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Precisely, there's zero linkage to the physical world from an NFT unless it's recognized and enforced by some sort of central authority. At which point it's ord

by ptmcc 6y ago

Precisely, there's zero linkage to the physical world from an NFT unless it's recognized and enforced by some sort of central authority. At which point it's orders of magnitude easier and more efficient to use a centralized database. I did some contract work with an Ethereum NFT startup several years ago (now defunct), before the recent hype, and the only "value" proposition was that they were selling "genuine" NFTs blessed by particular large consumer brands. Behind the scenes it was all a centralized SQL server that only touched the blockchain when you exported your tokens to a private wallet because that was slow and expensive -- and turns out almost no one actually cared about that part. As long as you left your tokens in custodianship of the company, the company technically owned them as far as the blockchain was concerned. And then even for digital goods where the concept of the "original" is meaningless when exact digital duplicates are zero-cost, just... who cares? What do even own, and why should anyone else respect your "ownership"? All this NFT noise just feels like those scams where you "buy" a plot of land on the moon or name a star. No authoritative body in the world recognizes that claim, and if we ever start colonizing the moon you can be sure as shit that no entity is going to respect your "ownership". It all feels very regressive in the face of decades of efforts of open source and work to liberalize things like copyrights and fair use in software and digital goods and services. Not to mention that it is an environmental disaster.

randomopining 6y ago
Yeah lol I agree. But I thought I might be dumb. Someone I follow who is always right is big on them. Their argument is that people buy expensive and rare shit just to have it and project superiority. Thus “owning” the HD Clíp of Lebron slam dunking is like cred they are willing to pay USD for.
chrisco255 6y ago
> there's zero linkage to the physical world from an NFT unless it's recognized and enforced by some sort of central authority Not at all the case. All the artist needs to do is publicly declare that they listed their art on an NFT platform, such as Rarible or Zora or what have you and that's enough. Direct communication with the fans is all that's needed, no central authority required. Not all NFTs are created equal. Some have all the data necessary to reproduce the work of art embedded right on the blockchain, such as Euler Beats: https://eulerbeats.com/ https://eulerbeats.com/ . Others use IPFS hashes and embed the hashes on the NFT itself, so all you need is a single server in the world serving up that file and you can validate authenticity. An NFT is sort of like a signed, autographed copy of something. Sure, I can have a reproduction of the Mona Lisa printed for about $50, but can I have the original canvas that Da Vinci himself painted on for $50? Of course not. When I was a kid, I liked to collect baseball cards. I knew a mint condition Mickey Mantle rookie card was exceedingly rare and valuable. A signed and rare card can go for tens of thousands or more dollars. Signed baseballs or gloves can also have additional value compared to the underlying physical item. What is it about the signature that changes the value of something? You know that the player themselves interacted with that item. That is the case with NFTs. They won't be going away. You can try to mint a copy of an NFT, but it will always have a later timestamp than the first one, and it won't have the original block number, so it's quite easy to root out counterfeits.
- notJim 6y ago
  > All the artist needs to do is publicly declare that they listed their art on an NFT platform, such as Rarible or Zora or what have you and that's enough. What happens if the artist declines to participate in the NFT marketplace, or (gasp!) even in social media altogether? In practice, one of the things that can happen is someone impersonates them, steals their art, mints tokens for it, and the artist gets nothing.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    That's a risk in the real world too. It's called forgery, it's an ancient practice. There's a concept called providence for which the art world uses experts to determine authenticity. But in the meantime, if an artist, such as Beeple, who is known publicly and has developed a reputation associated with an Ethereum address, has their art encoded on the blockchain, it's as as good of a title transfer record as any that exist in the physical world, if not better.

by ptmcc 6y ago

randomopining 6y ago

Yeah lol I agree. But I thought I might be dumb. Someone I follow who is always right is big on them. Their argument is that people buy expensive and rare shit just to have it and project superiority. Thus “owning” the HD Clíp of Lebron slam dunking is like cred they are willing to pay USD for.

chrisco255 6y ago

> there's zero linkage to the physical world from an NFT unless it's recognized and enforced by some sort of central authority Not at all the case. All the artist needs to do is publicly declare that they listed their art on an NFT platform, such as Rarible or Zora or what have you and that's enough. Direct communication with the fans is all that's needed, no central authority required. Not all NFTs are created equal. Some have all the data necessary to reproduce the work of art embedded right on the blockchain, such as Euler Beats: https://eulerbeats.com/ https://eulerbeats.com/ . Others use IPFS hashes and embed the hashes on the NFT itself, so all you need is a single server in the world serving up that file and you can validate authenticity. An NFT is sort of like a signed, autographed copy of something. Sure, I can have a reproduction of the Mona Lisa printed for about $50, but can I have the original canvas that Da Vinci himself painted on for $50? Of course not. When I was a kid, I liked to collect baseball cards. I knew a mint condition Mickey Mantle rookie card was exceedingly rare and valuable. A signed and rare card can go for tens of thousands or more dollars. Signed baseballs or gloves can also have additional value compared to the underlying physical item. What is it about the signature that changes the value of something? You know that the player themselves interacted with that item. That is the case with NFTs. They won't be going away. You can try to mint a copy of an NFT, but it will always have a later timestamp than the first one, and it won't have the original block number, so it's quite easy to root out counterfeits.

notJim 6y ago
> All the artist needs to do is publicly declare that they listed their art on an NFT platform, such as Rarible or Zora or what have you and that's enough. What happens if the artist declines to participate in the NFT marketplace, or (gasp!) even in social media altogether? In practice, one of the things that can happen is someone impersonates them, steals their art, mints tokens for it, and the artist gets nothing.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  That's a risk in the real world too. It's called forgery, it's an ancient practice. There's a concept called providence for which the art world uses experts to determine authenticity. But in the meantime, if an artist, such as Beeple, who is known publicly and has developed a reputation associated with an Ethereum address, has their art encoded on the blockchain, it's as as good of a title transfer record as any that exist in the physical world, if not better.