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NFT's aren't the answer to the problems of digital art

• jcpham2 5y ago
  The NFT space has already defined that NFTs and ownership is all about clout - which means absolutely nothing to anyone outside of the NFT space, who isn’t actively daily trying to gain internet points and/or followers.
• rvz 5y ago
  The only type of NFT that has both utility and value is a domain name. Other than that, all other NFTs have no utility and are absolutely useless.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• joeberon 5y ago
  People say NFTs open a huge new opportunity to sell art, but the only reason why the demand is higher is because of hype. Once that has died down, it will return to before: people not wanting to pay artists for commissions, no one contributing to their patreon, etc.
• ninthcat 5y ago
  A copy of digital art has (to an approximation) no value because it is infinitely reproducible. But an hour of an artist's time has value due to scarcity. The obvious answer — that the article doesn't mention for some reason — is that artists make money from commissions, not from selling copies of the art.
  • tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    >A copy of digital art has (to an approximation) no value because it is infinitely reproducible. Just like software.
  • TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    Actually what we have found I think with the internet is that some things have value no matter how many copies you make. Computers can copy digital things at essentially no cost, and some digital things have great value. So we have a way to copy value for free. We can do a lot with that if we really try. For example, wikipedia has produced incalculable value but the users don't generally pay anything for it. My personal economic theory is that we should try to maximize this effect. Make as much value as we can digital and try to make all digital value as free as we can make it. This should in theory create huge value in the world at very low cost. So to me, even if NFTs could prevent copying, it would be going in entirely the wrong direction. The whole desire to lock down digital goods in the first place seems like the biggest economic foot gun I can think of.
    • meheleventyone 5y ago
      On the whole I agree with you but the problem as ever is people wanting to be compensated for the work they do. They need to eat after all. I totally understand artists jumping on NFTs as a potential meal ticket. It's this paradox of seeing tremendous value in something but at the same time not seeing monetary value in it.
      • TaylorAlexander 5y ago
        > They need to eat after all. Honestly when I look at the whole equation: we have machines which can produce value for free, but because people need to eat we keep trying to shut the free value machine down... The obvious solution is that we should make food free. We should automate the hell out of the systems that produce our food, and we should make all of that automation open source so that all extraneous costs can be worked out. I think if we did that, food would be so genuinely cheap to produce we could give it away. So that's what I am trying to do. I am working on a farming robot, thinking about machines which can produce high volumes of free hot meals from basic ingredients (like the Sikhs do in India[1], but automated), and trying to understand crowd funded engineering to pay for it all. Like, the idea that we could produce way more value for free and we're stopping that from really happening because people need food? I think we can solve that. We just have to look at things differently. And we can do the same with rent, and shoes, and clothes. I think the upside is so incredibly high it is worth doing it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdoJroKUwu0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdoJroKUwu0
• mushysteven 5y ago
  The author doesn't address the biggest issue: ensuring scarcity of digital artifacts. How does a digital artist create limited editions of their digital artwork?
  • temp10298385 5y ago
    Lack of scarcity is the unique selling point of the digital. I think future generations will look back at the madness of manufacturing scarcity because society refused to adapt to abundance.
    • mushysteven 5y ago
      How does an artist get paid?
      • temp10298385 5y ago
        Good question. I think I can best answer this by example: People get paid to develop Blender. Blender even has an in house film studio, with paid artists. The software and artwork is made available for free. No artificial scarcity is imposed. And no one is starving. Trying to emulate the restrictions of the material realm is the wrong direction.
        • tonyedgecombe 5y ago
          It's a good example but I can't help feeling that we would end up with a much smaller ecosystem if that was how all software was funded. I work in a very narrow niche selling B2B and my experience tells me it just wouldn't be viable if it was open source. I'd end up selling support which is not how I want to work.
        • mushysteven 5y ago
          I don't think comparing the Blender Foundation to an artist is fair. And Blender is a software widely used in the industry.
• easytiger 5y ago
  I noticed Bonham's are currently auctioning NFTs for soccer football trading cards One for Ronaldo with 2days left is 180k with an expected sale of 800k-1.2m (usd) People have gone mad
  • d3nj4l 5y ago
    Just as likely that it's a wash trade.
    • blue1 5y ago
      I keep hearing this, but how is that supposed to work?
      • justblaze23 5y ago
        Since wallets aren't KYC one user with another wealth can bid up their own NFT or even sell it to themselves. Until a mark comes along and buys it
      • cwmma 5y ago
        You sell to your self on a different account, makes it look like people are buying it. Example here https://twitter.com/FoldableHuman/status/1457849741148971010?t=ZnxVH52pUb9YD7Db9Ga5Vg&s=19 https://twitter.com/FoldableHuman/status/1457849741148971010...
      • raesene9 5y ago
        This thread explained the scam pretty well https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1457749433844568066?s=20 https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1457749433844568066?s=20 (they changed NFT-->NTFS to avoid bots)
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• laurencei 5y ago
  One use case I was wondering for NFTs; would it make sense for photographers? So if I took some "amazing" photos of stuff, whether it was art, landscape or 'stock' style photos. I could list them on a website to be sold, and sell the NFT of the photo. Yes - anyone can "right click -> copy" the photo, but we are talking about the licensing side of the photo. This proves the person using the photo(s) in their product or website etc has the "right" to use that photo, in the same way open source projects have licences that people are expected to follow? The person who bought the photo could on sell those rights at a later stage if they no longer wanted to use my photo (since anyone can sell the NFT). Basically shutterstock.com or something, but with NFTs? Its about the only genuine use case I can think of...
  • blue1 5y ago
    One problem that I have noticed in the NFT space is that the platforms only deal with transaction between wallets, not persons. The association between wallets and persons is tenuous (by design). You don't know if you are buying from the real right holder (e.g. the author), and on the other side it is difficult to prove that the owner of a particular wallet is you.
  • schrijver 5y ago
    How does this improve upon copyright in practical terms? Because finding out who the rights holder is becomes more straightforward? I’m not aware how minting an NFT works exactly, but wouldn’t the person to whom the NFT points still have to prove they’re the rights holder and have engaged in some legal contract for that claim to be valid?
  • amalcon 5y ago
    I think this is kind of the idea, but it has basically the same problems as other areas. You're relying on meatspace legal and copyright systems to associate "ownership" / "right to use" with the NFT, but you could just use that same system to associate those rights with the purchaser directly.
    • capableweb 5y ago
• Kiro 5y ago
  CryptoKitties are cool. Art NFTs not so much. With art NFTs all you get is bragging rights that you bought X from Y. A CryptoKitty on the other hand actually has utility; not only in the game itself but also in other apps that are using them, e.g. HyperDragons eating CryptoKitties to grow stronger. I think that's the only (if any) viable future for NFTs. A unique set of items or objects on the blockchain that follow a standard, making them interoperable between different apps. Since the blockchain is an open API by nature no-one can prevent you from building your own game utilizing the same NFTs. So when you buy a sword you can use it in all games that support it or, as in the case of HyperDragons, sacrifice it to get something else.
  • laurencei 5y ago
    I read this article just yesterday about why NFT + games does not really make sense: https://docseuss.medium.com/look-what-you-made-me-do-a-lot-of-people-have-asked-me-to-make-nft-games-and-i-wont-because-i-m-29c7cfdbbb79 https://docseuss.medium.com/look-what-you-made-me-do-a-lot-o...
    • Kiro 5y ago
      I still think that the composability is intriguing. You don't need my permission to build an application that talks to my application, as with the example of HyperDragons eating CryptoKitties.
      • meheleventyone 5y ago
        You can have composability just by assets being permissively licensed. For example freesound.org or the various asset stores that are chock full of free stuff as well as paid things. What I suspect people want is free co-marketing rather than composability. HyperDragons is famous because it did something interesting with CrytoKitties that were already famous. In that case you also need to be very careful using other peoples IP so probably want a license anyway.
• jakupovic 5y ago
  Imagine a world where all or most of our interactions are in the digital realm. When you wake up in this place you are naked, cannot show anyone anything about yourself, but you are very rich. Now how do you show others that you are rich? Simple, you buy Gucci nft clothes that other naked peasants can see. That's what's happening.
  • dorkwood 5y ago
    If that's what's happening, why are most of the Twitter-famous whale collectors completely anonymous? Granted, it's probably happening to some degree amongst the rubes. But I'm more convinced by the argument that the main driver behind NFT sales is a kind of pyramid scam: artists at the top get paid by anonymous "collectors" (read: crypto investors), which causes swarms of smaller artists enter and the price of eth to go up.
    • podgaj 5y ago
      >If that's what's happening, why are most of the Twitter-famous whale collectors completely anonymous? Because it is an easy way to launder/hide money?
    • LegitShady 5y ago
      To pump the speculation scam.
    • 5560675260 5y ago
      They are not anonymous, they are pseudonymous, that's a very different thing. This allows them to participate in communities and engage in posturing with an added benefit of being able to dump their online persona if something goes really wrong.
    • Nowado 5y ago
      > Twitter-famous (...) anonymous Now, I'm not agreeing with parent comment in sentiment that this is all, or most, of what's happening (although introducing scarcity for the sake of it has to be related to creating perceivable value through inaccessibility), but if someone is twitter-famous, they are not anonymous. They are twitter-famous. There's nothing stopping one from identifying strongly with their handles or wallets.
• mattdesl 5y ago
  The irony of the article is that two of the highlighted artists (Anders Hoff, Lia) are now selling their work through NFTs. The market for generative art prints is extremely niche. Importantly, what the technology gives digital artists (myself included) is a strategy to distribute, document provenance/ownership, and monetize primarily digital media in a primarily digital manner, rather than expecting them to rely on non-digital print media & spatial activations. It becomes yet another avenue for artists to earn revenue on their work. It should also be noted that this article is several months old, which is basically a decade in crypto/NFT land.
  • LegitShady 5y ago
    The art has no value in digital space. I can even copy paste from wherever it's displayed, or take a screenshot, etc etc The value is in a piece of blockchain which makes it speculation scam. That someone made money from a speculation scam doesn't make it less of a scam.
    • adnzzzzZ 5y ago
      I make games. Do my games have no value in digital space because someone can pirate them? Is it a speculation scam to sell the game on Steam and make money from it when people can just get it for free elsewhere? Your argument makes no sense and is retarded.
      • LegitShady 5y ago
        The game has value for its utility and fun. It has no inherent value outside of that. If your game was a number on a blockchain such that only one owner could play it would that make your game more valuable? What if anyone could play it but only the blockchain owner could say they own it since the playing is just looking for art nfts? For art nfts anyone can look at and enjoy the art without owning the blockchain. Now some speculator can claim to actuakly own a rare pepe, is all It is a speculation scam. I know a dozen artists pumping them out now and they're all in on this speculation scam turning out high res icons attached to a piece of blockchain some poor idiot will speculate is valuable. If it's so valuable why don't they just keep it for themselves? Why have a market? Because it's all just a speculation scam. Why don't you just hold your super valuable game to yourself so no one else can play it? Because it only had value if it's played. Art nfts value is in owning something anyone can look at and gain the same function for without any nft at all. Rare Pepes
• KaiserPro 5y ago
  The problem is that NFTs doesn't solve a problem that existed. NFTs supposedly allow you to prove who owns something. However they don't actually form a contract for the thing that you think you are buying. You are buying the NFT, not the artwork them selves. This is the main problem, so if you get scammed, or you try and assert what you think your rights are, you have no support. To translate it to business, its like buying the sole share in some company, but its not actually the sole share, its a letter that says you've bought a receipt for a sole share from person x. There is no assertion that you own the actual thing the bit of paper says its a receipt for, or indeed that the person selling it to you owned it in the first place.
  • dnautics 5y ago
    > NFTs supposedly allow you to prove who owns something This is fundamentally wrong. NFTs allow you to show off who "owns"[0] something. [0] for some generalized, possibly meaningless definition of "own". I say possibly meaningless, then again, what is property really, just a government-managed, non-fungible, token? Don't gaze too hard at the abyss, unless you are willing to let the abyss to gaze back.
    • dnautics 5y ago
      oh wait, I forgot my proudhon. Property is theft!
    • lobocinza 5y ago
      NFTs are synthetic scarcity.
      • dnautics 5y ago
        So is money (or else it wouldn't work)
        • newacct583 5y ago
          Only in a specious sense. The point to money isn't "scarcity", the point to money is TRUST. You trust that $1 is going to be worth $1 tomorrow, and that it will be worth $1 to the shopkeeper and the bank and your family and everyone else. So anywhere you want to trade for something, you can do it in dollars. It's true that to provide that stability you have to control the supply, so money is "scarce". But only in the sense that the economy it represents is finite. NFTs don't provide that, therefore they aren't a good medium of exchange. They aren't "scarce" in the way that money is or has to be. They're also a Tulip bubble, but that's a different thing.
• crucialfelix 5y ago
  NFT art is basically meme culture. Everyone can see the art, but one person "owns" it. This makes ownership a spectacle. The value inflation is a spectacle too. So I would say this isn't about art at all, it's about monetising spectacles as a cultural artifact.
  • m00dy 5y ago
    I second your comment.
  • LegitShady 5y ago
    There's a huge aspect of speculation scam involved as well.
  • drawkbox 5y ago
    NFTs are also a pre metaverse type setup to get people used to digital goods, that you will need to see through an spectacles. Spectacles that require spectacles. Much like an online game when you buy cosmetic digital goods to improve the look or performance of your game/player, to show off really. In the meta/game world there will be unique digital goods that could be built to use an ownership/db system that isn't proprietary to the game/app/world. This is almost a psychological operation or training mission for that type of setup from games to the "real" meta world. Besides that, NFTs at the root were created as a product to buy with crypto that still essentially stores value. Like art today, they are a way to pass value, in some cases that will be to evade oversight, in other cases that will be to share, on other cases to own, in others to speculate. People buying actual goods with crypto would make it go down, so NFTs are a hedge to offset that essentially to keep speculation high. Essentially cryptocurrency creators/developers wanted a way to increase circulation, but not decrease the value, so they chose art/interactives as that product. It was a product created for crypto and potentially the future. Whether NFTs are that solution or not, digital goods do need some way outside systems to share across other worlds/views/apps/games. We have this already pretty much there with just the internet, but some want a large market within these systems with unique products being a way to create scarcity and potentially demand by limiting supply, but an external digital rights system. In the end though the root cause of NFTs being created was increasing cryptocurrency circulation with a way to essentially "lock up" some value like a vault or staking would do.
• cardamomo 5y ago
  Should be labeled (March 2021), as it feels like the news about Beeple's record-breaking NFT auction was several years ago.
• podgaj 5y ago
  NFTs, what a scam. I had no idea what the process was. I was a photographer in my younger days, published. Thought I could make a buck or two turning them into an NFT. NFTs are the people selling shovels during the gold rush, a for someone to make money off of you during the process of making and auctioning the NFT. If I cannot do the process without paying anyone, it's just a scam. Just like Bitcoin.
  • casi18 5y ago
    you can create nfts and have them minted upon sale, that way you dont have to pay anyone as its gasless. all you need is a signature, that doesnt cost anything. its actually a really neat way to onboard users to chain without needing to go through a cex and spend money.
    • podgaj 5y ago
      People are still making money from the process whether I do it before or after the sale.
    • throw_m239339 5y ago
      > you can create nfts and have them minted upon sale, that way you dont have to pay anyone as its gasless. all you need is a signature, that doesnt cost anything. by whom? What NFT platform/gallery allows the free creation of a NFT? As far as I know, artists need to pay to create NFT (buy ETH or whatever).
• NoblePublius 5y ago
  Saying an NFT grants ownership of something is like saying the address on my drivers license grants ownership of my house.
• locallost 5y ago
  so it's very much an old thing (possession of unique things) that people are trying to fit into the new world that no longer works the same way. There I say it will not work. Somebody needs to figure out new ways of making art that fit the new age instead.
• CraneWorm 5y ago
  WARNING, triggering content: lots of filthy swearing. still, a nice summary of what NFTs are good for :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxaHugHihh0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxaHugHihh0
  • casi18 5y ago
    if anyone wants some positive, optimistic takes from actual artists and musicians working in the space i'd recommend https://interdependence.fm https://interdependence.fm its not as attention grabbing as a sweary youtube video, but it isnt trying to enrage you for clicks, and has actual conversation on the issues artists face and how we might build alternatives. people arent all evil, its not the end of the world. the sky isnt falling. the kids are alright.
• nbzso 5y ago
  As an artist I don't like NFT concept at all. This is just another gaming "UX" (cards, skins, features) for kids created from scammers. The digital realm has a function - to be connected to reality, to enhance and give communication channels. Yes, someone within "NFT Realm" will "get lucky" and capitalize, but this applies to almost anything. I invest in a different art future, the old one. Where genuine skills and materials create uniqueness for ultimate value - for the real world.
  • Tenoke 5y ago
    >This is just another gaming "UX" (cards, skins, features) for kids created from scammers. As far as I can tell every one I see talking about or collecting NFTs are adults. I doubt you are looking at them honestly if you think they were designed to take money from kids. NFT art could be bad or good regardless but you seem motivated by your ties to the 'old way' based on your comment.
    • Jensson 5y ago
      They are designed to take money from adults who thinks that they can resell them for significant mark-up to kids.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • nerdponx 5y ago
    Because none of this is inherent to NFTs. It's just a way to encode on a blockchain that I own something you made. All this other stuff is just weirdness borne of weird people being weird during a weird time.
    • sumeno 5y ago
      It’s important to note that the “thing” you “own” is the receipt, not the art. The NFT is not the art and doesn’t contain the art, it’s (in the vast majority of cases) just a link to the art. You have no ownership or claim to the art itself.
• folli 5y ago
  The main problem of NFTs has been discussed in a recent thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29158348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29158348 The point is that digital art is hosted on a domain (relying on centralized authority) and the NFT barely links to it. There are ways to circumvent that (i.e. by uploading the actual artwork to the blockchain), but it's prohibitively expensive to do so.
  • mattdesl 5y ago
    This is indeed a problem with OpenSea (generally regarded as a crappy platform) using centralized hosting, but nowadays most new marketplaces and contracts will use IPFS to decentralize the hosting, ensuring it is not linked to a single point of failure.
  • casi18 5y ago
    i think you are underestimating reputation, legitimacy, and community. sometimes this metadata matters, other times it doesnt at all. its just a handshake between two people. relationships matter. if you mess up your metadata, rugpull your audience, remint the same works, break the trust with your audience, thnen your not gonna have a good time. but if you understand your community, be transparent and giving, and participate, you will have much stronger connections with others. nft critics ironically cant see past the money.
    • AlexandrB 5y ago
      What happens if you rug pull after 5 years while being a model NFTer until then? If your customers are buying "real" art or products from you they don't just go poof at that point (with some exceptions, like IoT or some software). Many NFTs do because they hyperlink content hosted on real servers with real costs to run. And no online community lasts forever either. How does an NFT community wind down? Does the value of those NFTs drop? Slowly or quickly? It's easy to claim it's about the community when things are going well, but one day some part of the community will be left holding the bag of worthless assets. Is the rest of the community going to bail them out?
• nxpnsv 5y ago
  I guess it is the answer for how to get paid for at least some aspiring artists...
• balsam 5y ago
  NFTs are letters patent issued by NSA (Non-State Actor), which perhaps makes them just letters.
• smugglerFlynn 5y ago
  Two swindlers arrive at the capital city of an emperor who spends lavishly on clothing at the expense of state matters. Posing as art dealers, they offer to provide him magnificent clothes that would be backed by a digital token which proves value to those smart folks who understand digital. The emperor hires them, and they go to work in a special minting room. A succession of officials, and then the emperor himself, visit them to check their progress. Each sees that the room is empty but pretends otherwise to avoid being thought a fool. Finally, art dealers report that the emperor's suit and its token are ready for release. They mime dressing him and he sets off in a procession before the whole city. The townsfolk uncomfortably go along with the pretense, not wanting to appear inept or stupid, until a child blurts out that the emperor is wearing nothing at all. The people then realize that child is very stupid, not understanding simple principles of digital DeFi-fueled web3.0 economy. Still smirking at the child, the emperor continues the procession, walking more proudly than ever.
  • ggoo 5y ago
    I don’t have anything to add - I just really like this comment. Would buy an NFT of it.
  • gitfan86 5y ago
    The trick here with Web3/DeFi is that there is so much indirection and abstraction. What do these people do? They are involved in DeFi projects. What do those projects do? They provide an infrastructure for DeFi. But what does that infrastructure do? It allows the DeFi transactions. But what are those transactions? Well it could be anything due to the open nature of smart contracts. But what does it actually do today? It moves digital tokens around. When is it going to provide real value? Many people have made a lot of money in Crypto already And how did they make their money? By owning tokens that went up in value And how is that not a pyramid scheme? Well the US Dollar is a scam. No one should be long US Dollar. TLDR; Because the US Dollar is at risk of inflation, you should buy and hold onto a variety of digital trading cards. Somehow the Metaverse will include digital scarcity and those trading cards will make your meta rich.
    • smugglerFlynn 5y ago
• k__ 5y ago
  I'm not sure that media NFTs have much merit besides being an alternative to things like Patreon/OnlyFans. On the other hand I bought and traded many Magic the Gathering cards and people buy stamps, even if both are copied quite easily. You can only view or listen to media NFTs "content". Here ownership doesn't give you much more "features". But I own non-media NFTs and here ownership gives me more "features". I can change where my ENS domain is pointing and I can access a DAO community because I own these NFTs.
• 1cvmask 5y ago
  A lot of buying decisions is focused on “bragging” rights. That’s why paintings from dead artists are usually worth more simply because the supply is finite by definition. Even all the clothings of Versace the designer were snapped up right after his death and that is not even “art”.
• diveanon 5y ago
  ITT: a bunch of people who are not knowledgeable about defi or NFT’s sharing their anecdotes and opinions about defi and NFT’s.
• lvl100 5y ago
  NFT serves one purpose: to legitimize crypto.
• pengwing 5y ago
  NFTs are not the answer to many questions. Maybe you should start asking the correct questions. The one problem NFTs solve perfectly: How to do decentralized and pseudonymous proof of community membership. Successful projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club are not about the fancy drawings, but about the exclusivity of a social club. You may find that silly, but that does not diminish the human craving for status. NFTs are the digital equivalent of designer clothes, luxury watches, and fancy cars.
  • LogonType10 5y ago
    Didn't some artist get his NFTs stolen through Discord screensharing and he begged his Twitter followers not to acknowledge the possessor of the NFT as the real owner of art?
    • pengwing 5y ago
      I do not know this particular story and do not see the relevance to the points I am making. That being said, you cannot steal an NFT via Discord screensharing unless you manage to display your private key on screen. In which case: Children gotta learn that the stove is hot.
      • lupire 5y ago
        And then children grow up into adults who don't use stoves as currency.
    • Joeboy 5y ago
      I think maybe you're talking about this: https://futurism.com/person-furious-right-click-saved-precious-nft https://futurism.com/person-furious-right-click-saved-precio... Which strictly speaking is about the art being "stolen", not the NFT.
    • mherdeg 5y ago
      I saw something like this described here: https://twitter.com/eevee/status/1455325800291397633 https://twitter.com/eevee/status/1455325800291397633 My personal view here is that your continued ability to own an NFT depends on your ability to tell an interesting story. If 51% of the professional clout of the art world decides you don't own something any more, you ... might not? If the metadata that denote ownership of beeple's first 5000 everydays are accidentally overwritten due to a small bug, probably everyone will agree to ignore that. But if someone puts on a super cool art-thief costume and does a livestream where they write and execute software that resets the ownership so it's their art now, while they play "The Thomas Crown Affair" soundtrack in the background, probably everyone will go along with this, yeah? (Certainly the theft of the Mona Lisa increased its value!)
• dakom 5y ago
  The actual problem is how society determines value. It's based on supply and demand, which can be gamed, rather than inherent value. For example, compared to jobs in the stock market, education is a low-paying sector, as is janitorial work and other fields that contribute disproportionately to the well-being of civilization because the focus is not about artificially gaming the system to increase financial reward. I don't want to get too far into the weeds of whether or not some industries are worth their salt (e.g. entertainment, sports, etc.)- but the point is that financial value and real-world value are inherently disconnected. This affects more than just raw economics. Just look at the MeToo movement- how many people are considered valuable due to their financial success as opposed to their inner psychological work and kindness towards others, and are therefore (wrongly) placed into positions of power. Of course this affects the art world too. A painting of rare skill that stirs the heart and intrigues the mind is worth money, because it makes us more human and lifts the world up a notch. The other stuff is not worth it. Professional (as in its how they make their living) artists know this and game the system for financial rewards. The NFT craze is just symbolic of the bigger issue. It works because it's a self-sustaining greed machine. Pure supply and demand, no inherent value. I would say it's a bubble but throughout human history, value and value have been unrelated, with no end in sight. craze is an important word though. The mechanism of NFTs can be used for actual value, such as paperless tickets, real estate deeds, digital assets with utility etc. Even in a basic sense they can be an improvement over bespoke mobile apps and QR codes. Anyway, what do I know, I'm barely making ends meet, and I'm one of the dummies who dabbled in BTC back in the day and lost my wallet carelessly because it seemed so worthless anyway. Maybe I'm the problem and should just get on board with the whole greed thing. Maybe if I make enough money my opinion might be valuable.
• moron4hire 5y ago
  The key problem with NFTs is that they are advertised as decentralized, zero-trust, proof of ownership. But minting doesn't prove authorship and selling the tokens isn't exclusively transferring the data. Say you want to prove authorship. Prove without a shadow of a doubt, prove mathematically, that you own this MOV of your indie film. You can't. You can't do it in the real world, you can't do it in the digital world. In the real world, we register copyright and then sue violators for damages in courts governed by laws put on the books by legislatures elected by citizens. That's the very system the NFT is trying to avoid. And say you want to create exclusion for the data. You'd have to create a DRM system. But we can't even get DRM to work when we do have legitimate proof of ownership in physical media sales through authorized retailers. So even if DRM could, would, and should be implemented, then it's only as good as the teeth behind it. So now you're back in court, invoking the DMCA. The concepts of Ownership and "decentralized, zero-trust" are incompatible. Ownership requires exclusion, exclusion requires a credible threat of violence if violated, and violence is monopolized by the State. I would personally go so far as to say the entire concept of zero-trust is a boondoggle, it's really all just "shifting the point of trust", but that's a different argument for another day.
• twox2 5y ago
  It bums me out how the HN crowd lacks any creativity when it comes to anything Crypto. NFTs do solve a problem, and the problem that they solve is that creatives are getting paid for their creative output. Not every NFT is a flex, or used to launder money. Some folks use NFTs as Patreon -> to support artists who's work they admire. "Why not just buy a painting?" Well people who make digital videos and 3d renderings are artists too, aren't they? The promise of NFTs is that they offer a different way for people to interact. Ownership is always based on social constructs, so folks that are involved in this space need to have some consensus of what it means to "own" an NFT on whatever chain. From there these items can be gamified. NFTs run on top of what is essentially programmable money. What if we designate an NFT to an application (a smart contract) that in exchange issues tokens to designate fractional ownership of that NFT? Never in history has anyone been able to buy shares of highly coveted art... maybe now you can? Using smart contracts you can you can also conduct trustless exchanges of digital assets (NFTs). This is huge.
  • phone8675309 5y ago
    What stops me, technologically, from creating an NFT from an image that I didn’t actually create? If it was about creators getting paid then there'd be a better answer than "nothing, caveat emptor".
    • flowless 5y ago
      Nothing. Creators are getting paid because NFTs are associated with their brand, not just magically having a value because you minted one.
      • twox2 5y ago
        Correct!
      • elevader 5y ago
        But creators aren't actually paid anything if the NFT is sold by somebody else, which seems to happen quite a lot (at least according to twitter).
• iamacyborg 5y ago
  What's interesting is that in the ~240 comments so far, no one has actually engaged with the topic of the article, which is the real world display of digital art.
  • smoovb 5y ago
    Real world displays for digital art, like photo frames, could be the next step in digital art enjoyment. But will the hardware manufactures enforce ownership of public keys so only the owner's NFTs can be displayed?
  • cblconfederate 5y ago
    The discussion of DRM has ended since the 00s , there is really not much to say about it.
    • iamacyborg 5y ago
      I'm not sure you read the article.
      • cblconfederate 5y ago
        I did, what the author is saying is that Nfts are not DRM (which is true and well known). They assume DRM is a problem that can be solved, but it can't.
        • iamacyborg 5y ago
          I'm the author - if that's what you got from the article then maybe I need to rewrite it, but it's primarily around the issue of how art is displayed. Looking at a picture on a screen is really fucking boring.
          • cblconfederate 5y ago
            OK, but then why did you expect that NFTs would solve the problem of art display? It's a bit of misrepresentation of what NFTs do, the closest thing of which is, it's like a certificate of authenticity. In other words, i dont think most people expected NFTs to solve that problem anyway In any case even if someone makes a display that only works with original NFTs it doesnt change the fact that anyone else can make a screen that doesn't. We re back to the Napster and Kazaa problem.
• fny 5y ago
  I invite you all to open your eyes a little. Sure, NFTs are a little ridiculous... but there's an evolving marriage between crypto and IPFS which I find very exciting. We've all been complaining about the dangers of centralization, censorship, and impermanence on the modern web for years, and now there's billions flowing into an absolutely ridiculous application of decentralized tech. Crypto is currently a very expensive toy, but I think there's immense opportunity for those who can help it mature. Edit: If you're still arguing about whether NFTs are useful or cypto is currency, you're missing the point. We have a new substrate. It's fun, it's interesting. Go play! And yes, paying millions for a jpeg is dumb.
  • packetlost 5y ago
    Sure. Let me know when crypto isn't consuming the energy of a mid-sized nation and then we'll talk.
    • motioncuty 5y ago
      Then can you appreciate take about the non energy abusing blockchains or will you paint them all with the same brush?
      • packetlost 5y ago
        blockchain as a mechanism for doing things that are not financial speculation, scams, energy-waste-machines, etc., sure. IPFS seems like a legitimately interesting concept, as do many other things you could have on a blockchain like identity management. I want to be clear here: cryptocurrencies and blockchain are both not the same thing and should not be talked about in the same way.
  • serverholic 5y ago
    Personally, I believe in the long-term applications of crypto and NFTs. The NFT craze is weird but if it leads to mass adoption then fine by me. I'm more interested in things like CityDAO where you can buy land and get a city-minted NFT that represents land ownership.
• noetic_techy 5y ago
  All those poo-pooing NFT's will miss NFT gaming and gambling like a freight train to the face. Reading the comments, I see too many people focused on the art aspect (of course this is OP's articles focus). NFT's applied to art is a bit stupid and makes only nominal sense. NFT art is really just flexing for the rich, because as anyone realizes, right-click save-as is all you need to have the art too, just not the "key" or "ownership proof" to that art. However when it comes to gameing, its a whole different story. Think of it more like a key to unlock something unique in some digital world. Want to own the unique special edition sword with rare attributes in the Zelda-verse or the uber lazer in your favorite open world space game? Buy the NFT block chain address to it that says you and only you can have it (check out Phantom Galaxies). Want to own the penthouse apartment in the zuckers-verse? Buy the NFT key that says only you have ownership rights. There are already people buying up digital lots in VR games in development. Want to be a unique character with unique pets in World-of-crypto-craft? Buy the NFT's to unlock these. Want to own a special randomly generated horse in a horse race gambling game? Buy the NFT to unlock, and feed your NFT in with someone else to "breed" a new horse with chances of getting the same rare attributes (this is the concept of D-race). Want to own the rare uber-pokemon in the poke-verse to battle with others (check out Illuvium, same concept)? Buy the NFT to unlock. Sell them if you get bored for more/less money, and the game developer gets a cut! The gaming and even the gambling application scenarios are enormous. That's why crypto gaming will likely be huge and I myself have invested in it's foundations for the long term (Enjin, Seedify-fund, D-race, etc). It's one of the few applications that makes sense outside of rich snobs flexing. Tell me I'm wrong.
  • dgellow 5y ago
    Everything you describe has been possible for decades, without the need of NFTs or other cryptocurrency concepts. Even the market aspect has been done in the past, you have for example Diablo 3's Auction House where users could trade for real money, and was a horrible gaming experience.
    • iamacyborg 5y ago
      I thought the AH was great in D3, certainly light years ahead of the trade experience in Path of Exile.
• PaulHoule 5y ago
  My current #1 side project is "three-sided cards" which live in both the physical and digital worlds. There was that time I got a "free" inkjet printer and discovered that the ink would dry out if I didn't use it regularly, so I challenged myself to print something every day. I have been through a year of continuous improvement and thinking a lot about how to develop more physical-digital objects, performances, etc. I am still dismissive of Facebook's "metaverse", but my current work and planned work is all metaverse-ready.
• hosh 5y ago
  > These artworks are infinitely reproducible and therefore hard to value, if anyone can own a perfect copy of the work with the click of a button, what value does it have? From the perspective of non-dual Shaiva Tantra, the value of rasa (aesthetic, beauty, art), is its transformative experience of the consciousness as consciousness experiences art. From such a frame, it is uniquely valuable to the specific viewer and the art; no two experience are ever the same, not fungible or reproducible. The transformative experience can expand meaning and significance to one’s journey in life, how to better contribute to the world. It is not monetary value, and yet can have great value to both individuals and society. On the other hand, modern art has spent an (imo excessive) amount of effort deconstructing classical notions of art, so it shouldn’t be surprising that among what gets deconstructed are the societal valuation of art itself.
• btbuildem 5y ago
  I don't know about this art stuff, but NFTs seem made for solving the problem of deepfakes. Say a politician does a speech, it is recorded, hashed, a corresponding token is generated and archived. We can all verify that the token exists and has not been tampered with. When someone posts a video of that speech, we can verify whether it's the original "as aired", modified in some way, or fully synthetic. The politician may very well be lying through their teeth, but we can at least verify that the recording is authentic, and of reality as it happened.
  • zohch 5y ago
    Has this problem not already been solved by digital signature schemes, and are NFTs not built on these very digital signature schemes, and have the digital signature schemes not been utterly useless for solving the deepfake problem, and have deepfake problem not been completely exaggerated to begin with? I'm actually unsure what you gain from NFTs over simple PGP except the buzzword factor.
  • Jxl180 5y ago
    Can’t we just do that with a pgp signature verified by the public key of a politician?Blockchain seems like an unnecessary step.
    • casi18 5y ago
      Hmm, but where would we put the data that we know will be safe and trusted? We need a shared database we can all use. One that keeps a record of the changes of its state over time, and anyone can verify it and host a node! Ah but it might get spammed. We could add a small fee for each write action. But if someone gets too many of the tokens could they alter the history by rewriting it? we need some kind of consensus mechanism, we could reward participation but make it expensive to lie? Make cooperation the winning move in the game. How do we give the tokens value? maybe some kind of natural scarcity to their issuance, or a fee burning mechanism. As more people use the database the value of the tokens will go up too as they are needed for writing to it, which in turn makes it more expensive to attack and safer storage. That sounds like it might work.
• 015a 5y ago
  I'm not in love with NFTs, but many of these points are trivially easy to shoot down. > artists are waking up to find that their digital artworks are being sold by fraudsters to unwitting victims. As the author attests; this is just a problem with art, not a problem with NFTs. The potential reward for counterfeiting an NFT isn't significantly higher than traditional art, especially given how much cooler the NFT markets have become over the past few months, and the degree to which we understand how prevalent traditional art counterfeiting is (you'll notice this as a theme; cryptocurrencies don't generally create new problems, they simply make the existing problems of our world much more open and obvious). The vastly more correct criticism to lobby in this domain is that, generally, the systems and mechanisms to prove the providence of an NFT will fundamentally rely on some kind of centralized identity verification (maybe just a Twitter verified badge); this is antithetical to the goals of crypto, in general. Though, in practice, it is not antithetical to the goals of most NFT holders. And that's far more important. > This comes hot on the heals of what feels like mania History would remember "tulip mania" as a "tulip investment opportunity" if it had never crashed. Point being, yes there are some signals which suggest that an investment domain is in "mania", and NFTs did relay some of those signals. At this point, the mania has died down quite a bit; but only time can say for sure. A critical piece of information that many people fail to consider when seeing the prices these NFTs are sold for; they're purchased with ETH (or another cryptocurrency). CNN lists the price in USD. There are tons of people who, over the past five years, became "ETH millionaires"; they may have thousands of ETH, but that's different than millions in cash. There's nothing to spend ETH on. Converting it into USD, to go buy yourself a McClaren, would require a massive tax payment at best, and in many countries the laws surrounding this are so unclear, or straight illegal, that a fiat bank account suddenly receiving a $50M transfer may draw the ire of authorities. So; something comes along they can actually buy; they buy it. You can argue against the utility of such a transaction. I'm not sure that's relevant, but I'd argue its actually massively utilitarian: Early adopters believe, one day, they will be able to buy a Big Mac with their ETH. Buying a random piece of art for $5M USD in ETH generates news headlines. Its an investment, both in an asset they can eventually, hopefully liquidate, and also in buzz to get more people into the system. > Transactions made through the Ethereum wallet of Beeple are responsible for 78,306 kilograms of CO2 emissions One could, with some amount of validity, argue that securely transferring millions of USD in wealth while only creating the pollutive equivalent of six UK adults is actually an improvement on traditional systems, considering the massive amount of "hidden pollution" our traditional financial system consumes. The bigger issue is that this is an argument of per-transaction scale, and similar carbon outputs are generated even with smaller transactions. Gas prices are the biggest criticism of ETH right now, and the best solutions the community has generated to date are mostly new sub-chains (like MATIC) which don't have the same marketing momentum ETH does. > there is still no clear timeline in sight for Ethereum This is the big question. The timeline outlined on the official Ethereum site is quite clear; mid to late 2022. Whether they can stick to that timeline is another matter; democratic systems are messy, as anyone who has participated in the US government can attest. Things are looking rather positive though.
• nkrisc 5y ago
  Perhaps my understanding of NFTs is lacking, but what prevents someone from pulling a scam like in The Producers and simply selling multiple NFTs for the same work of art, apart from people finding out about it? Is simply the fact that the artist publicly states “this hash belongs to this piece”? So if the buyer wasn’t paying attention or didn’t validate the hash there’s nothing stopping someone from selling as many NFTs as they want?
  • tshaddox 5y ago
    I imagine it’s no different than an artist selling a painting they claim is one of a kind but isn’t.
    • lottin 5y ago
      Well, a painting is of one a kind. It can't be replicated with exact fidelity, unlike an abstract sequence of 1s and 0s.
      • lalaland1125 5y ago
        NFTs are technically one of a kind too since they have an exact timestamp ordering creation. A second copy would have a different timestamp.
        • lottin 5y ago
          > A second copy would have a different timestamp. No, you can copy the timestamp as well.
      • capableweb 5y ago
        NFTs are based around the idea that you create a new cryptocurrency for each object you want to sell on a chain, for example Ethereum. When you do this "creation of a non-fungible token", your token gets an address that is essentially an "ID" for the token you've created. Every token you create gets a unique ID, that only that token has. So with that in mind, a NFT is as unique as a painting in your example, as a NFT is always "one of a kind".
• jrm4 5y ago
  NFT's are a crap solution to a very important problem that needs solving. The "shares" idea is a MUCH BETTER ONE; i.e. flip the model. Make giving money to artists a collective and inclusive thing that we can all participate in and reap the benefits of multiple works, as opposed to the silliness of fake exclusivity over individual works.
  • wombat-man 5y ago
    that to me is just patreon or something. Like sell me a postcard or a print or a book. I can get into that. the NFT thing is fine, but I just don't think it hits the same as wandering around a friends house and seeing a cool painting on the wall. You having a NFT with a link to an image that's hosted on some site that's in some kind of NFT wallet or on your personal website just doesn't have the same effect. Not sure why some NFT prices are so high, maybe some people are just very rich and are having fun.
  • dmonitor 5y ago
    You can already do that. I already do that because I'm a furry. NFTs don't contribute anything here can't be replicated by a spreadsheet.
• shadowtree 5y ago
  The Internet was designed and built by hippies (literally bearded dudes out of Berkeley). Open protocols, bits are free. Copying is a core function. Open Source, BSD, GNU, ... all an extension of that thought. While this was awesome for the spread and easy build out of the modern apps we all use, it had a massive "flaw" when it comes to property rights. This was exemplified by what happened to music through p2p file sharing, e.g. Napster. Bits don't have copy protection. The industry tried to roll back this fundamental freedom of the web via DRM schemes, with massive pushback from the old guard of netizens. But, freedom is never perfect, the devastating effect on artists is real. Streaming kind of solved the copy problem, but the amount you can charge for music now is miniscule. (Just using music as an example). NFTs, web3, metaverse are all now being positioned to rollback this fundamental flaw of the Internet - copy protection, ownership on the bit level. Digital scarcity. There will be no Right-Click Copy in the metaverse, no screenshots in web3. The struggle with NFTs right now is that it is this idea of digital ownership on top of bits that don't support it, hence this mind-boggling maelstrom of crazy. Personally, having grown up in HACKER CULTURE (see the name of this very forum, oh the irony) e.g. having spent time at copy parties in shady buildings, admiring the intros/demos on cracked games, the BBS scene ... this whole web3 thing creeps me out. I totally get why it's kids doing it, they don't know it better, and maybe this is just normal, the pendulum always swings. Some VCs will get ultra-rich pumping this, big corps will be all over it (charging for bits? ironclad copy-protection? price arbitrage on premium bits?), even government will see the upside - no more anonymity, every bit is signed. Bleh.
  • jayd16 5y ago
    How do any of these technologies stop data copying, exactly? NFTs seem pretty ineffective. At best you can argue a walled garden might end up being the most popular incarnation of the metaverse, but its not fundamental to it.
    • shadowtree 5y ago
      The metaverse will be built on closed protocols. Crypto is at odds with free bits. both are trying to bring real world concepts into the digital. they are at fundamental odds with the foundational tech and protocols of the current Internet. people complain about Apple's "walled garden". Just watch what happens if the whole web3 is one big controlled ecosystem, pay for play. I can create bits out of thin air right now - I don't need to MINE them. just insane how everything is going into hard reverse.
• jelliclesfarm 5y ago
  NFT art is to Art as masturbation is to porn.
• missinfo 5y ago
  Imagine Kant had issued the “categorical imperative” as an NFT. It could be worth billions today. Other ideas such as hell or courage or irony are so old no one knows who invented them. But a market in ideas conceived as NFTs could solve this. I envision such a market as a powerful tool to determine the value and originality of ideas, while providing a powerful social incentive for the development of more and better ideas. Notice that because ideas are purely abstract, they are exceedingly fit to be represented by purely abstract entities like NFTs. https://brunomacaes.substack.com/p/nfts-and-the-marketplace-of-ideas https://brunomacaes.substack.com/p/nfts-and-the-marketplace-...