To be honest, I’ve seen royalty disputes heating up again recently, and my first reaction was, “Oh, it’s this again.” Scrolling through older posts, back in 2020 when NFTs first went mainstream, people were arguing over the same question: whether creators should charge secondary royalties. What about now? Platforms, to grab liquidity, directly cut royalties, calling it “letting the market decide.” It’s pretty ironic—creator economics that once got hyped to the heavens ends up still depending on trading volume’s mood.

The same goes for the airdrop season around the same time. Task platforms went after anti-sybil behavior, and a points system made opportunistic farmers compete like it was work. Everyone stayed up until the early morning hours refreshing interactions, only to find that gas fees were even higher than the airdrop. Sometimes I really feel like we keep churning around in Web3 and, in the end, we just become a tiny fraction in the platform’s traffic data. But from another angle, at least the royalty dispute shows creators are still fighting for a say, and the airdrop mechanisms are also evolving. Even though the process is exhausting, it’s still better than a stagnant pond.

Forget it, let’s leave it at this. Anyway, for an old weed like me, after seeing too much, you get used to it. The things you should do still need to be done—just don’t take it too personally.