Recently, that back-and-forth squabble over NFT royalties has left me feeling a bit conflicted. On one side, creators say, “If the royalties are gone, what’s the point of making art?” On the other, the market says, “Liquidity is dried up—who’s still going to buy?” Put simply, both sides want the other to give in. But blockchain transparency is right there; making everyone happy is almost impossible.

I deal with slippage and private transactions every day, and the deepest thing I’ve felt is that ordinary users’ expectations of privacy are actually quite vague. A lot of people are worried about getting sandwiched by MEV bots, yet they also want the transaction records to be “transparent” to the project team. But these two things are fundamentally at odds.

The compliance boundary isn’t simply black or white; it’s more like whether you’re willing to expose your wallet address to specific counterparties.

Anyway, I think: don’t expect the chain to be completely anonymous, and don’t expect project teams to truly keep your privacy in check. When you act fast but feel uneasy, it’s more practical to think about what you’re trying to hide—and what you can actually hide—than to endlessly debate how compliance should be enforced. For now, I’ll stop here and wait for a big shot to talk about how to protect users’ slippage amid the royalty dispute…