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We're absolutely dying to make the NFT concept revolutionary. But most of the uses so far are really pedestrian and don't actually require a decentralized block

We're absolutely dying to make the NFT concept revolutionary. But most of the uses so far are really pedestrian and don't actually require a decentralized blockchain with expensive and immensely wasteful transactions. They could just be hosted by centralized e-commerce platforms, which allow authors of digital assets to enroll. I'm not saying that Everydays or CryptoPunk #7804 NFTs aren't valuable. They probably are, as historic firsts. But I don't think they prove the existence of a long tail of long-term value of similar tokens. In my opinion, an NFT actually becomes useful when it represents a right that is decoupled from one specific asset. More like a tradable auth role. In effect, a tradable identity. That would actually merit decentralization, such that any provider that respects that role could use it to authorize access to some asset or experience. Even still, this could be centralized, but I think it's a step closer to enabling something truly novel, rather than simply trying to reproduce mutual exclusive ownership of a physical object.

svachalek 6y ago
I think the most interesting use of NFTs is for ticketing. It allows someone to transfer a ticket to another person in a way that the buyer can verify it's valid, the seller can't also sell it to someone else, and neither needs permission from the original ticketing authority. Particularly as a token of online membership or authority itself. I think the whole NFT for art thing is probably here to stay but not likely to ever be important to the vast majority of the public that never went shopping in real world art galleries.
- acjohnson55 6y ago
  But if ticket vendors wanted their tickets to be easily tradable, they could make that happen. They clearly aren't that interested, though. I think they see it as a threat to their control of the primary market
  - Traster 6y ago
    Yeah the idea that this was previously a technical limitation and not a commercial one is absurd. Ticketmaster could’ve put a “transfer ticket” button in their system a long time ago - but venues don’t want a 3rd party reselling tickets.
- nonameiguess 6y ago
  This specifically requires buy-in from whatever venue you're trying to gain access to with the ticket, which remains an authority. As long as they have some other means of associating an identity with the original purchase, they can deny entrance to anyone else possessing the ticket. In other words, you absolutely need permission from the original ticketing authority. In practice, this would work for any venue that sells tickets to anonymous buyers, but most sufficiently in-demand events at least pay some lip service to trying not to do that to avoid getting all of their tickets purchased by professional scalping operations using bots.
iamwil 6y ago
> an NFT actually becomes useful when it represents a right that is decoupled from one specific asset. More like a tradable auth role. We do have something like that already, the Ethereum Name Service, or ENS. It's basically DNS for Ethereum wallet addresses. Because wallets represent an owner, they're like an identity. ENS names look like `acjohnson.eth`, and they're NFTs. That means they're also tradable on exchanges and marketplaces. Unlike DNS, the entire ENS lookup and auction mechanism is on-chain. That means, there's no single point of failure, and given the contracts were written right (still hard to do), shuts down specific vector of attacks.
- acjohnson55 6y ago
  Thanks for that pointer! I had seen these around, but hadn't looked into it. I guess that kind of makes the point that tradable identity already exists in the form of DNS. Although, in that case, it's the position of the name itself in the namespace that is the commodity of interest, not so much what its ownership provides access to. What I have in mind is something really similar, but the commodity is effectively anonymous, but provides secure and unique access to some asset. Also, DNS and ENS names are both rented, rather than owned.

svachalek 6y ago

I think the most interesting use of NFTs is for ticketing. It allows someone to transfer a ticket to another person in a way that the buyer can verify it's valid, the seller can't also sell it to someone else, and neither needs permission from the original ticketing authority. Particularly as a token of online membership or authority itself. I think the whole NFT for art thing is probably here to stay but not likely to ever be important to the vast majority of the public that never went shopping in real world art galleries.

acjohnson55 6y ago
But if ticket vendors wanted their tickets to be easily tradable, they could make that happen. They clearly aren't that interested, though. I think they see it as a threat to their control of the primary market
- Traster 6y ago
  Yeah the idea that this was previously a technical limitation and not a commercial one is absurd. Ticketmaster could’ve put a “transfer ticket” button in their system a long time ago - but venues don’t want a 3rd party reselling tickets.
nonameiguess 6y ago
This specifically requires buy-in from whatever venue you're trying to gain access to with the ticket, which remains an authority. As long as they have some other means of associating an identity with the original purchase, they can deny entrance to anyone else possessing the ticket. In other words, you absolutely need permission from the original ticketing authority. In practice, this would work for any venue that sells tickets to anonymous buyers, but most sufficiently in-demand events at least pay some lip service to trying not to do that to avoid getting all of their tickets purchased by professional scalping operations using bots.

iamwil 6y ago

> an NFT actually becomes useful when it represents a right that is decoupled from one specific asset. More like a tradable auth role. We do have something like that already, the Ethereum Name Service, or ENS. It's basically DNS for Ethereum wallet addresses. Because wallets represent an owner, they're like an identity. ENS names look like `acjohnson.eth`, and they're NFTs. That means they're also tradable on exchanges and marketplaces. Unlike DNS, the entire ENS lookup and auction mechanism is on-chain. That means, there's no single point of failure, and given the contracts were written right (still hard to do), shuts down specific vector of attacks.

acjohnson55 6y ago
Thanks for that pointer! I had seen these around, but hadn't looked into it. I guess that kind of makes the point that tradable identity already exists in the form of DNS. Although, in that case, it's the position of the name itself in the namespace that is the commodity of interest, not so much what its ownership provides access to. What I have in mind is something really similar, but the commodity is effectively anonymous, but provides secure and unique access to some asset. Also, DNS and ENS names are both rented, rather than owned.