Recently, I’ve been seeing more arguments about royalties in the secondary market. Basically, creators want continuous cash flow, traders want lower friction, and platforms end up stuck in the middle, putting on an act like the good guys. I used to think that “supporting creators” was pretty righteous, but later I realized that once royalties are enforced by force, they end up tasting the same as MEV: whoever can control the ordering/routing decides whether you actually have to pay that fee. On-chain, it’s not about sentiment—only verifiable rules and game theory.

Now the incentive mechanisms and points on the testnet are pretty much the same. Everyone is betting on whether the mainnet will issue tokens, so the creator economy easily turns into “just make the data look great first and deal with the rest later.” I’m personally a bit timid: I’d rather have one-time commitments like sponsorships, memberships, and whitelists written out clearly, and I don’t really trust secondary-market royalties to keep anyone going. Those who manage to survive are often the ones willing to spell out transaction costs. In any case, don’t hang moral accounting on forced deductions—usually, retail investors are the ones who end up paying.