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I agree this is one facet, but other is we now have a trustless ownership protocol (ie. cryto + NFTs) that will lay the foundation for people "caring" about the

I agree this is one facet, but other is we now have a trustless ownership protocol (ie. cryto + NFTs) that will lay the foundation for people "caring" about the stuff and status you have in the metaverse.

delecti 5y ago
The virtual stuff you "own" in virtual environments are going to be siloed in individual companies' ecosystems. Just like GTA Online is never going to give me any sort of benefit from the fancy sword I have in World of Warcraft, neither is Facebook/Meta going give me any benefit from the couch I have in whatever system Microsoft or Valve puts out. NFTs are never going to materialize into that sort of cross-ecosystem unified ownership because no large company benefits from honoring assets obtained in another company's ecosystem.
- nkingsy 5y ago
  Never say never. A “stuff” import seems like the kind of feature that would have to be copied by other platforms as soon as one does it, but there’s a chicken and egg aspect. I disagree with the whole “value of ownership” thing. Making knock off nfts is trivial, so this relies on people caring enough about provenance to police this and shame people that have knock offs in their virtual environment. Digital goods can be copied for free. It’s the killer feature of digital. No more scarcity!! Any system that fails to embrace this will be outcompeted long term. See the music industry.
  - tehbeard 5y ago
    > shame people that have knock offs in their virtual environment Because the bullying at school for having non-brand clothing or things wasn't enough. You'll need Supreme(TM) nfts, or become a digital pariah?
    - charlesju 5y ago
      NFTs are country club memberships.
- charlesju 5y ago
  This is already happening. You're thinking about this in reverse. The web 1.0 and 2.0 way of thinking if we build the product, then we own the community. The web 3.0 way of thinking is there are existing communities out there (BAYC, Punks, etc.) that we can enable to use our product and come into our space. And this is already happening.
  - TigeriusKirk 5y ago
    BAYC is light years beyond everything else in the NFT space. The way they've built a community and played up their cool factor to make you want to be a part of it all is impressive. Their parties this last week in NYC for NFT week pretty much locked them as the model to strive for. I don't know if others can do it, but they've set the standard.
    - TillE 5y ago
      > played up their cool factor C'mon. This is very "rich nerds desperately trying to be cool", it's not an actual thing that normal people will ever care about. We already have status symbols that you can show off in the real world.
      - charlesju 5y ago
        It's just a country club membership
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      At every cryptocurrency party I've been to, the people (i.e., the normal ones, not the true believers) stop coming when the free drinks and food stop flowing. I wouldn't confuse that with a "cool factor."
  - roywiggins 5y ago
    Okay, but these people are already on Twitter and Twitter doesn't do any work to verify that they "own" the NFT for their BAYC avatar or whatever. But they like Twitter, so they hang out there anyway even though anyone could "rip off" their NFT and tweet it or use it as their avatar. It seems to me that they need Twitter (and Discord, etc) way more than the other way around. No enabling required.
- roywiggins 5y ago
  And even if they did, they could share that information with a database or a federated API. No reason to bother with NFTs.
roywiggins 5y ago
What stops me from minting an NFT that says I own anything I want? If platforms are only honoring NFTs minted by other platforms then they might as well just share that information in a database.
- charlesju 5y ago
  Same way you can't just print out a copy of the mona lisa? People care about status and authenticity. Imagine a virtual world where 1. You have the validate you are an avatar you own 2. You can be anything you want The virtual world 1 is way more interesting because it's authentic and the people of status will want to use it and people of less status will build towards being higher status.
  - abeppu 5y ago
    Who arbitrates which NFTs-based claims are respected versus not? How does one decide authenticity? And once you have an answer to such a question (relying on some preexisting system of ownership in the real world), then why should we care about tokens? E.g. if someone _does_ try to create an NFT for the Mona Lisa, our ability to refute / accept its authenticity is premised on the knowledge that in the real world, the French Republic itself owns the work. How would we trust that the keys associated with minting the NFT were controlled by the French Republic? Presumably we'd need some public statement of attestation from an official French government body, and perhaps with the concurrence of others, to have confidence that this wasn't a rogue intern at the Ministry of Culture, or a hacker that got control to some official accounts or pages. But applying this logic to "avatars" seems to be either broken or creepy. Who has the authority to say that you are or aren't you?
    - gfodor 5y ago
      The people who decide which NFTs matter are the communities and cultures you participate in, and entities who have sovereignty over you. Which is no different than anything else.
      - 5y ago
tomc1985 5y ago
Yes let's crystalize greed and avarice into our brave new virtual meta world thing How about a virtual world of no ownership? Why must we give the wealthy yet another venue to lord their status over us?
- gfodor 5y ago
  The ultimate scarcity is human attention and creativity - so in the limit that will always be a thing that is a form of wealth. The ownership of digital assets (NFTs or not) is fundamentally an output of a system where someone chooses to expend creative energy into making the asset, and traded that opportunity cost off based on the expected outcome. A scenario where that work would not be something they could capture value from by enforcement mechanisms of scarcity would lead to some of these efforts not happening. (Not all of course, many people do amazing CC licensed work. But it doesn’t pay the bills.)
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    But digital is a realm of infinite copying, and where true ownership of bits means that you can never show them off (like Shkreli and that A Tribe Called Quest album). NFT 'ownership' is an additional layer on top of the data that can easily be stripped away, as the exclusivity only exists in the minds of those gullible enough to actually value it. I am very tired of watching humans constantly try to impose real-world economic scarcity into a digital land of infinite plenty. Rather than fight the nature of a digital economy, why not embrace it?
    - gfodor 5y ago
      People who want to create works that can be infinitely copied, will. People who want to create works that have various kinds of cultural norms imposing scarcity, will. There is no “fight”, it’s just saying that you’d prefer less options for people to choose how to expend their creative energy. Nobody is stopping a person from turning the knob all the way to “infinite free copies,” but the idea here is to make a knob that is granular, multidimensional, and under their control, as opposed to under the control of a few centralized actors. Besides, NFTs actually embrace your philosophy: allow copies, and shift scarcity elsewhere to things like social status. It is not DRM, obviously. You should be a fan.

delecti 5y ago

The virtual stuff you "own" in virtual environments are going to be siloed in individual companies' ecosystems. Just like GTA Online is never going to give me any sort of benefit from the fancy sword I have in World of Warcraft, neither is Facebook/Meta going give me any benefit from the couch I have in whatever system Microsoft or Valve puts out. NFTs are never going to materialize into that sort of cross-ecosystem unified ownership because no large company benefits from honoring assets obtained in another company's ecosystem.

nkingsy 5y ago
Never say never. A “stuff” import seems like the kind of feature that would have to be copied by other platforms as soon as one does it, but there’s a chicken and egg aspect. I disagree with the whole “value of ownership” thing. Making knock off nfts is trivial, so this relies on people caring enough about provenance to police this and shame people that have knock offs in their virtual environment. Digital goods can be copied for free. It’s the killer feature of digital. No more scarcity!! Any system that fails to embrace this will be outcompeted long term. See the music industry.
- tehbeard 5y ago
  > shame people that have knock offs in their virtual environment Because the bullying at school for having non-brand clothing or things wasn't enough. You'll need Supreme(TM) nfts, or become a digital pariah?
  - charlesju 5y ago
    NFTs are country club memberships.
charlesju 5y ago
This is already happening. You're thinking about this in reverse. The web 1.0 and 2.0 way of thinking if we build the product, then we own the community. The web 3.0 way of thinking is there are existing communities out there (BAYC, Punks, etc.) that we can enable to use our product and come into our space. And this is already happening.
- TigeriusKirk 5y ago
  BAYC is light years beyond everything else in the NFT space. The way they've built a community and played up their cool factor to make you want to be a part of it all is impressive. Their parties this last week in NYC for NFT week pretty much locked them as the model to strive for. I don't know if others can do it, but they've set the standard.
  - TillE 5y ago
    > played up their cool factor C'mon. This is very "rich nerds desperately trying to be cool", it's not an actual thing that normal people will ever care about. We already have status symbols that you can show off in the real world.
    - charlesju 5y ago
      It's just a country club membership
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    At every cryptocurrency party I've been to, the people (i.e., the normal ones, not the true believers) stop coming when the free drinks and food stop flowing. I wouldn't confuse that with a "cool factor."
- roywiggins 5y ago
  Okay, but these people are already on Twitter and Twitter doesn't do any work to verify that they "own" the NFT for their BAYC avatar or whatever. But they like Twitter, so they hang out there anyway even though anyone could "rip off" their NFT and tweet it or use it as their avatar. It seems to me that they need Twitter (and Discord, etc) way more than the other way around. No enabling required.
roywiggins 5y ago
And even if they did, they could share that information with a database or a federated API. No reason to bother with NFTs.

roywiggins 5y ago

What stops me from minting an NFT that says I own anything I want? If platforms are only honoring NFTs minted by other platforms then they might as well just share that information in a database.

charlesju 5y ago
Same way you can't just print out a copy of the mona lisa? People care about status and authenticity. Imagine a virtual world where 1. You have the validate you are an avatar you own 2. You can be anything you want The virtual world 1 is way more interesting because it's authentic and the people of status will want to use it and people of less status will build towards being higher status.
- abeppu 5y ago
  Who arbitrates which NFTs-based claims are respected versus not? How does one decide authenticity? And once you have an answer to such a question (relying on some preexisting system of ownership in the real world), then why should we care about tokens? E.g. if someone _does_ try to create an NFT for the Mona Lisa, our ability to refute / accept its authenticity is premised on the knowledge that in the real world, the French Republic itself owns the work. How would we trust that the keys associated with minting the NFT were controlled by the French Republic? Presumably we'd need some public statement of attestation from an official French government body, and perhaps with the concurrence of others, to have confidence that this wasn't a rogue intern at the Ministry of Culture, or a hacker that got control to some official accounts or pages. But applying this logic to "avatars" seems to be either broken or creepy. Who has the authority to say that you are or aren't you?
  - gfodor 5y ago
    The people who decide which NFTs matter are the communities and cultures you participate in, and entities who have sovereignty over you. Which is no different than anything else.
    - 5y ago

tomc1985 5y ago

Yes let's crystalize greed and avarice into our brave new virtual meta world thing How about a virtual world of no ownership? Why must we give the wealthy yet another venue to lord their status over us?

gfodor 5y ago
The ultimate scarcity is human attention and creativity - so in the limit that will always be a thing that is a form of wealth. The ownership of digital assets (NFTs or not) is fundamentally an output of a system where someone chooses to expend creative energy into making the asset, and traded that opportunity cost off based on the expected outcome. A scenario where that work would not be something they could capture value from by enforcement mechanisms of scarcity would lead to some of these efforts not happening. (Not all of course, many people do amazing CC licensed work. But it doesn’t pay the bills.)
- tomc1985 5y ago
  But digital is a realm of infinite copying, and where true ownership of bits means that you can never show them off (like Shkreli and that A Tribe Called Quest album). NFT 'ownership' is an additional layer on top of the data that can easily be stripped away, as the exclusivity only exists in the minds of those gullible enough to actually value it. I am very tired of watching humans constantly try to impose real-world economic scarcity into a digital land of infinite plenty. Rather than fight the nature of a digital economy, why not embrace it?
  - gfodor 5y ago
    People who want to create works that can be infinitely copied, will. People who want to create works that have various kinds of cultural norms imposing scarcity, will. There is no “fight”, it’s just saying that you’d prefer less options for people to choose how to expend their creative energy. Nobody is stopping a person from turning the knob all the way to “infinite free copies,” but the idea here is to make a knob that is granular, multidimensional, and under their control, as opposed to under the control of a few centralized actors. Besides, NFTs actually embrace your philosophy: allow copies, and shift scarcity elsewhere to things like social status. It is not DRM, obviously. You should be a fan.