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.

翻译：非同质化代币（NFT）正在改变艺术家等内容创作者为其作品定价和销售的方式。NFT的一个关键特性是包含版税，这使得创作者能够从所有未来转售收益中获得分成。尽管版税被广泛使用，但批评者认为，主导NFT市场的精明投机者会将版税预先计入价格，从而抵消其影响。本文表明，这一直觉仅在完美无摩擦的市场中成立。在更为现实的市场条件下，版税使创作者能够至少通过三种方式利用投机者的存在获益：可以促进风险分担（在风险厌恶情况下）、缓解信息不对称（当投机者掌握更充分信息时），以及实现价格歧视收益（在多单元场景中）。此外，在所有三种情况下，版税均能显著扩大交易，从而为平台带来更高的交易量。这些结果提供了可检验的预测，能够指导实证研究和平台设计。