When you buy an NFT, you’re not just getting a digital image—you’re entering a contract. And if that NFT follows ERC-2981, a blockchain standard that defines how NFTs pay creators royalties on secondary sales. Also known as the NFT Royalty Standard, it tells marketplaces exactly how much the original artist should get every time the NFT changes hands. Without it, creators get nothing after the first sale—even if their work sells for 10x or 100x more later.
Most NFTs today don’t use ERC-2981. Why? Because platforms like OpenSea and Blur decided to ignore it. They let buyers and sellers set their own terms, which means artists often lose out on future earnings. But projects that care about long-term creator value—like those built on Ethereum, Polygon, or Arbitrum—still implement it. If an NFT collection has a clear royalty structure, chances are it’s using ERC-2981 under the hood. It’s not flashy. It doesn’t make headlines. But it’s the quiet backbone of fair compensation in digital art.
ERC-2981 doesn’t force anyone to pay royalties. It just gives a clear way to ask for them. Think of it like a receipt that says: "This NFT was created by Alice. She deserves 10% of every resale." The marketplace then decides whether to honor it. That’s why some platforms pay and others don’t—it’s voluntary. But when a project like NFT metadata, the embedded data that describes an NFT’s properties, including creator info and royalty percentages includes ERC-2981, it’s a signal: this team believes creators should keep earning.
What’s more, ERC-2981 works with any blockchain that supports smart contracts. It doesn’t care if you’re on Ethereum or Solana. It just needs the right code. That’s why even newer chains are adopting it. And as regulators start looking at NFT royalties as a form of intellectual property, standards like this could become the difference between legal compliance and chaos.
You won’t see ERC-2981 in flashy ads. But if you’ve ever bought an NFT and wondered why the artist didn’t get a cut, now you know why. And if you’re a creator, it’s the one thing you should demand before launching your collection. Because without it, your art could become someone else’s profit—forever.
Below, you’ll find real-world examples of how this standard plays out—or fails to—in the wild. Some NFTs pay. Others vanish. Some projects built their entire model around fair royalties. Others? They’re just gambling with other people’s work.
NFT royalties let creators earn from secondary sales, but not all marketplaces pay them. Learn how ERC-2981 works, why some platforms ignore royalties, and what creators and buyers should do in 2025.
