, but it turns out it’s more like this: if they can get around it, they will—nobody wants to be the sucker.

On my end, I watch the chain the way a duty cat watches for alerts, and I actually feel that royalties are pretty much like “voluntary donations.” Once they become optional, they’re effectively assumed to be 0. Put simply, the market doesn’t care about sentiment—it only cares about friction costs. Lately, the ongoing back-and-forth about Layer2 TPS, fees, and subsidies also looks pretty similar: lots of hot talk, but in the end, users head in the direction that minimizes hassle.

Maybe we have to admit it: relying on continued cutbacks from the secondary market isn’t that stable. Creators still need to keep making more “worth it” things—permissions, community, updates, even offline events… Otherwise, one day when liquidity gets pulled away, no matter how pretty the royalties look, they’ll just be for show. That’s all for now—keep watching for anomalies.