NFT Royalties
Ongoing payments to a creator on secondary sales of their NFT — a promise that proved hard to enforce.
NFT royalties are a percentage of every secondary-market resale that flows back to the original creator, encoded when the NFT is created. They were celebrated as a breakthrough for digital creators — perpetual income from a work’s ongoing resale, something traditional art markets rarely provide.
The reality proved messier: royalties were largely not enforceable at the protocol level, only honored voluntarily by marketplaces. When competition pushed marketplaces to make royalties optional (or drop them) to attract traders, creator royalty income collapsed — a cautionary tale about the gap between what a blockchain can promise and what it can enforce. Efforts to make royalties technically enforceable continue, but the episode tempered early utopian claims about NFTs guaranteeing creator compensation.