Royalty Registry

A registry establishes a single, canonical source of truth for royalty parameters (e.g., recipient address, percentage fee) on-chain. This prevents fragmentation where different marketplaces might use conflicting data. It typically implements a standard interface, like EIP-2981 for NFTs, allowing any compliant platform to query and respect the creator's intended terms.

• Core Function: Stores and serves royalty information via a standardized smart contract function.
• Eliminates Guesswork: DApps query the registry instead of relying on off-chain metadata or marketplace-specific lists.

Registries are often governed by decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) or use a permissionless listing model. This prevents any single entity (like a marketplace) from controlling or censoring royalty terms.

• DAO Governance: Token holders may vote on registry upgrades or policy changes.
• Permissionless Registration: Creators can register their collections without needing approval from a central authority, aligning with Web3 principles.

Beyond simple data storage, advanced registries integrate enforcement features. This can include:

• Transfer Logic Hooks: Smart contracts that revert transactions if royalty payments fail.
• Allow/Deny Lists: The ability for creators to specify which marketplaces are authorized to facilitate trades of their assets, creating economic leverage for royalty compliance.
• Revenue Splitting: Automatically distributing payments to multiple parties (e.g., primary creator, collaborators, DAO treasury).

All registrations and updates to royalty terms are recorded as immutable transactions on the blockchain. This provides a transparent, verifiable history of a creator's intended compensation model.

• Provenance & Trust: Buyers and platforms can audit the royalty terms for any asset from its mint date.
• Dispute Resolution: The on-chain record serves as an unambiguous reference in case of disagreements about intended fees.

A universal registry acts as a shared infrastructure layer for the entire ecosystem. Wallets, marketplaces, aggregators, and analytics tools can all read from the same source, ensuring consistent royalty application regardless of where a sale occurs.

• Developer Standard: Provides a single integration point for builders.
• User Experience: Creates a predictable environment for collectors, who can trust that creator terms are honored across platforms.

Developed to enforce royalties on secondary sales, this registry (often associated with OpenSea) uses an allowlist and blocklist model. It allows creators to restrict which marketplaces (operators) can trade their NFTs based on their royalty compliance. Marketplaces must register and adhere to the creator's fee structure to be on the allowlist, creating a technical enforcement mechanism beyond simple information lookup.

On Solana, the Metaplex protocol has integrated royalty enforcement at the core of its NFT standard. It uses a creator array stored in the token's metadata, specifying shares for multiple recipients. During a sale, programs like the Token Metadata program can validate that the listed royalties are paid to the designated addresses before allowing the transfer, providing native, protocol-level enforcement.

A critical design pattern uses the registry as a global fallback. When a marketplace queries an NFT's royalty info, it first checks the token contract itself (for EIP-2981 support). If the contract doesn't implement it, the marketplace queries the royalty registry. This ensures backward compatibility for older NFTs and provides a single upgrade point for the ecosystem's royalty policy without requiring contract redeployment.

Despite standardization, practical challenges remain:

• Optional Enforcement: EIP-2981 is an information standard; marketplaces can choose to ignore the returned data.
• Gas Costs: On-chain lookups add marginal transaction costs.
• Chain Fragmentation: Separate registries exist for different blockchains (Ethereum, Polygon, etc.), requiring multi-chain support from applications.
• Upgrade Complexity: Centralized registry control introduces governance and upgradeability risks.

A core security distinction is where enforcement logic resides. On-chain enforcement integrates fee logic directly into the NFT's smart contract (e.g., via EIP-2981), making it immutable and verifiable. Off-chain enforcement relies on marketplace policy, creating a trust dependency and potential for circumvention. The registry's role is to provide a canonical, on-chain source of truth that all participants can query.

The security model depends on the registry's governance. A single-contract registry controlled by a multi-sig introduces a central point of failure and potential censorship. Decentralized registries (e.g., permissionless, upgradeable via DAO) reduce this risk but must manage upgrade security and governance attack vectors carefully. The trust assumption shifts from marketplaces to the registry's administrators.

Malicious actors can attempt to spoof royalty settings by deploying a fake registry or manipulating queries. Secure implementations require:

• Immutable registry addresses referenced in core standards.
• On-chain verification that the queried registry is the authorized one.
• Protection against front-running, where a seller quickly lists an NFT after maliciously changing its registered royalty address in a permissive system.

The registry's primary value is reducing the need for creators to trust every marketplace. It provides:

• Transparent Policy: Royalty rates and recipient addresses are publicly auditable on-chain.
• Persistence: Settings survive beyond the lifespan of any single marketplace or platform.
• Programmable Enforcement: Allows for complex rules (e.g., split payments, time-based rates) executed predictably by compliant marketplaces.

Marketplaces integrating a registry must ensure secure, correct implementation to maintain user trust. Critical checks include:

• Verifying the integrity of the registry response (signatures, if applicable).
• Correctly handling edge cases like zero addresses, invalid data formats, or revoked permissions.
• Implementing fail-secure defaults if the registry call reverts or returns unexpected data.

The percentage of a secondary sale paid to the original creator or rights holder. This is the core value that a royalty registry is designed to enforce and distribute. It is typically encoded in the smart contract but requires a registry for universal market compliance.

• Example: A 5% creator fee on a 10 ETH sale sends 0.5 ETH to the creator.
• On-Chain vs. Off-Chain: Can be mandated by the NFT's smart contract logic or enforced via policy at the marketplace level.

The set of rules and enforcement mechanisms implemented by an NFT trading platform regarding royalties. This is the practical layer where registry data is applied.

• Key Decisions: Whether to honor on-chain royalty signals, apply platform-default fees, or allow optional tipping.
• Registry Integration: Compliant marketplaces query the registry for each transaction to determine the correct fee recipient and amount, ensuring payments are routed correctly even if the NFT is traded across different platforms.

The technical and economic mechanisms used to ensure creator fees are paid. Simple contract-level enforcement can be bypassed; registries enable more robust models.

• Methods: Include transfer hooks (logic that executes on transfer), allowlists for compliant marketplaces, and token gating that restricts utility for non-compliant sales.
• Goal: To align the economic incentives of sellers, marketplaces, and creators to participate in the fee system.

The automated distribution of a single royalty payment to multiple parties. This is a key advanced feature managed by sophisticated registry designs.

• Use Cases: Compensating multiple collaborators (artist, writer, developer), funding a community treasury, or allocating to a DAO.
• Implementation: The registry holds the split configuration and directs payments to multiple addresses according to predefined percentages, simplifying complex revenue sharing.