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DNS can be thought of as an early form of NFT - something that is purely digital and has a unique owner. Currently, NFT is about collecting and speculation, wh

DNS can be thought of as an early form of NFT - something that is purely digital and has a unique owner. Currently, NFT is about collecting and speculation, which is currently the exact same use case as many collectibles like baseball cards. I believe the space will evolve to allow NFT holders to have additional rights and utility, such as copyright and ability to earn royalties from licensing the art. NFT is simply provable ownership of a digital asset. What that asset actually is and what it provides is an experimental and evolving space. I think HNers need to think less narrow about this.

organsnyder 5y ago
> NFT is simply provable ownership of a digital asset. How is this any different from traditional copyright ownership? Assigning the rights for a piece of IP has been commonplace for well over a century.
- seibelj 5y ago
  This goes down the rabbit hole of crypto enthusiasm, which HN as a collective despises. But blockchain allows the asset to be verified quickly, impossible to counterfeit (the asset itself, not the NFT image), and immediately makes it available to the entire ecosystem of dapps running on the blockchain rails. I believe NFTs will become a larger component of DeFi, enabling their use as collateral. But a large number of games will also integrate with NFTs and enable a larger ecosystem of assets to move freely between them.
  - organsnyder 5y ago
    > This goes down the rabbit hole of crypto enthusiasm, which HN as a collective despises. Count me among the naysayers. I've worked in a field (publishing) with IP as its lifeblood, and I simply don't see the business value NFTs provide over traditional contracts.
  - MereInterest 5y ago
    But when I make a second NFT based on the same image, it has those same properties. It still can be traced back to the same image. If NFTs are meant to establish ownership over some asset, there is nothing that connects the NFT to the asset itself.
    - sumtechguy 5y ago
      To be fair there is also nothing that really connects this piece of paper which is the title of my car to my car. This application of blockchain seems to be only creating a chain of ownership. Which we already sort of have now with many things. It does not seem to bring many better properties with it other than one I can think of. That property is that it makes it harder to forge ownership. The weird thing is coming from people creating NFT's for things that are basically not worth tracking who owns it. Then others buying that thing at a wildly overinflated price (which many digital easily copied goods fall into).
petercooper 5y ago
DNS can be thought of as an early form of NFT - something that is purely digital and has a unique owner. I think this is an interesting metaphor that goes even further than that. Much like the global DNS system, NFTs only work if people trust and adhere to which (single) system has been used to trade a work/define a domain name. Because I could easily create my own separate DNS and sell "microsoft.com" on it for $100 to anyone, but no-one uses or trusts my DNS.
- seibelj 5y ago
  You need applications to integrate with the blockchain rails and start using it as a source of truth. As the ecosystem develops and more applications to do, it organically occurs. For example, Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is a name service on Ethereum https://ens.domains/ https://ens.domains/ Brave Browser has natively integrated with it, and .eth domains are tied into it. As more browsers and tools integrate with it, the value of it continues organically. There is no top-down government or organization making this happen - it all happens organically.
  - Joeboy 5y ago
    But, it's at best an source of alternative truth, to the one that's recognised by the courts.
    - gizmo686 5y ago
      There is no authoritative source of truth for the courts. When a property dispute goes before courts, they are allowed to look at many different forms of evidence and make a ruling based on that, even if said ruling disagrees with an official government database.
      - Joeboy 5y ago
        And if somebody has an entry in a blockchain saying they own Star Wars, how much weight would you expect the courts to give that?
Grustaf 5y ago
The difference is that your domain name is useful. Knowing that you “own” some youtube clip or tweet is not useful, since you don’t actually own any of the rights.
markwkw 5y ago
Regarding Unique owner: is this the same as with other crypto? That is, you are the owner when you know the crypto key. But if you unwittingly leak you keys (or use a proxy holder - an exchange) then the uniqueness becomes problematic?
eli 5y ago
I don't think baseball cards are a good investment either.
ineedasername 5y ago
The domain name is a human-readable address to digital content. It also has some added value in that purpose if it's shorter, easier to remember, etc. An NFT is not an address, any link is purely abstract. The NFT could go away and not impact anything it's supposed to be linked to. In fact sometimes people make a point to purposely destroy the thing abstractly linked to the NFT. Those seem very different to me. In fact even if you wanted to use an NFT to be the address of a piece of digital content, you couldn't easily do that: You would need to build something like DNS on top of NFT's in order to make them human usable in that way.

organsnyder 5y ago

> NFT is simply provable ownership of a digital asset. How is this any different from traditional copyright ownership? Assigning the rights for a piece of IP has been commonplace for well over a century.

seibelj 5y ago
This goes down the rabbit hole of crypto enthusiasm, which HN as a collective despises. But blockchain allows the asset to be verified quickly, impossible to counterfeit (the asset itself, not the NFT image), and immediately makes it available to the entire ecosystem of dapps running on the blockchain rails. I believe NFTs will become a larger component of DeFi, enabling their use as collateral. But a large number of games will also integrate with NFTs and enable a larger ecosystem of assets to move freely between them.
- organsnyder 5y ago
  > This goes down the rabbit hole of crypto enthusiasm, which HN as a collective despises. Count me among the naysayers. I've worked in a field (publishing) with IP as its lifeblood, and I simply don't see the business value NFTs provide over traditional contracts.
- MereInterest 5y ago
  But when I make a second NFT based on the same image, it has those same properties. It still can be traced back to the same image. If NFTs are meant to establish ownership over some asset, there is nothing that connects the NFT to the asset itself.
  - sumtechguy 5y ago
    To be fair there is also nothing that really connects this piece of paper which is the title of my car to my car. This application of blockchain seems to be only creating a chain of ownership. Which we already sort of have now with many things. It does not seem to bring many better properties with it other than one I can think of. That property is that it makes it harder to forge ownership. The weird thing is coming from people creating NFT's for things that are basically not worth tracking who owns it. Then others buying that thing at a wildly overinflated price (which many digital easily copied goods fall into).

petercooper 5y ago

DNS can be thought of as an early form of NFT - something that is purely digital and has a unique owner. I think this is an interesting metaphor that goes even further than that. Much like the global DNS system, NFTs only work if people trust and adhere to which (single) system has been used to trade a work/define a domain name. Because I could easily create my own separate DNS and sell "microsoft.com" on it for $100 to anyone, but no-one uses or trusts my DNS.

seibelj 5y ago
You need applications to integrate with the blockchain rails and start using it as a source of truth. As the ecosystem develops and more applications to do, it organically occurs. For example, Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is a name service on Ethereum https://ens.domains/ https://ens.domains/ Brave Browser has natively integrated with it, and .eth domains are tied into it. As more browsers and tools integrate with it, the value of it continues organically. There is no top-down government or organization making this happen - it all happens organically.
- Joeboy 5y ago
  But, it's at best an source of alternative truth, to the one that's recognised by the courts.
  - gizmo686 5y ago
    There is no authoritative source of truth for the courts. When a property dispute goes before courts, they are allowed to look at many different forms of evidence and make a ruling based on that, even if said ruling disagrees with an official government database.
    - Joeboy 5y ago
      And if somebody has an entry in a blockchain saying they own Star Wars, how much weight would you expect the courts to give that?

Grustaf 5y ago

The difference is that your domain name is useful. Knowing that you “own” some youtube clip or tweet is not useful, since you don’t actually own any of the rights.

markwkw 5y ago

Regarding Unique owner: is this the same as with other crypto? That is, you are the owner when you know the crypto key. But if you unwittingly leak you keys (or use a proxy holder - an exchange) then the uniqueness becomes problematic?

eli 5y ago

I don't think baseball cards are a good investment either.

ineedasername 5y ago

The domain name is a human-readable address to digital content. It also has some added value in that purpose if it's shorter, easier to remember, etc. An NFT is not an address, any link is purely abstract. The NFT could go away and not impact anything it's supposed to be linked to. In fact sometimes people make a point to purposely destroy the thing abstractly linked to the NFT. Those seem very different to me. In fact even if you wanted to use an NFT to be the address of a piece of digital content, you couldn't easily do that: You would need to build something like DNS on top of NFT's in order to make them human usable in that way.