This artwork is the result of exploring this question, and looking for alternative ownership models that could answer it. It attempts to improve upon two existing royalty mechanisms:

1. Secondary Sales Commissions - While this is a huge step forward, the creator only earns when the item changes hands. How can we increase turnover, or alternatively generate revenue in the absence of sales?

2. Harberger Taxes - This mechanism solves the above, by putting the item "always on sale", and charging the owner a tax. But such a mechanism can be unappealing to people who are accustomed to traditional property rights.

"This Artwork Earns Yield" combines both of these mechanisms, with a couple of tweaks:

- A fixed, refundable deposit, instead of fees that need to be topped up
- Royalties paid with DeFi yield, instead of taxes

While such a mechanism will not be appropriate for all NFTs, the hope is that the simpler UX may reduce friction enough to make it useful in some applications.

We are also excited to start a conversation about how Ethereum's composability can be leveraged to create novel solutions to this challenge.