6 ms·

I think the author has got it all wrong. The blockchain (and the NFT contract) don't make digital art scarce, nor do they confirm 'ownership'. It's been pointed

I think the author has got it all wrong. The blockchain (and the NFT contract) don't make digital art scarce, nor do they confirm 'ownership'. It's been pointed out many times that anyone can create an NFT on a blockchain, and just because you own an NFT with a URL of http://example.com/example.jpg http://example.com/example.jpg doesn't stop anyone else from creating another NFT with the same URL. An NFT is 'genuine' solely because the artist says it is. Anyone can make another NFT of Beeple's $69m picture, and it will be identifiable on the blockchain, but it won't be the 'original' because Beeple says it isn't. In other words, none of this is decentralised, it's all based upon real world authority. Despite all the crypto verbiage, blockchains don't add or enable anything with NFTs. The artist, or a company, could easily just maintain a database showing who 'owns' which artwork NFT, and could update it when works are re-sold. The fact that this runs right now on the blockchain is just because it provides an existing database (and a polluting, expensive and cumbersome one at that!)

seibelj 6y ago
Beeple said which one was valid originally, which is how we know which smart contract and which token ID is valid. But after Beeple dies, we will still know the correct one. The authority happened at minting, but from now on is programmed into the ledger. > Despite all the crypto verbiage, blockchains don't add or enable anything with NFTs. Wrong - blockchains add the digital scarcity component that you don't get with a centralized company running a relational database.
- joosters 6y ago
  The 'NFT company' maintaining the database would still show who 'owned' it long after Beeple is gone. Running such a company could be profitable because you could charge a small fee for the admin: right now it costs around $100 in ethereum fees to buy an NFT, so it could even work out cheaper! As a side benefit, such a company could also host the artwork, ensuring that the inevitable link rot that will otherwise afflict most tokens won't take place. Win win!
- dwb 6y ago
  Where do we go to find out which NFT is valid according to Beeple? How is this information stored, authenticated, distributed?
- jsmith45 6y ago
  A centralized company running a database absolutely can provide digital scarcity. If they could not, then why would there be a real money market around in-game items for many games (which may include some limited run or even one-of-a-kind items). Sure one can say that NFTs are uniquly identifyable. But that does not mean very much. People might claim it means the owner of the database cannot just make your unique item into something super common by creating many copies. But they still can create many nearly identical copies differing basically only the NFT token's id, which in effect would act like a serial number. I don't see this providing any scarcity that a centralized list of "offical" owners does not provide.
- manigandham 6y ago
  How can there be scarcity when anyone can copy the digital files infinitely without permission? The whole point of artificial scarcity is that something can control and prevent the replication, otherwise it's not scarce.
mettamage 6y ago
> The artist, or a company, could easily just maintain a database showing who 'owns' which artwork NFT What if hackers hack into it and scramble all the data. What if the artist happens to alter the data him/herself? I think a decentralized database is a small benefit (when we're not discussing the environmental externalities).
- mdoms 6y ago
  But with blockchain-based NFTs the artist much maintain such a database themselves anyway. Someone must maintain some kind of off-blockchain store showing which NFTs are "official".
- kevinpet 6y ago
  Not a question unique to NFTs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Physical_Impossibility_of_Death_in_the_Mind_of_Someone_Living#Decay_and_replacement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Physical_Impossibility_of_...
- lqqq 6y ago
  > What if hackers hack into it and scramble all the data. What if the artist happens to alter the data him/herself? The same questions also apply to blockchains. But if a blockchain is compromised, then who will I sue?
- deckard1 6y ago
  What if hackers hack into the artist's computer and steal their key and create new NFTs?
  - viklove 6y ago
    It won't affect the original NFT or the ledger w.r.t. who owns it.
    - superbaconman 6y ago
      And if it's reported as stolen all NFTs crafted after that date will be known to be invalid.
gnopgnip 6y ago
The artist could refuse to transfer this if they don't like you, or they don't like who you are selling it to. Or the artist could create a "copy", and sell the exact same thing to two different people and both tell them they own print 03/10. An NFT addresses both of these concerns, and if you are buying these solely for speculation these are both real concerns.
- runarberg 6y ago
  Heck, then print out a certificate on some nice paper, state that the holder of this paper is the owner of the work, sign it, and stamp into some wax on it that has radioactive isotopes mixed in that can be used to date it. You’ve got your NFT which the holder can then resell as you will. If the artist then sells another certificate claiming it is unique, sue them.
- platz 6y ago
  An NFT does not solve or prevent the artist from selling additional editions of their work. They can always create more tokens.
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    Right, but those would be different editions, and would be separate from the original edition. Even if the artist creates millions of tokens, there's probably prestige from having the first to be issued.
    - platz 6y ago
      I realize now that calling it an edition was an error on my part, because in irl an edition is a physical copy of the work itself which can be made scarce, whereas a token is just a pointer with a url to some infinitely-duplicable bits, so the edition metaphor does not hold.
  - gnopgnip 6y ago
    Yes the original artist, or anyone else could create NFTs of the same image. And in the same way the artist could come out with a limited series of 10 prints, then make more of the same prints later. But there is no way to create a forgery and duplicate your NFT. The digital provenance is all there on the blockchain. With a physical object anyone could create it later and claim it was an original.
parkaboy 6y ago
You are correct that the NFT is valuable because the artist says it is (though ideally, artists should be digitally signing their works with their private key, which is a whole other thing). What the blockchain provides, however, which is incredibly valuable in the art world (not saying this isn't vapid, btw) is provenance in a secure verifiable way that would likely extend past the lifespan of any centralized company. Showing provenance is basically a requirement for any high value work of art, which gets more and more difficult as time goes on and the work changes hands. We're talking timespans of hundreds and thousands of years. Highly recommend watching the fascinating show "Fake or Fortune" -- on Amazon Prime (at least in the US) -- to really appreciate how much people care about provenance.
- meheleventyone 6y ago
  How does blockchain provide provenance? Anyone can make an NFT for anything. Surely only the artist can actually do that and that requires the statement saying which NFT is the real one to be stored somewhere for it to work.
  - parkaboy 6y ago
    It shows how the art has changed hands and been transacted over time. That is an incredibly difficult thing to do in the physical world over hundreds or thousands of years. You are correct that at the very initial point of minting there still needs to be some proof (i.e. artist cryptographically signing the data of their work with their private key), which as I understand, is not something that's really done currently (and should be).
    - meheleventyone 6y ago
      Right but an NFT is just a link to a URL so there is no guarantee that it points to what it did originally or points to anything at all. All it guarantees is the provenance of the token, not the art itself.
      - parkaboy 6y ago
iamwil 6y ago
Hey ya, OP here. > It's been pointed out many times that anyone can create an NFT on a blockchain, and just because you own an NFT with a URL of http://example.com/example.jpg http://example.com/example.jpg doesn't stop anyone else from creating another NFT with the same URL. I addressed this under the section called "Common Objections". To sum up, even if someone else created an NFT contract with an entry pointing to the same URL, it likely wouldn't be viewed as legitimate. I'm borrowing the term legitimate from Vitalik, which showed up on HN the other day. https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html Legitimate is whatever most people accept to the be case, in that social context. It doesn't matter if you don't view either contract as legitimate, because you're not a party to the social context where different parties are transacting. It only matters to those transacting in that social context. As long as the two parties can agree what is legitimate in a social context, then that's what works for them--kinda like how people agree on a price on an exchange. As long as a buyer and seller agree on a price, it doesn't matter if anyone else on the exchange thinks it's overvalued or undervalued. The aggregated agreement on which contract is legitimate over all transactions is what we collectively agree is legit. > An NFT is 'genuine' solely because the artist says it is. Sort of. It's more like a benevolent dictator position. A creator has the power to dictate which NFT is genuine because that power is conferred by the fans. There is no leader without followers. But this power can be taken away. I'll refer to Vitalik's "Legitimate" post again. "To better understand the force that we are getting at, another important example is the epic saga of Steem and Hive. In early 2020, Justin Sun bought Steem-the-company, which is not the same thing as Steem-the-blockchain but did hold about 20% of the STEEM token supply. The community, naturally, did not trust Justin Sun. So they made an on-chain vote to formalize what they considered to be a longstanding "gentleman's agreement" that Steem-the-company's coins were held in trust for the common good of Steem-the-blockchain and should not be used to vote. With the help of coins held by exchanges, Justin Sun made a counterattack, and won control of enough delegates to unilaterally control the chain. The community saw no further in-protocol options. So instead they made a fork of Steem-the-blockchain, called Hive, and copied over all of the STEEM token balances - except those, including Justin Sun's, which participated in the attack. The lesson that we can learn from this situation is this: Steem-the-company never actually "owned" the coins. If they did, they would have had the practical ability to use, enjoy and abuse the coins in whatever way they wanted. But in reality, when the company tried to enjoy and abuse the coins in a way that the community did not like, they were successfully stopped. What's going on here is a pattern of a similar type to what we saw with the not-yet-issued Bitcoin and Ethereum coin rewards: the coins were ultimately owned not by a cryptographic key, but by some kind of social contract." This is possible because the NFT is on-chain. It'd be much harder to do if Justin also controlled the centralized database with the NFT records. Also, blockchains do add and enable things with NFTs. See the sections under interoperability in the post. Thanks for pointing this out, I'll update the post later to be more clear.

seibelj 6y ago

Beeple said which one was valid originally, which is how we know which smart contract and which token ID is valid. But after Beeple dies, we will still know the correct one. The authority happened at minting, but from now on is programmed into the ledger. > Despite all the crypto verbiage, blockchains don't add or enable anything with NFTs. Wrong - blockchains add the digital scarcity component that you don't get with a centralized company running a relational database.

joosters 6y ago
The 'NFT company' maintaining the database would still show who 'owned' it long after Beeple is gone. Running such a company could be profitable because you could charge a small fee for the admin: right now it costs around $100 in ethereum fees to buy an NFT, so it could even work out cheaper! As a side benefit, such a company could also host the artwork, ensuring that the inevitable link rot that will otherwise afflict most tokens won't take place. Win win!
dwb 6y ago
Where do we go to find out which NFT is valid according to Beeple? How is this information stored, authenticated, distributed?
jsmith45 6y ago
A centralized company running a database absolutely can provide digital scarcity. If they could not, then why would there be a real money market around in-game items for many games (which may include some limited run or even one-of-a-kind items). Sure one can say that NFTs are uniquly identifyable. But that does not mean very much. People might claim it means the owner of the database cannot just make your unique item into something super common by creating many copies. But they still can create many nearly identical copies differing basically only the NFT token's id, which in effect would act like a serial number. I don't see this providing any scarcity that a centralized list of "offical" owners does not provide.
manigandham 6y ago
How can there be scarcity when anyone can copy the digital files infinitely without permission? The whole point of artificial scarcity is that something can control and prevent the replication, otherwise it's not scarce.

mettamage 6y ago

> The artist, or a company, could easily just maintain a database showing who 'owns' which artwork NFT What if hackers hack into it and scramble all the data. What if the artist happens to alter the data him/herself? I think a decentralized database is a small benefit (when we're not discussing the environmental externalities).

mdoms 6y ago
But with blockchain-based NFTs the artist much maintain such a database themselves anyway. Someone must maintain some kind of off-blockchain store showing which NFTs are "official".
kevinpet 6y ago
Not a question unique to NFTs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Physical_Impossibility_of_Death_in_the_Mind_of_Someone_Living#Decay_and_replacement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Physical_Impossibility_of_...
lqqq 6y ago
> What if hackers hack into it and scramble all the data. What if the artist happens to alter the data him/herself? The same questions also apply to blockchains. But if a blockchain is compromised, then who will I sue?
deckard1 6y ago
What if hackers hack into the artist's computer and steal their key and create new NFTs?
- viklove 6y ago
  It won't affect the original NFT or the ledger w.r.t. who owns it.
  - superbaconman 6y ago
    And if it's reported as stolen all NFTs crafted after that date will be known to be invalid.

gnopgnip 6y ago

The artist could refuse to transfer this if they don't like you, or they don't like who you are selling it to. Or the artist could create a "copy", and sell the exact same thing to two different people and both tell them they own print 03/10. An NFT addresses both of these concerns, and if you are buying these solely for speculation these are both real concerns.

runarberg 6y ago
Heck, then print out a certificate on some nice paper, state that the holder of this paper is the owner of the work, sign it, and stamp into some wax on it that has radioactive isotopes mixed in that can be used to date it. You’ve got your NFT which the holder can then resell as you will. If the artist then sells another certificate claiming it is unique, sue them.
platz 6y ago
An NFT does not solve or prevent the artist from selling additional editions of their work. They can always create more tokens.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  Right, but those would be different editions, and would be separate from the original edition. Even if the artist creates millions of tokens, there's probably prestige from having the first to be issued.
  - platz 6y ago
    I realize now that calling it an edition was an error on my part, because in irl an edition is a physical copy of the work itself which can be made scarce, whereas a token is just a pointer with a url to some infinitely-duplicable bits, so the edition metaphor does not hold.
- gnopgnip 6y ago
  Yes the original artist, or anyone else could create NFTs of the same image. And in the same way the artist could come out with a limited series of 10 prints, then make more of the same prints later. But there is no way to create a forgery and duplicate your NFT. The digital provenance is all there on the blockchain. With a physical object anyone could create it later and claim it was an original.

parkaboy 6y ago

You are correct that the NFT is valuable because the artist says it is (though ideally, artists should be digitally signing their works with their private key, which is a whole other thing). What the blockchain provides, however, which is incredibly valuable in the art world (not saying this isn't vapid, btw) is provenance in a secure verifiable way that would likely extend past the lifespan of any centralized company. Showing provenance is basically a requirement for any high value work of art, which gets more and more difficult as time goes on and the work changes hands. We're talking timespans of hundreds and thousands of years. Highly recommend watching the fascinating show "Fake or Fortune" -- on Amazon Prime (at least in the US) -- to really appreciate how much people care about provenance.

meheleventyone 6y ago
How does blockchain provide provenance? Anyone can make an NFT for anything. Surely only the artist can actually do that and that requires the statement saying which NFT is the real one to be stored somewhere for it to work.
- parkaboy 6y ago
  It shows how the art has changed hands and been transacted over time. That is an incredibly difficult thing to do in the physical world over hundreds or thousands of years. You are correct that at the very initial point of minting there still needs to be some proof (i.e. artist cryptographically signing the data of their work with their private key), which as I understand, is not something that's really done currently (and should be).
  - meheleventyone 6y ago
    Right but an NFT is just a link to a URL so there is no guarantee that it points to what it did originally or points to anything at all. All it guarantees is the provenance of the token, not the art itself.
    - parkaboy 6y ago

iamwil 6y ago

Hey ya, OP here. > It's been pointed out many times that anyone can create an NFT on a blockchain, and just because you own an NFT with a URL of http://example.com/example.jpg http://example.com/example.jpg doesn't stop anyone else from creating another NFT with the same URL. I addressed this under the section called "Common Objections". To sum up, even if someone else created an NFT contract with an entry pointing to the same URL, it likely wouldn't be viewed as legitimate. I'm borrowing the term legitimate from Vitalik, which showed up on HN the other day. https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/03/23/legitimacy.html Legitimate is whatever most people accept to the be case, in that social context. It doesn't matter if you don't view either contract as legitimate, because you're not a party to the social context where different parties are transacting. It only matters to those transacting in that social context. As long as the two parties can agree what is legitimate in a social context, then that's what works for them--kinda like how people agree on a price on an exchange. As long as a buyer and seller agree on a price, it doesn't matter if anyone else on the exchange thinks it's overvalued or undervalued. The aggregated agreement on which contract is legitimate over all transactions is what we collectively agree is legit. > An NFT is 'genuine' solely because the artist says it is. Sort of. It's more like a benevolent dictator position. A creator has the power to dictate which NFT is genuine because that power is conferred by the fans. There is no leader without followers. But this power can be taken away. I'll refer to Vitalik's "Legitimate" post again. "To better understand the force that we are getting at, another important example is the epic saga of Steem and Hive. In early 2020, Justin Sun bought Steem-the-company, which is not the same thing as Steem-the-blockchain but did hold about 20% of the STEEM token supply. The community, naturally, did not trust Justin Sun. So they made an on-chain vote to formalize what they considered to be a longstanding "gentleman's agreement" that Steem-the-company's coins were held in trust for the common good of Steem-the-blockchain and should not be used to vote. With the help of coins held by exchanges, Justin Sun made a counterattack, and won control of enough delegates to unilaterally control the chain. The community saw no further in-protocol options. So instead they made a fork of Steem-the-blockchain, called Hive, and copied over all of the STEEM token balances - except those, including Justin Sun's, which participated in the attack. The lesson that we can learn from this situation is this: Steem-the-company never actually "owned" the coins. If they did, they would have had the practical ability to use, enjoy and abuse the coins in whatever way they wanted. But in reality, when the company tried to enjoy and abuse the coins in a way that the community did not like, they were successfully stopped. What's going on here is a pattern of a similar type to what we saw with the not-yet-issued Bitcoin and Ethereum coin rewards: the coins were ultimately owned not by a cryptographic key, but by some kind of social contract." This is possible because the NFT is on-chain. It'd be much harder to do if Justin also controlled the centralized database with the NFT records. Also, blockchains do add and enable things with NFTs. See the sections under interoperability in the post. Thanks for pointing this out, I'll update the post later to be more clear.