Are NFT Royalties the Way? How to Build a Sustainable Creator Economy - Ep. 414

Sterling Crispin, artist and software developer and Holly Herndon, host of the Interdependence podcast, talk about the problems that creators face, some potential solutions, and the debate over creator royalties.

Show highlights:

how Holly and Sterling got into crypto

how Holly used the Holly Plus Project to pay royalties

how NFTs change the economic experience of being a creator

how creators make money and why it is so difficult for most of them

whether NFT royalties are necessary for artists

why creators are the ones that should decide to charge royalties or not

how the enforcement of royalties also occurs in the traditional art world

whether NFT royalties only benefit big players vs. smaller creators

what shifts could make paying royalties a norm, the way paying for music streaming became a norm over piracy

other solutions to helping creators earn from their work besides NFT royalties

whether NFT creators should use blocklists

whether people objecting to blocklists can be hypocritical about decentralization

whether creators can build their own marketplaces

how a profit-sharing model among creators could work

Thank you to our sponsors!
Crypto.com
Chainalysis
Minima

Sterling:

Twitter

Website

Blog post: NFTs and Crypto Art: The Sky Is not Falling

Holly:

Twitter

Podcast

Holly's AI Video

Episode Links

Previous episodes of The Chopping Block debating NFT Royalties:

The Chopping Block: Two on Two Debate: NFT Royalty Throwdown!

The Chopping Block: Was This Gary Gensler’s Most Liked Tweet?

The Chopping Block: Did OFAC Overstep by Sanctioning Tornado Cash?

NFT Royalties

Magic Eden

Magic Eden Moves to Optional Royalties and Heats Up the Debate

MetaShield

Solana Could Get Enforceable NFT Royalties Via New Metaplex Standard

Why NFT royalties are almost impossible to enforce on-chain

Galaxy Digital report showing that Nike and Yuga Labs earned the most in NFT royalties.

Royalties in NFTs: Yes, no, and why?

Royalties Chaos Shows Ethereum NFT Market 'More Serious' Than Solana: Fidenza Artist Tyler Hobbs

Artists’ Royalties by BlackBox.art

On Royalties by foobar

Kyle Samani thread on verticalization

Potential solutions

Collector Royalties

Collector Royalties Eligibility Expansion — Aug ‘21

How do they work

Profit Sharing

Cardinal Labs

Metaplex Standard

Exchange Royalties Guarantee

NFTs for n00bs: A brief history of tokens and tulips, NFT aesthetics, energy dramas, fan

brigades, social tokens and the metaverse with Daniel Keller