5 ms·

The hype around NFTs currently is just that: hype _BUT_ that doesn't mean that there is no value in an NFT. Remember, NFTs are non-fungible digital signatures a

by tsujp 5y ago

The hype around NFTs currently is just that: hype _BUT_ that doesn't mean that there is no value in an NFT. Remember, NFTs are non-fungible digital signatures and there is value in something being provable and forcibly unique. The easiest non-hype example I can think of right now is identity. If you literally own your identity then you're in control. Anyway, the problem here is that apparently, via this hack, the ERC721 standard (which is implemented via a contract) is not as secure as we thought. That's fine, it can be improved, and I hope it will. Art NFTs being hyped to the point where people invest tens of thousands or millions in something they don't know about is a layer on-top of this which is regrettable. I'd like to see someone present an example of the first implementation of a standard being secure for all time though.

rspeele 5y ago
> The easiest non-hype example I can think of right now is identity. If you literally own your identity then you're in control. Can you explain what you mean by this? I can understand using public/private key cryptography for identity. That makes a lot of sense, although there would be challenges around what to do when somebody loses or leaks their private key. Would likely require a central authority that can authenticate a fallback form of identification (old school birth certificate/driver's license/passport/whatever) and certify a new set of keys for the person's identity. But how would NFTs/blockchain become involved? I wouldn't ever want to transfer my identity to somebody else.
- tsujp 5y ago
  You can already transfer your identity to someone else in your public/private key example. If you accidentally expose your private key it's no longer your identity. You can "transfer" this identity to your new machine by copying it across etc. NFTs are just a standard, there's no rule requiring you monetise and trade them. Say your wallet seed (which is used to derive your private keys) gets compromised, you'd want to transfer your NFT to yourself in a new wallet. A typical use-case for burning (irrevocably destroying) tokens is to send them to specific burner contracts or addresses. MakerDAO does this with fees burned in MKR. You could "burn" your identity NFT by sending it to the burner contract if you need it changes or re-issued.
  - rspeele 5y ago
    Oh, I understand that accidentally exposing my private key is a problem in my system, too. It's definitely not an advantage of my public/private key example, over NFTs. What I don't get is what the advantage is in the other direction: what does the NFT ecosystem give me, that a centralized database of public keys for identities doesn't? > Say your wallet seed (which is used to derive your private keys) gets compromised, you'd want to transfer your NFT to yourself in a new wallet. Unless the person who compromised my wallet seed does exactly that, before I find out about the compromise. At that point, there must be some way for me to get my identity back, because no system of identity can function when the answer to "my identity was lost" is "you have no identity now sorry" and the answer to "my identity was stolen" is "they're legally you now sorry". So there must be some authority I can contact and show real-world proof that... I'm still me. And that authority's word must be treated by the ecosystem as more meaningful than the now-irrecoverable NFT-identity that's held in my attacker's new wallet. The question is, if this authority exists, what point is there to the blockchain or NFT-standard part of it? Since this authority is trusted more highly than the blockchain anyway, what do we lose by just trusting the authority to maintain a basic-bitch database of public key : identity pairs? It can still be publicly mirrored and distributed, as long as it has $trusted_authority's signature and a recent timestamp it's assumed good.
alephu5 5y ago
> The easiest non-hype example I can think of right now is identity. If you literally own your identity then you're in control. You can do this using government issued certificates. In Spain you send them a CSR and then attend an appointment with a clerk who checks your passport/national ID. Afterwards they send out the certificate. It's used for online authentication and signing scanned documents. Overall a good system. You don't have the ability to trade them like NFTs, but that makes no sense for identities.
- tsujp 5y ago
  That does sound like a good system indeed. By extension imagine if you could login to anything using that certificate if it was digital. The problem with digital data is that it can be copied arbitrarily. NFTs prove authenticity of some data, so now your identity can be provably yours, only a single one can exist, and you can use it to login to things, sign a message that is provably from you etc. Yes NFTs are tradable because they are tokens but you don't have to, and I'd argue an extension to ERC721 which limits NFTs to only a single issuance with a single token would make such a system reasonbly whole.
  - boxed 5y ago
    We have a system called BankID in Sweden where you can do exactly that. And sign stuff and it has the same legal status as a signature on paper. > The problem with digital data is that it can be copied arbitrarily. And NFTs aren't digital data? I don't understand the distinction.

by tsujp 5y ago

rspeele 5y ago

> The easiest non-hype example I can think of right now is identity. If you literally own your identity then you're in control. Can you explain what you mean by this? I can understand using public/private key cryptography for identity. That makes a lot of sense, although there would be challenges around what to do when somebody loses or leaks their private key. Would likely require a central authority that can authenticate a fallback form of identification (old school birth certificate/driver's license/passport/whatever) and certify a new set of keys for the person's identity. But how would NFTs/blockchain become involved? I wouldn't ever want to transfer my identity to somebody else.

tsujp 5y ago
You can already transfer your identity to someone else in your public/private key example. If you accidentally expose your private key it's no longer your identity. You can "transfer" this identity to your new machine by copying it across etc. NFTs are just a standard, there's no rule requiring you monetise and trade them. Say your wallet seed (which is used to derive your private keys) gets compromised, you'd want to transfer your NFT to yourself in a new wallet. A typical use-case for burning (irrevocably destroying) tokens is to send them to specific burner contracts or addresses. MakerDAO does this with fees burned in MKR. You could "burn" your identity NFT by sending it to the burner contract if you need it changes or re-issued.
- rspeele 5y ago
  Oh, I understand that accidentally exposing my private key is a problem in my system, too. It's definitely not an advantage of my public/private key example, over NFTs. What I don't get is what the advantage is in the other direction: what does the NFT ecosystem give me, that a centralized database of public keys for identities doesn't? > Say your wallet seed (which is used to derive your private keys) gets compromised, you'd want to transfer your NFT to yourself in a new wallet. Unless the person who compromised my wallet seed does exactly that, before I find out about the compromise. At that point, there must be some way for me to get my identity back, because no system of identity can function when the answer to "my identity was lost" is "you have no identity now sorry" and the answer to "my identity was stolen" is "they're legally you now sorry". So there must be some authority I can contact and show real-world proof that... I'm still me. And that authority's word must be treated by the ecosystem as more meaningful than the now-irrecoverable NFT-identity that's held in my attacker's new wallet. The question is, if this authority exists, what point is there to the blockchain or NFT-standard part of it? Since this authority is trusted more highly than the blockchain anyway, what do we lose by just trusting the authority to maintain a basic-bitch database of public key : identity pairs? It can still be publicly mirrored and distributed, as long as it has $trusted_authority's signature and a recent timestamp it's assumed good.

alephu5 5y ago

> The easiest non-hype example I can think of right now is identity. If you literally own your identity then you're in control. You can do this using government issued certificates. In Spain you send them a CSR and then attend an appointment with a clerk who checks your passport/national ID. Afterwards they send out the certificate. It's used for online authentication and signing scanned documents. Overall a good system. You don't have the ability to trade them like NFTs, but that makes no sense for identities.

tsujp 5y ago
That does sound like a good system indeed. By extension imagine if you could login to anything using that certificate if it was digital. The problem with digital data is that it can be copied arbitrarily. NFTs prove authenticity of some data, so now your identity can be provably yours, only a single one can exist, and you can use it to login to things, sign a message that is provably from you etc. Yes NFTs are tradable because they are tokens but you don't have to, and I'd argue an extension to ERC721 which limits NFTs to only a single issuance with a single token would make such a system reasonbly whole.
- boxed 5y ago
  We have a system called BankID in Sweden where you can do exactly that. And sign stuff and it has the same legal status as a signature on paper. > The problem with digital data is that it can be copied arbitrarily. And NFTs aren't digital data? I don't understand the distinction.