# NFT royalties: what ERC-2981 specifies and what it does not enforce

ERC-2981 lets an NFT contract report a royalty recipient and amount for a given sale price. It standardizes royalty information, not automatic payment on every transfer. A marketplace or other seller must implement the payment behavior; an ordinary token transfer does not reveal whether a sale occurred or what its price was.

Evidence: [NFT royalty standard](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2981)

Canonical: https://degreesofsatoshi.com/encyclopedia/nft-royalties/
Published: 2026-10-02
Substantively modified: 2026-10-02
Independently verified by an automated reviewer: 2026-10-02T19:27:58.939Z
Data current through: 2026-10-02

AI-assisted research and drafting with a separate automated source-verification pass; no external expert or named human review is implied.

## Key facts

- **Query:** royaltyInfo returns a recipient and calculated amount. ([NFT royalty standard](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2981))
- **Units:** The royalty amount uses the same monetary unit as the supplied sale price. ([NFT royalty standard](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2981))
- **Enforcement:** ERC-2981 itself does not force marketplaces to pay. ([NFT royalty standard](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2981))

## The contract provides a payment instruction

A marketplace supplies the token ID and sale price to royaltyInfo and uses the response to determine the requested royalty. The interface does not itself transfer funds to the recipient.

A transfer between two wallets might be a gift, custody move or sale. That is why a generic transfer method cannot infer the sale price required for a percentage royalty.

Evidence: [NFT royalty standard](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2981)

## Keep the royalty in the sale-price currency

Assume a contract reports a 5% royalty. For a hypothetical sale of 2 ETH, the amount is 0.1 ETH. For a sale priced at 200 units of another currency, it is 10 units of that currency, not 10 ETH.

The implementation may use a royalty percentage that changes under its rules. Query the relevant token and sale context rather than assuming an earlier displayed percentage is permanent.

Evidence: [NFT royalty standard](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2981)

## An advertised royalty and a paid royalty are separate facts

Standard support shows that royalty information can be requested. To establish that a particular sale paid it, inspect the marketplace’s payment implementation and the actual transfers.

Collections can use additional restrictions or marketplace arrangements, but those are separate designs. Do not attribute their enforcement guarantees to ERC-2981 alone.

Evidence: [NFT royalty standard](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2981)

## Questions

### Does every wallet-to-wallet NFT transfer owe an automatic royalty?

ERC-2981 does not impose an automatic charge on transfers. It reports sale-related royalty information for participants that implement payment.

Evidence: [NFT royalty standard](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2981)

### Can a marketplace ignore the royalty information?

The standard alone cannot force a payment. Its specification describes voluntary adoption by marketplaces and other sale participants.

Evidence: [NFT royalty standard](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2981)

## Claims and scope

### nft-royalties-quick-answer

ERC-2981 lets an NFT contract report a royalty recipient and amount for a given sale price. It standardizes royalty information, not automatic payment on every transfer. A marketplace or other seller must implement the payment behavior; an ordinary token transfer does not reveal whether a sale occurred or what its price was.

Scope: {"collection":"ethereum","dataAsOf":"2026-10-02","blockHeight":null}

### nft-royalties-fact-query

Query: royaltyInfo returns a recipient and calculated amount.

Scope: {"collection":"ethereum","dataAsOf":"2026-10-02","blockHeight":null}

### nft-royalties-fact-units

Units: The royalty amount uses the same monetary unit as the supplied sale price.

Scope: {"collection":"ethereum","dataAsOf":"2026-10-02","blockHeight":null}

### nft-royalties-fact-enforcement

Enforcement: ERC-2981 itself does not force marketplaces to pay.

Scope: {"collection":"ethereum","dataAsOf":"2026-10-02","blockHeight":null}

## Sources

- [NFT royalty standard](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2981) — Ethereum Improvement Proposals. Royalty information calculation in sale-price units does not enforce marketplace payment. Locator: Abstract; royaltyInfo; specification; voluntary payments. Retrieved: 2026-10-02T18:55:25.506Z.

## Revision history

- 2026-10-02: First publication after primary-source research and separate automated verification.

## Cite this entry

Degrees of Satoshi editorial project. “NFT royalties: what ERC-2981 specifies and what it does not enforce.” Published 2026-10-02; updated 2026-10-02. https://degreesofsatoshi.com/encyclopedia/nft-royalties/