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Some important differences: The print is beautiful and hanging on my wall. The print won't evaporate when the url suddenly points to a server that was shutdow

Some important differences: The print is beautiful and hanging on my wall. The print won't evaporate when the url suddenly points to a server that was shutdown from lack of payment. I know I bought a print, nobody was trying to trick me into thinking it was the original. And, most importantly of all, the artist got paid.

mattdesl 5y ago
The NFT-signed work is beautiful and also hanging on my walls (both digital, such as social media, and physical, in that I own prints representing the tokens, signed by the artists who have distributed the same NFTs). The media does not evaporate as it is either on-chain, or distributed via IPFS (ie: peer-to-peer rather than a central server). None of the artists I have purchased NFTs from have tried to trick me (including Anders Hoff, mentioned in the OP article, who has distributed his work as an NFT). And, most importantly, the artists and non-profit organizations in the arts are getting paid via NFT sales. :)
- snarf21 5y ago
  And I can copy that url off of the chain, pay nothing, print it out and hang it on my wall. You bought nothing. If you want to support an artist, give them money. NFTs are the new penny stocks. Pump and dump.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- threeseed 5y ago
  But you could have done this with a credit card. And I think for most people getting a piece of paper, physically signed by the author stating that it's their work is far more valuable than some UUID on a computer.
  - mattdesl 5y ago
    Some NFT platforms also support credit cards. But, I'd rather buy art in a way that doesn't include exploitative third parties that take a significant cut (Stripe, Shopify, PayPal, currency exchange fees when paying an artist in another country, etc). For reference, the last NFT I purchased on Hicetnunc.xyz had a protocol fee of 0.002947 XTZ (around 1¢ USD) and a platform fee of 2.5%, the rest of the sale went directly to the artist's wallet. To your second point; this remains to be seen—society can place value on many different abstract concepts, "ink on paper" may not be the only valuable vehicle for art and culture.
    - atom_arranger 5y ago
      Platform fee of 2.5% doesn’t seem that different from the fees the payment processors you listed charge.
      - mattdesl 5y ago
        In practice, the fees in traditional e-commerce systems tend to be significantly higher than 2.5% (I say this as an artist running a Shopify print shop for a few years). Some services like Bandcamp are upwards of 12-18%. Hicetnunc fees are fixed, and the free market gives an opportunity for other platforms to improve on this if the community desires a marketplace with lower fees (it's much easier to build an alternative to Hicetnunc than an alternative Stripe/Shopify/PayPal). Artists are also given a 10-25% royalty (which they decide) for each resale of a token on the Hicetnunc marketplace. And, of course, since it is all peer-to-peer, you are free to exchange art tokens with no fees at all, save the negligible protocol/transaction fees.
    - indigochill 5y ago
      > society can place value on many different abstract concepts What society definitely can't place value on is a URL to a digital asset that may or may not be there tomorrow, because an uninsured, untrusted value store can't be relied on. There's nothing saying NFT artifacts have to be digital, though, I'd think. Using them to facilitate trade of physical artifacts would back the trade with (relatively) reliable value stores (physical artifacts) while benefiting from the low transaction fees.
  - ThomPete 5y ago
    you’d think that but you would be wrong. Kids today happily buy skins and items from games and are quite proud of them.
- sumeno 5y ago
  I hate to break it to you, but things on IPFS can and do evaporate.
  - mattdesl 5y ago
    Indeed; nothing in life is permanent.
  - nybble41 5y ago
    You can always pin it on your own IPFS node rather than rely on others to keep the content available.
- jrochkind1 5y ago
  You don't need to buy an NFT to hang prints of the art that's pictured in the URL in the NFT on your wall. Not even legally. Unless the artist sold you an exclusive license to hang on your wall, I guess, which they can do with or without an NFT.
- piaste 5y ago
  > And, most importantly, the artists and non-profit organizations in the arts are getting paid via NFT sales. So why couldn't you have just donated money to the artists and right-click-saved / printed the art anyway, without involving a blockchain?
  - mattdesl 5y ago
    For many reasons, including lower fees (see [1]), acquiring ownership of an artist-signed asset, rather than a digital media file (the limited-edition token is cryptographically signed by the artist, the media file is not), participating in a digital art community, supporting decentralized systems, etc. A simple way to frame Hicetnunc is a social media platform that is not driven by FAANG, advertising models, and "Like" buttons, but instead by artists, collectors, and OSS developers participating in a digital economy: selling and trading tokens, and also exploring ways to steward and maintain that work without solely relying on traditional centralized third-party services. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29160891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29160891
    - piaste 5y ago
      > For many reasons, including lower fees (see [1]) The lower fees derive from the medium used (crypto instead of traditional payment processors). You didn't need to involve a NFT to send crypto to the artist's wallet. > acquiring ownership of an artist-signed asset, rather than a digital media file (the limited-edition token is cryptographically signed by the artist, the media file is not) I'm going to refer to the rest of this comment thread about whether 'ownership' is a suitable word for having a cryptographic signature applied to your blockchain address, when the media file in question is bit-for-bit identical. As you can guess, I hardly think so. There is nothing you can do as an 'owner' of a digital ape picture that anybody else who right-clicked it and saved it can't also do, with the possible exception of getting kudos from the artist for the money you gave them. But a simple donation would have had the same result. > participating in a digital art community Which hardly requires NFTs, only your involvement and communication. Online art communities go back to Elfwood. > supporting decentralized systems, etc. Tautology. "I use NFTs because I want to support the use of NFTs". -- > A simple way to frame Hicetnunc is a social media platform that is not driven by FAANG, advertising models, and "Like" buttons, but instead by artists, collectors, and OSS developers participating in a digital economy: selling and trading tokens, and also exploring ways to steward and maintain that work without solely relying on traditional centralized third-party services. I'm a Fediverse user and I want to nuke the FAANGs, so I'm fully on board with promoting alternative, decentralized social networks. I just don't believe that adding glorified baseball trading cards to the recipe makes them better or stronger in any way. I never heard anyone saying that Team Fortress 2 became a better community after it became an online market for ugly digital hats.
- shuger 5y ago
  Are any NFTs at all actually on chain? First time I hear about this.
  - mattdesl 5y ago
    Yep, see ArtBlocks, Deafbeef tokens for example.
capableweb 5y ago
Immaterial differences at best. > The print is beautiful and hanging on my wall. Physical: you can view it, it can be stolen. NFT: you can view it, it can stolen. > The print won't evaporate when the url suddenly points to a server that was shutdown from lack of payment. Physical: might burn down/stolen, insurance + security + safety prevents that. NFT: Host might disappear. Content-addressing solves that. > I know I bought a print, nobody was trying to trick me into thinking it was the original. Physical: You can prove you have it because you have it. NFT: You can prove you have it because your wallet contains it. > And, most importantly of all, the artist got paid. Physical: Artist can get paid when it initially got sold NFT: Artist can get paid when it initially got sold, and can take a piece of each resell thereafter.
- iamacyborg 5y ago
  If someone can break into your property to steal your painting they can break into your crypto wallet to steal your NFT.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    Depends on a lot of things. Usually paintings are hanged somewhere where you can see them, usually not in safes. But with NFTs, you can have the display on the wall while the wallet is in a safe. You could put a painting in a safe too, but you won't be able to as easily show it off then.
    - TylerE 5y ago
      How safe is your wallet when you’re tied to a chair with a gun pointed at your head?
  - toolz 5y ago
    You can't honestly believe the same skillset applies here. Hacking digital assets is not the same as breaking a quarter inch pane of glass and turning a knob while no one is around.
jrochkind1 5y ago
And unless the artist actually signed the print, it's probably fraud. Is it even fraud if the artist didn't actually... what even? the NFT?
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  Hmmmm, all of my prints were bought at museums or from the artist directly. Probably not fraud, but I get your point.
wonderwonder 5y ago
One interesting aspect of NFT's is that the artist can continue to get paid on each sale of the item, automatically receiving a set percentage of the sale price on each sale in perpetuity.
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  How many NFT systems actually do this?
  - mattdesl 5y ago
    Almost all of the major marketplaces on Ethereum and Tezos facilitate artist royalties.
    - Ensorceled 5y ago
      How is this being collected/enforced with anonymous wallets and transactions?
      - wonderwonder 5y ago
        The wallet address is your id. So essentially if I create an nft, it is forever associated with my wallet as the creator. I set a royalty amount in the smart contract and the transfer of the nft / token takes place through the contract and automatically sends the percentage of the fee to my wallet. The token does not go directly from A to B, it passes through the contract where the logic to transfer the token is implemented.
        iamacyborg 5y ago
        So if the artist loses access to their wallet they'll never be able to retrieve payments accrued?
        wonderwonder 5y ago

mattdesl 5y ago

The NFT-signed work is beautiful and also hanging on my walls (both digital, such as social media, and physical, in that I own prints representing the tokens, signed by the artists who have distributed the same NFTs). The media does not evaporate as it is either on-chain, or distributed via IPFS (ie: peer-to-peer rather than a central server). None of the artists I have purchased NFTs from have tried to trick me (including Anders Hoff, mentioned in the OP article, who has distributed his work as an NFT). And, most importantly, the artists and non-profit organizations in the arts are getting paid via NFT sales. :)

snarf21 5y ago
And I can copy that url off of the chain, pay nothing, print it out and hang it on my wall. You bought nothing. If you want to support an artist, give them money. NFTs are the new penny stocks. Pump and dump.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
threeseed 5y ago
But you could have done this with a credit card. And I think for most people getting a piece of paper, physically signed by the author stating that it's their work is far more valuable than some UUID on a computer.
- mattdesl 5y ago
  Some NFT platforms also support credit cards. But, I'd rather buy art in a way that doesn't include exploitative third parties that take a significant cut (Stripe, Shopify, PayPal, currency exchange fees when paying an artist in another country, etc). For reference, the last NFT I purchased on Hicetnunc.xyz had a protocol fee of 0.002947 XTZ (around 1¢ USD) and a platform fee of 2.5%, the rest of the sale went directly to the artist's wallet. To your second point; this remains to be seen—society can place value on many different abstract concepts, "ink on paper" may not be the only valuable vehicle for art and culture.
  - atom_arranger 5y ago
    Platform fee of 2.5% doesn’t seem that different from the fees the payment processors you listed charge.
    - mattdesl 5y ago
      In practice, the fees in traditional e-commerce systems tend to be significantly higher than 2.5% (I say this as an artist running a Shopify print shop for a few years). Some services like Bandcamp are upwards of 12-18%. Hicetnunc fees are fixed, and the free market gives an opportunity for other platforms to improve on this if the community desires a marketplace with lower fees (it's much easier to build an alternative to Hicetnunc than an alternative Stripe/Shopify/PayPal). Artists are also given a 10-25% royalty (which they decide) for each resale of a token on the Hicetnunc marketplace. And, of course, since it is all peer-to-peer, you are free to exchange art tokens with no fees at all, save the negligible protocol/transaction fees.
  - indigochill 5y ago
    > society can place value on many different abstract concepts What society definitely can't place value on is a URL to a digital asset that may or may not be there tomorrow, because an uninsured, untrusted value store can't be relied on. There's nothing saying NFT artifacts have to be digital, though, I'd think. Using them to facilitate trade of physical artifacts would back the trade with (relatively) reliable value stores (physical artifacts) while benefiting from the low transaction fees.
- ThomPete 5y ago
  you’d think that but you would be wrong. Kids today happily buy skins and items from games and are quite proud of them.
sumeno 5y ago
I hate to break it to you, but things on IPFS can and do evaporate.
- mattdesl 5y ago
  Indeed; nothing in life is permanent.
- nybble41 5y ago
  You can always pin it on your own IPFS node rather than rely on others to keep the content available.
jrochkind1 5y ago
You don't need to buy an NFT to hang prints of the art that's pictured in the URL in the NFT on your wall. Not even legally. Unless the artist sold you an exclusive license to hang on your wall, I guess, which they can do with or without an NFT.
piaste 5y ago
> And, most importantly, the artists and non-profit organizations in the arts are getting paid via NFT sales. So why couldn't you have just donated money to the artists and right-click-saved / printed the art anyway, without involving a blockchain?
- mattdesl 5y ago
  For many reasons, including lower fees (see [1]), acquiring ownership of an artist-signed asset, rather than a digital media file (the limited-edition token is cryptographically signed by the artist, the media file is not), participating in a digital art community, supporting decentralized systems, etc. A simple way to frame Hicetnunc is a social media platform that is not driven by FAANG, advertising models, and "Like" buttons, but instead by artists, collectors, and OSS developers participating in a digital economy: selling and trading tokens, and also exploring ways to steward and maintain that work without solely relying on traditional centralized third-party services. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29160891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29160891
  - piaste 5y ago
    > For many reasons, including lower fees (see [1]) The lower fees derive from the medium used (crypto instead of traditional payment processors). You didn't need to involve a NFT to send crypto to the artist's wallet. > acquiring ownership of an artist-signed asset, rather than a digital media file (the limited-edition token is cryptographically signed by the artist, the media file is not) I'm going to refer to the rest of this comment thread about whether 'ownership' is a suitable word for having a cryptographic signature applied to your blockchain address, when the media file in question is bit-for-bit identical. As you can guess, I hardly think so. There is nothing you can do as an 'owner' of a digital ape picture that anybody else who right-clicked it and saved it can't also do, with the possible exception of getting kudos from the artist for the money you gave them. But a simple donation would have had the same result. > participating in a digital art community Which hardly requires NFTs, only your involvement and communication. Online art communities go back to Elfwood. > supporting decentralized systems, etc. Tautology. "I use NFTs because I want to support the use of NFTs". -- > A simple way to frame Hicetnunc is a social media platform that is not driven by FAANG, advertising models, and "Like" buttons, but instead by artists, collectors, and OSS developers participating in a digital economy: selling and trading tokens, and also exploring ways to steward and maintain that work without solely relying on traditional centralized third-party services. I'm a Fediverse user and I want to nuke the FAANGs, so I'm fully on board with promoting alternative, decentralized social networks. I just don't believe that adding glorified baseball trading cards to the recipe makes them better or stronger in any way. I never heard anyone saying that Team Fortress 2 became a better community after it became an online market for ugly digital hats.
shuger 5y ago
Are any NFTs at all actually on chain? First time I hear about this.
- mattdesl 5y ago
  Yep, see ArtBlocks, Deafbeef tokens for example.

capableweb 5y ago

Immaterial differences at best. > The print is beautiful and hanging on my wall. Physical: you can view it, it can be stolen. NFT: you can view it, it can stolen. > The print won't evaporate when the url suddenly points to a server that was shutdown from lack of payment. Physical: might burn down/stolen, insurance + security + safety prevents that. NFT: Host might disappear. Content-addressing solves that. > I know I bought a print, nobody was trying to trick me into thinking it was the original. Physical: You can prove you have it because you have it. NFT: You can prove you have it because your wallet contains it. > And, most importantly of all, the artist got paid. Physical: Artist can get paid when it initially got sold NFT: Artist can get paid when it initially got sold, and can take a piece of each resell thereafter.

iamacyborg 5y ago
If someone can break into your property to steal your painting they can break into your crypto wallet to steal your NFT.
- capableweb 5y ago
  Depends on a lot of things. Usually paintings are hanged somewhere where you can see them, usually not in safes. But with NFTs, you can have the display on the wall while the wallet is in a safe. You could put a painting in a safe too, but you won't be able to as easily show it off then.
  - TylerE 5y ago
    How safe is your wallet when you’re tied to a chair with a gun pointed at your head?
- toolz 5y ago
  You can't honestly believe the same skillset applies here. Hacking digital assets is not the same as breaking a quarter inch pane of glass and turning a knob while no one is around.

jrochkind1 5y ago

And unless the artist actually signed the print, it's probably fraud. Is it even fraud if the artist didn't actually... what even? the NFT?

Ensorceled 5y ago
Hmmmm, all of my prints were bought at museums or from the artist directly. Probably not fraud, but I get your point.

wonderwonder 5y ago

One interesting aspect of NFT's is that the artist can continue to get paid on each sale of the item, automatically receiving a set percentage of the sale price on each sale in perpetuity.

Ensorceled 5y ago
How many NFT systems actually do this?
- mattdesl 5y ago
  Almost all of the major marketplaces on Ethereum and Tezos facilitate artist royalties.
  - Ensorceled 5y ago
    How is this being collected/enforced with anonymous wallets and transactions?
    - wonderwonder 5y ago
      The wallet address is your id. So essentially if I create an nft, it is forever associated with my wallet as the creator. I set a royalty amount in the smart contract and the transfer of the nft / token takes place through the contract and automatically sends the percentage of the fee to my wallet. The token does not go directly from A to B, it passes through the contract where the logic to transfer the token is implemented.
      - iamacyborg 5y ago
        So if the artist loses access to their wallet they'll never be able to retrieve payments accrued?
        wonderwonder 5y ago