Ledger LandISSUE #61 of 90

royalties · enforced vs honored

BlockyVSDouble-Spend Dan

Blocky saysRoyalties can be honored or enforced — and the difference decides whether creators get paid.

An NFT can request a royalty (e.g. via the EIP-2981 standard), but the base ERC-721 transfer doesn't force payment — a marketplace or peer-to-peer transfer can skip it. Some projects responded with transfer-blocking allowlists to enforce royalties, trading composability for income. The tension between enforcement and open transferability has no clean answer yet.

Power-ups you unlock

EIP-2981 standardizes the royalty request
Plain transfers don’t enforce payment
Allowlists can enforce but limit composability
Enforcement vs openness is an open tension

Double-Spend Dan attacks — common mistakes

Believing EIP-2981 forces payment
Ignoring the composability cost of enforcement
Assuming peer transfers honor royalties

Boss battleContrast "honored" and "enforced" royalties for a creator’s revenue.

Example code

<!doctype html><html><head><meta charset="utf-8"></head>
<body style="background:#06040d;color:#e6e0ff;font-family:monospace;padding:20px"><pre>honored:  marketplace chooses to pay (optional)
enforced: contract blocks non-paying transfers
          (but breaks composability)</pre></body></html>

▶ Open the interactive comic issue

‹ Marketplaces · Opensea · Blur · Royalty Wars Nft Utility · Access · Governance · Gaming ›