What Royalties Are Supposed to Do
An NFT royalty is a percentage of every resale that gets paid back automatically to the original creator, set at the moment the NFT was minted — the idea being that an artist keeps earning as their work changes hands, not just on the first sale.
Why Enforcement Fell Apart
In practice, royalties depend entirely on a marketplace choosing to honor them, not on any real copyright enforcement. When some major marketplaces made royalty payments optional to attract more trading volume, total volume rose sharply while actual royalty payments collapsed toward zero — the mechanism still technically existed, but the incentive to use it had disappeared.
What This Means Today
Support for royalties now varies significantly by marketplace, with some niche platforms still enforcing them strictly to attract creators. It's worth checking a marketplace's actual royalty policy before assuming a purchase supports the creator the way you'd expect it to.
Ownership is only part of what makes NFTs interesting — how creators actually get paid over time is the other half. NFT Know-How covers both sides of that picture.
ℹ️ This article draws on publicly available sources and is correct as of September 21, 2026. Crypto moves fast — prices, fees, and regulations can change, so always verify anything time-sensitive before acting on it.