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Are you an art collector? Because I'm getting real tired of criticisms of NFTs that actually apply quite generally to the entire art collection space. I am no

by px43 5y ago

Are you an art collector? Because I'm getting real tired of criticisms of NFTs that actually apply quite generally to the entire art collection space. I am not an art collector, but as I understand it, the most important thing that they care about, even before aesthetics of an art piece, is *provenance*. That is, who created it, and who has owned it since it was created. NFTs provide a nearly unforgeable cryptographic record of both of those things, and are therefore a perfect fit for this market.

alfiedotwtf 5y ago
> That is, who created it, and who has owned it since it was created. How do you link the provenance of a piece of art to an NFT? i.e what's the difference between an artist agreeing to the NFT being minted and a grifter creating an NFT on a marketplace that's trying to link it to the artist's work?
- nocommentguy 5y ago
  The difference would be the artist’s agreement you just mentioned
  - ForHackernews 5y ago
    Yeah, but some bytes on a blockchain somewhere prove nothing about that.
    - nocommentguy 5y ago
      So? Did anyone claim that it does? How is provenance for physical works tracked? It’s just using a database with a nice composable public API. People are excited because you can use it in the context of other smart contracts, do it without permission from some art “authority”, and so on.
    - meowface 5y ago
      Right; impostor NFTs are rampant, unfortunately. I imagine solutions to mitigate this will become more common on the big platforms at some point. (I briefly considered maybe trying to work on one.) An NFT listing could contain some kind of publicly verifiable authenticity certificate issued by a separate (semi-?)decentralized service that just does things like authenticity verification. For example, they could perhaps have a procedure where an NFT minter (such as an artist) has to, among other things, sign and post some message across at least 5 social media accounts confirming they created a token with that contract address and token ID. If after ~10 days the claimed individual re-affirms the signed messages and no issues are found (e.g. account compromise), the certificate could be validated and the NFT could be marked as verifiably attributable. Theoretically, an NFT smart contract could also maybe even try to bake part of it into the logic and NFT metadata, rather than it being just at the platform level. We're really still in the early Wild West days of smart contracts, dapps, tokens, etc. It probably will feel a bit less sketchy in a few years. Maybe.
    - twox2 5y ago
      The address that it's minted from is well documented on the blockchain.
      - hiq 5y ago
        You still have to link this address to the external entity you're trying to represent.
        twox2 5y ago
        Sure, but if it's an artist you're trying to establish provenance for it's pretty easy. Most artists who are coveted mint through curated platforms. Those who don't might mint directly on opensea where they will have verified accounts tied to their address. It's pretty easy to do this kind of due diligence.
meowface 5y ago
Isn't one other difference the fact that when you own a physical art piece, you have the option of hanging the original on your wall and claiming the exclusive right to see or move it whenever and however you want? Especially if you explicitly don't want other people to see it, for whatever reason, and if you particularly appreciate being able to stand an inch away from it without a security guard yelling at you. With most NFT implementations, everything you're getting is 100% public and can be bit-for-bit seen, downloaded, and redistributed by anyone. (There's always the possibility of off-chain solutions that grant access to exclusive content only if you prove you own the token, and they're built into some platforms. But these seem to mostly be novelties at this point, and with current solutions there's always the risk of the provider getting hacked and all the exclusive content leaking, etc.) This is why it's hard to equate piracy with theft and NFT ownership with physical painting ownership, I think. You can probably equate the speculative parts of art collection to it, where the collector (or "investor") may never actually care about the work intrinsically and may never be closer than 1000 miles away from it because they view it solely as a financial asset. No idea what % of the current physical art collection market is like that, though.
- stinkytaco 5y ago
  > You can probably equate the speculative parts of art collection to it, where the collector (or "investor") may never actually care about the work intrinsically and may never be closer than 1000 miles away from it because they view it solely as a financial asset. Even this, I assume, is based on the assumption that someone, someday will want to do what you describe (hang it on a wall and have exclusive access) and pay you for the privilege to do so. Right now, that isn't really possible with an NFT.
  - meowface 5y ago
    Maybe. Or maybe there are enough pure speculators where some art really does just get passed around for a century to different investors despite remaining in some storage facility the whole time? Don't know anything about art collection, so I have no clue.
- rjknight 5y ago
jcpham2 5y ago
> "but as I understand it, the most important thing that they care about, even before aesthetics of an art piece, is provenance" early stage Physical BTC collector here to say yep, chain of custody is super important for collectibles in general. Provenance is king.
lottin 5y ago
The blockchain only tracks ownership of the NFT itself. It doesn't keep track of who owns the art piece. As such it doesn't provide a record of the "provenance" of the art piece at all.
hiccuphippo 5y ago
Maybe they should stop advertising NFTs to the average people and only focus on the art-collection market. I'm real tired of seeing NFTs everywhere like it's the next stock market panacea.

by px43 5y ago

alfiedotwtf 5y ago

> That is, who created it, and who has owned it since it was created. How do you link the provenance of a piece of art to an NFT? i.e what's the difference between an artist agreeing to the NFT being minted and a grifter creating an NFT on a marketplace that's trying to link it to the artist's work?

nocommentguy 5y ago
The difference would be the artist’s agreement you just mentioned
- ForHackernews 5y ago
  Yeah, but some bytes on a blockchain somewhere prove nothing about that.
  - nocommentguy 5y ago
    So? Did anyone claim that it does? How is provenance for physical works tracked? It’s just using a database with a nice composable public API. People are excited because you can use it in the context of other smart contracts, do it without permission from some art “authority”, and so on.
  - meowface 5y ago
    Right; impostor NFTs are rampant, unfortunately. I imagine solutions to mitigate this will become more common on the big platforms at some point. (I briefly considered maybe trying to work on one.) An NFT listing could contain some kind of publicly verifiable authenticity certificate issued by a separate (semi-?)decentralized service that just does things like authenticity verification. For example, they could perhaps have a procedure where an NFT minter (such as an artist) has to, among other things, sign and post some message across at least 5 social media accounts confirming they created a token with that contract address and token ID. If after ~10 days the claimed individual re-affirms the signed messages and no issues are found (e.g. account compromise), the certificate could be validated and the NFT could be marked as verifiably attributable. Theoretically, an NFT smart contract could also maybe even try to bake part of it into the logic and NFT metadata, rather than it being just at the platform level. We're really still in the early Wild West days of smart contracts, dapps, tokens, etc. It probably will feel a bit less sketchy in a few years. Maybe.
  - twox2 5y ago
    The address that it's minted from is well documented on the blockchain.
    - hiq 5y ago
      You still have to link this address to the external entity you're trying to represent.
      - twox2 5y ago
        Sure, but if it's an artist you're trying to establish provenance for it's pretty easy. Most artists who are coveted mint through curated platforms. Those who don't might mint directly on opensea where they will have verified accounts tied to their address. It's pretty easy to do this kind of due diligence.

meowface 5y ago

Isn't one other difference the fact that when you own a physical art piece, you have the option of hanging the original on your wall and claiming the exclusive right to see or move it whenever and however you want? Especially if you explicitly don't want other people to see it, for whatever reason, and if you particularly appreciate being able to stand an inch away from it without a security guard yelling at you. With most NFT implementations, everything you're getting is 100% public and can be bit-for-bit seen, downloaded, and redistributed by anyone. (There's always the possibility of off-chain solutions that grant access to exclusive content only if you prove you own the token, and they're built into some platforms. But these seem to mostly be novelties at this point, and with current solutions there's always the risk of the provider getting hacked and all the exclusive content leaking, etc.) This is why it's hard to equate piracy with theft and NFT ownership with physical painting ownership, I think. You can probably equate the speculative parts of art collection to it, where the collector (or "investor") may never actually care about the work intrinsically and may never be closer than 1000 miles away from it because they view it solely as a financial asset. No idea what % of the current physical art collection market is like that, though.

stinkytaco 5y ago
> You can probably equate the speculative parts of art collection to it, where the collector (or "investor") may never actually care about the work intrinsically and may never be closer than 1000 miles away from it because they view it solely as a financial asset. Even this, I assume, is based on the assumption that someone, someday will want to do what you describe (hang it on a wall and have exclusive access) and pay you for the privilege to do so. Right now, that isn't really possible with an NFT.
- meowface 5y ago
  Maybe. Or maybe there are enough pure speculators where some art really does just get passed around for a century to different investors despite remaining in some storage facility the whole time? Don't know anything about art collection, so I have no clue.
rjknight 5y ago

jcpham2 5y ago

> "but as I understand it, the most important thing that they care about, even before aesthetics of an art piece, is provenance" early stage Physical BTC collector here to say yep, chain of custody is super important for collectibles in general. Provenance is king.

lottin 5y ago

The blockchain only tracks ownership of the NFT itself. It doesn't keep track of who owns the art piece. As such it doesn't provide a record of the "provenance" of the art piece at all.

hiccuphippo 5y ago

Maybe they should stop advertising NFTs to the average people and only focus on the art-collection market. I'm real tired of seeing NFTs everywhere like it's the next stock market panacea.