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1. ERC-721 tokens don't replace DRM. Effectively you would buy the book and use any DRM scheme you want as the DRM would verify that you owned the ERC-721 befor

by Sargos 6y ago

1. ERC-721 tokens don't replace DRM. Effectively you would buy the book and use any DRM scheme you want as the DRM would verify that you owned the ERC-721 before allowing the media to be used. 2. True, there is always smart contract risk. The DAO hack happened right after Ethereum was founded as nobody really knew what they were doing and tooling was extremely basic. Things are still in the early dial up days for crypto but even now tooling is vastly better, there are dedicated firms for contract/code auditing and the systems being created today are much more robustly designed. With that said, nothing can be certified 100% safe and the only concrete proof of security we have is the passing of time itself. These systems will be new for a while and adoption of this tech will happen slowly over time in the same way the internet grew over two decades into what we know today. There will likely be a system that withstands the test of time and becomes old enough to be trusted by even conservative developers, but until then there will likely be mechanisms built-in where the content creator can destroy and re-create tokens in case of failure. Not every token will be this way and the decision is up to the content creator themselves. 3. This is a problem for wallets in general and lots of people are working on it. The leading solution seems to be social recovery which is where you designate trusted addresses (family members, hardware wallets, friends etc) and configure it to allow your wallet to be recovered if say 3 of the 5 agree that you legitimately lost it. If you ever lose your wallet because you forgot the password or your computer/phone died then you can recover it easily and safely, no complicated and technically hard key backup systems needed which is key for normal non-HN people. You can also set outgoing filters so your ERC-721 tokens couldn't be sent unless it's to a whitelisted address or you verify it with another of your trusted addresses, so even if a hacker got into your wallet they couldn't transfer the tokens and you would just recover your wallet using the system above. It's still early days but Argent is the best example of this.

michaelmrose 6y ago
Are you saying the original owner can destroy the token they already gave you? Regarding social recovery. I wasn't talking about recovery in case of data loss although that is a legitimate concern I was talking about loss through theft. If everyone suddenly had at least hundreds of dollars of value on their desktop that could be stolen and easily monetized by any software also running on said computer then the entire planet becomes a target rich environment full of badly secured computers. Buy or break into an addon used by 10k people. Steal an average of $200 in digital goods per user and walk away with 2 million dollars.
- Sargos 6y ago
  >Are you saying the original owner can destroy the token they already gave you? With most tokens, no. They are yours forever. If the token creator did want to set this up then they can do it though. An example is RealT which tokenizes rental housing. They can revoke a token and re-issue it if they need to (if you lose your token or it gets stolen) and they are up front about this. It is very obvious when a token has a backdoor and most of them do not as it's kind of a scandal when someone does backdoor a token and people don't adopt it. >Regarding social recovery I did cover theft in my comment but I'll elaborate. Smart contract wallets are more sophisticated than simply money being stored on a computer. They operate a lot like banks do today with daily spending limits, trusted owners, and the like. With Argent for example you can limit outgoing transfers to non-whitelisted addresses to $100 a day similar to how ATMs are limited in the amount you can withdraw daily. This cuts down on loss due to theft. As soon as you notice $100 missing you would recover your wallet (like replacing your debit card) and the thief wouldn't be able to steal anymore. Also, in case you don't know the technicals, wallets are generally very secure and even if an extension can see your wallet they won't be able to access the funds as they are cryptographically protected and also secured by a password/biometrics. So it's not likely that your funds will be stolen by a run-of-the-mill thief and even if they are successful the loss is limited. With all that said, a lot of people will likely still use banks to store and use their crypto as those existing trusted intermediaries still work just fine. People just have the option of storing their digital money themselves now.
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    What is the point of a token if its actually centrally controlled like rental properties? You can't actually use the token to revoke a rental agreement you use a court and the court looks at supporting docs like the rental agreement. At best it acts as official motorization of what the exact agreement is which isn't normally the point of dispute. Presumably those spending limits and indeed ANY limits are user configurable with a token that could itself be stolen or just used by software instead of a person on the machine in question. If the person can do it the software can after all. For example by faking keyboard and mouse input and keystroke logging the user to steal their password. We can't secure simple things now I cannot imagine how you can believe we can secure complex things with even higher stakes. Credit card transactions are tolerable because the financial sector takes in a huge chunk of the value of the economy and writes off losses out of that huge pile of money. In a decentralized situation where the only money in the kitty is users actual money how does this actually work?

by Sargos 6y ago

michaelmrose 6y ago

Are you saying the original owner can destroy the token they already gave you? Regarding social recovery. I wasn't talking about recovery in case of data loss although that is a legitimate concern I was talking about loss through theft. If everyone suddenly had at least hundreds of dollars of value on their desktop that could be stolen and easily monetized by any software also running on said computer then the entire planet becomes a target rich environment full of badly secured computers. Buy or break into an addon used by 10k people. Steal an average of $200 in digital goods per user and walk away with 2 million dollars.

Sargos 6y ago
>Are you saying the original owner can destroy the token they already gave you? With most tokens, no. They are yours forever. If the token creator did want to set this up then they can do it though. An example is RealT which tokenizes rental housing. They can revoke a token and re-issue it if they need to (if you lose your token or it gets stolen) and they are up front about this. It is very obvious when a token has a backdoor and most of them do not as it's kind of a scandal when someone does backdoor a token and people don't adopt it. >Regarding social recovery I did cover theft in my comment but I'll elaborate. Smart contract wallets are more sophisticated than simply money being stored on a computer. They operate a lot like banks do today with daily spending limits, trusted owners, and the like. With Argent for example you can limit outgoing transfers to non-whitelisted addresses to $100 a day similar to how ATMs are limited in the amount you can withdraw daily. This cuts down on loss due to theft. As soon as you notice $100 missing you would recover your wallet (like replacing your debit card) and the thief wouldn't be able to steal anymore. Also, in case you don't know the technicals, wallets are generally very secure and even if an extension can see your wallet they won't be able to access the funds as they are cryptographically protected and also secured by a password/biometrics. So it's not likely that your funds will be stolen by a run-of-the-mill thief and even if they are successful the loss is limited. With all that said, a lot of people will likely still use banks to store and use their crypto as those existing trusted intermediaries still work just fine. People just have the option of storing their digital money themselves now.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  What is the point of a token if its actually centrally controlled like rental properties? You can't actually use the token to revoke a rental agreement you use a court and the court looks at supporting docs like the rental agreement. At best it acts as official motorization of what the exact agreement is which isn't normally the point of dispute. Presumably those spending limits and indeed ANY limits are user configurable with a token that could itself be stolen or just used by software instead of a person on the machine in question. If the person can do it the software can after all. For example by faking keyboard and mouse input and keystroke logging the user to steal their password. We can't secure simple things now I cannot imagine how you can believe we can secure complex things with even higher stakes. Credit card transactions are tolerable because the financial sector takes in a huge chunk of the value of the economy and writes off losses out of that huge pile of money. In a decentralized situation where the only money in the kitty is users actual money how does this actually work?