I just came across a pretty interesting NFT project. Its whitepaper is written as beautifully as a poem—things like “creator sovereignty,” “community co-governance,” and “building long-term value together.” My first reaction was to flip to the royalties section and see how it’s split in the secondary market.

As expected, it says things like “negotiable royalties” and “creators can earn on-chain revenue,” but then it’s followed by a bunch of disclaimer clauses like “final interpretation rights belong to the platform.” Put simply, royalties depend on goodwill now, and both the project team and the platform want to take advantage of both sides, leaving creators as the weakest party.

On the macro side lately, the expected rate cuts have been swinging back and forth. When the U.S. dollar index rises, risk assets wheeze right along, and the NFT floor price rides the roller coaster too. I feel that if the royalties mechanism itself can’t hold up, then no matter how much the project team sells the “creator economy,” it’s just an empty shell. In any case, I’ll only look at actual on-chain execution. Those “perfect” promises in the whitepaper—I’ll treat them as notes, and only trust it once it truly lands. That’s it for now. Continue watching other things.