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The analogy that helped me understand it (even though I would still not buy one myself and think the hype is way over the top): Think of a booth at Comic Con,
by cloogshicer 5y ago
The analogy that helped me understand it (even though I would still not buy one myself and think the hype is way over the top):
Think of a booth at Comic Con, where an artist hands out signed copies of their comic books. The comic book itself is nothing special, but the signature is. But there is a problem: if you ever want to sell the signed comic book, how do you prove it's a real signature? NFTs solve that problem.
- omgbear 5y agoHow does it solve the problem? You still have to trust the physical object I hand over is the real signed copy.
- cloogshicer 5y agoSorry, I meant it solves the problem in digital space. But even in offline space, the artist or seller could transfer an NFT to your account. You could then verify its authenticity (or even before the transfer).
- robertlagrant 5y agoIt doesn't solve it. What if what's at the other end of the URL the NFT points to changes or vanishes?
- yokem55 5y agoHigher end nft's store the images on arweave or filecoin for decentralized persistent storage.
- robertlagrant 5y agoLet's hope those services stick around, then?
- captn3m0 5y agoIn the digital space, we have signed PDFs. So a comic book artist could easily generate 100 numbered PDFs, and sign them each. Anyone could verify it's authenticity using even Adobe Acrobat Reader, which has had this functionality for decades.
- renewiltord 5y agoYeah, but I can’t sell you the PDF because I can’t prove that I’m selling only to you. That makes the PDF useless to sell on. An example of something is the fact that I am a vim donor and a neovim initial backer. I really like that I’m in backers.md. If they would have handed out NFTs for backing, I would have loved that too.
- captn3m0 5y agoThe artist could publish a git repo with all the signatures? We already solved this problem with Cert Transparency in PKI. None of this needs a energy-hungry blockchain.
- renewiltord 5y agoAh but I can’t transfer it without the artist having to be involved. And so, in practice, I can’t transfer it because that adds too much trouble for them.
- captn3m0 5y agoYou could sign it forward. Slightly harder to validate, but maybe if the original PDF included your key - that should maintain a clear chain of custody on the PDF itself.
- renewiltord 5y agoOh for sure. And the existence of the signed on copy with a timestamp can invalidate later signed copies, etc. This is just a mechanism that provides that in a general way. It’s sort of like, how, before Uber you could call up the few cabbies you had who you liked and get a ride but having Uber was a game changer anyway because the friction fell below some threshold.
- crorella 5y agoexactly, anyone could alter the content the URL points to.