The coffee has gone cold again. Outside the window, the rain keeps tapping away, and just as I’m scrolling through the group chat, I see those same few screenshots of stablecoins “depegging” being reshared—my mood is even more frantic than the rain. Actually, the audit report has already been posted for a long time, but nobody has the patience to read it all the way through. In any case, share it first, and talk later.

Speaking of creator economics, the controversy around secondary-market royalties that’s been going around these past few days is something I’d like to discuss. Originally, royalties were meant to let creators get a share of later trades as well. But in practice, when it comes to implementation, either platforms cut them out, or arbitrageurs find loopholes to take advantage. I’ve drawn a little sketch, imagining royalties as a “receipt” on a chain: each time the asset changes hands, a small payment is automatically triggered. But real on-chain royalties have to be written into the smart contract itself—there’s no substitute for hard-coded enforcement, not something that depends on platforms’ good intentions. The reality is that at the protocol level, it can’t be forced, so royalties become a “moral obligation,” and naturally some people choose not to pay.

Think it through coldly: if the royalty mechanism itself isn’t robust enough to resist censorship, creator economics will sooner or later shift toward capturing value at a lower layer—such as binding verifiable rights directly to the work (for example, using ZK proofs to prove ownership changes), or simply breaking royalties into smaller “ecosystem contribution” rebates. I don’t know which approach is more reliable, but at least don’t let your emotions run the show. The ones arguing the most in the group usually aren’t the people truly creating.

That’s it for now—when the rain stops, I’ll draw the second sketch.