Crypto Gloss

Erc 2981

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title: “ERC-2981”

slug: “erc-2981”

type: concept

description: “ERC-2981 is the Ethereum NFT royalty standard — a smart contract interface that signals a royalty recipient and fee percentage to compliant marketplaces.”

tags: [erc-2981, nft-royalty-standard, creator-royalties, nft, ethereum, eip, royalty-enforcement, marketplace]

related_coins: [ethereum]

ERC-2981 is an Ethereum token standard that defines a minimal interface NFT contracts can implement to communicate a royalty recipient address and a royalty amount to any marketplace that supports it. The standard does not enforce payment — it only provides a shared language for querying royalty terms on-chain.

What the Standard Does

ERC-2981 adds a single read function to an NFT contract: given a token ID and a hypothetical sale price, the contract returns the address that should receive the royalty and the royalty amount in the same currency as the sale. A marketplace that wants to honor royalties can call this function before completing a sale and route the correct amount to the creator automatically.

The standard is intentionally minimal. It does not dictate how royalties are paid, what currency is used, or whether the marketplace must comply. It only defines the question a marketplace can ask and the format of the answer the contract gives back.

Collection-Level vs. Per-Token Royalties

Most ERC-2981 implementations set a single royalty rate for the entire collection — every token in the contract returns the same recipient and percentage. More advanced implementations can assign different royalty terms per token ID, which is useful for collaborative collections where different artists created different pieces.

Either approach is valid under the standard. The calling marketplace simply queries the specific token ID involved in a given sale.

Why Enforcement Is a Separate Problem

ERC-2981 is a read standard, not a payment standard. A marketplace that ignores the royaltyInfo response is not violating the ERC-2981 spec — it is simply choosing not to honor the royalty. This design was intentional: enforcing royalties at the smart contract level requires restricting transfers, which has significant tradeoffs for liquidity and user experience.

The royalty enforcement debate that erupted in 2022–2023 — when platforms like Blur began routing trades through royalty-bypassing contracts — is a consequence of this voluntary architecture, not a flaw in ERC-2981 itself.

History

2018 — Early royalty experiments. Individual NFT projects began implementing ad hoc royalty splits in their contracts, but with no shared interface, marketplaces had no consistent way to detect or honor them.

2020 — ERC-2981 proposed. Zach Burks, James Morgan, Blaine Malone, and Jeb Ropple submitted the proposal as a lightweight royalty signaling standard that any marketplace could query without needing project-specific integrations.

2022 — Finalized as a full standard. ERC-2981 was formally approved as a final Ethereum standard. The same year, royalty wars began as newer marketplace aggregators started routing trades through wrapper contracts that stripped royalty logic.

2023 — OpenSea drops mandatory enforcement. After Blur captured significant market share by making royalties optional, OpenSea followed suit, effectively ending protocol-level enforcement on the two largest NFT platforms. ERC-2981 remained the standard for signaling, even as payment became voluntary.

Common Misconceptions

“ERC-2981 guarantees creators get paid.” It does not. The standard guarantees that any marketplace can ask an NFT contract what the royalty terms are. Whether the marketplace actually routes payment is entirely up to the marketplace.

“If my contract implements ERC-2981, I’m protected.” Implementing the standard protects you on compliant platforms. On platforms that intentionally bypass royalties, the on-chain signal is present but ignored — the contract itself cannot block a non-compliant sale.

“ERC-2981 is outdated after the royalty wars.” The standard is still the universal query interface. Even platforms that make royalties optional typically still call royaltyInfo — they just make payment a seller setting rather than automatic.

Criticisms

  • Voluntary compliance only: Because the standard relies on marketplace goodwill, any platform that wants to capture volume by eliminating fees can ignore it with zero technical consequence.
  • No cross-chain consistency: ERC-2981 is an Ethereum standard. Other chains have implemented compatible versions, but there is no universal enforcement mechanism across L2s and alternative chains.
  • Favors large platforms: Creators on major marketplaces benefit when those platforms choose to enforce. Creators on smaller or newer venues have less leverage to demand compliance.

Social Media Sentiment

  • r/NFT: Discussion centers on whether royalties are a creator right or a market friction. Threads around major platform policy changes draw thousands of upvotes on both sides.
  • r/CryptoCurrency: More skeptical — royalties are frequently described as an arbitrary tax on buyers that inflates platform fees.
  • X/Twitter: NFT creators defend ERC-2981 as foundational to sustainable creator economics. Traders and aggregator users push back, framing mandatory royalties as anti-competitive.
  • Discord: Project communities use ERC-2981 compliance as a metric for evaluating which marketplaces to recommend to their holders.

Last updated: 2026-04

Related Terms

  • Creator Royalties — the broader concept of on-chain royalty payments that ERC-2981 is designed to support.
  • Royalty Enforcement — the mechanisms used to compel marketplaces to honor royalty terms.
  • Royalty Bypass — the techniques used to route trades around royalty-collecting contracts.
  • EIP-4973 — the account-bound token proposal, another NFT-adjacent Ethereum improvement proposal.

See Also

Sources