Economics of NFTs: The Value of Creator Royalties

Abstract

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are transforming how content creators, such as artists, price and sell their work. A key feature of NFTs is the inclusion of royalties, which grant creators a share of all future resale proceeds. Although widely used, critics argue that sophisticated speculators, who dominate NFT markets, simply price in royalties upfront, neutralizing their impact. We show this intuition holds only under perfect, frictionless markets. Under more realistic market conditions, royalties enable creators to capitalize on the presence of speculators in at least three ways: They can enable risk sharing (under risk aversion), mitigate information asymmetry (when speculators are better informed), and unlock price discrimination benefits (in multi-unit settings). Moreover, in all three cases, royalties meaningfully expand trade, implying increased transaction volume for platforms. These results offer testable predictions that can guide both empirical research and platform design.