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Can someone explain to me why I’d want an “NFT”? What’s the actual point of it? It can be used to prove some “ownership” of a digital work - but when no one car

Can someone explain to me why I’d want an “NFT”? What’s the actual point of it? It can be used to prove some “ownership” of a digital work - but when no one cares about that ownership, how can it actually have value? If I change a byte in the work, it’s also a completely distinct work of art meaning there is no problem creating thousands of copies with thousands of owners? I might be a boomer but I just don’t get it.

gtvwill 5y ago
E.g. buy house. Get deed saying you own house. Instead of getting deed as a piece of paper and your name in town books you get a NFT and its stores details on a blockchain ledger.its just a new medium of storing data securely. What you use it for is upto you.
- alkonaut 5y ago
  This just feels like traditional blockchain tech (putting the city ledger with all deeds in a cryptographic ledger)? That one I can understand. Non-distributed but public ledgers is one of few good use cases I can see for blockchains. My question was specifically “why NFTs” not “why cryptographic ledgers”.
jlokier 5y ago
I don't get it either. The appeal isn't there for me. Not that I can afford any of the headline NFT prices anyway. But we might as well look at the analogy with the art market - why do some people place high value on some art? Part of the answer is "authenticity" and "provenace". These are about who created the artifact. Were they the actual creator of the artifact being stamped, or are they some random trying to cash in on someone else's work? If they weren't the original creator, but paid for the artifact via transaction from the creator, that's respected too. Technically, sure, you can change a byte in an NFT and get a new one. But it's obvious to everyone doing diligence that you're claiming ownership of, and perhaps selling, a derivative. After all there is a proof of the original out there, which differs by one byte and was stamped before yours. If there aren't the tools to detect this sort of thing yet, there will be soon. So don't think you can re-encode the original to work around this. SImilarity detection is a thing. People, well some people anyway, will place a much higher value on an original compared with an altered derivative when both are available. They also place much higher value on something that can be traced to its creator, than something created by one person where another tries to claim it. Perhaps there's an instinct at play here that causes (some) people to direct resources vaguely in the direction of artifact creators they respect, and to the halo of people around them.
- alkonaut 5y ago
  But does NFTs prove ownership? I can make an NFT of anyone’s art.
  - thrill 5y ago
    Not signed by the artist you can't.
    - alkonaut 5y ago
      Is that a thing? My Twitter timeline is full of artist outrage over people making NFTs from their art.
Kiro 5y ago
You don't need to change any bytes. The artwork is not in the blockchain. It's just a JSON file with metadata and a link to a hosted image. So it's even more pointless than you imagine.

gtvwill 5y ago

E.g. buy house. Get deed saying you own house. Instead of getting deed as a piece of paper and your name in town books you get a NFT and its stores details on a blockchain ledger.its just a new medium of storing data securely. What you use it for is upto you.

alkonaut 5y ago
This just feels like traditional blockchain tech (putting the city ledger with all deeds in a cryptographic ledger)? That one I can understand. Non-distributed but public ledgers is one of few good use cases I can see for blockchains. My question was specifically “why NFTs” not “why cryptographic ledgers”.

jlokier 5y ago

I don't get it either. The appeal isn't there for me. Not that I can afford any of the headline NFT prices anyway. But we might as well look at the analogy with the art market - why do some people place high value on some art? Part of the answer is "authenticity" and "provenace". These are about who created the artifact. Were they the actual creator of the artifact being stamped, or are they some random trying to cash in on someone else's work? If they weren't the original creator, but paid for the artifact via transaction from the creator, that's respected too. Technically, sure, you can change a byte in an NFT and get a new one. But it's obvious to everyone doing diligence that you're claiming ownership of, and perhaps selling, a derivative. After all there is a proof of the original out there, which differs by one byte and was stamped before yours. If there aren't the tools to detect this sort of thing yet, there will be soon. So don't think you can re-encode the original to work around this. SImilarity detection is a thing. People, well some people anyway, will place a much higher value on an original compared with an altered derivative when both are available. They also place much higher value on something that can be traced to its creator, than something created by one person where another tries to claim it. Perhaps there's an instinct at play here that causes (some) people to direct resources vaguely in the direction of artifact creators they respect, and to the halo of people around them.

alkonaut 5y ago
But does NFTs prove ownership? I can make an NFT of anyone’s art.
- thrill 5y ago
  Not signed by the artist you can't.
  - alkonaut 5y ago
    Is that a thing? My Twitter timeline is full of artist outrage over people making NFTs from their art.

Kiro 5y ago

You don't need to change any bytes. The artwork is not in the blockchain. It's just a JSON file with metadata and a link to a hosted image. So it's even more pointless than you imagine.