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The problem is that people don’t understand what NFTs are and talk about them with the idea that they are about representing digital art. NFTs are about repres

The problem is that people don’t understand what NFTs are and talk about them with the idea that they are about representing digital art. NFTs are about representing non-fungible digital assets. For some reason, NFT art took off (which I don’t understand), but that wasn’t what NFTs were built for. NFTs can represent digital assets that exist fully on a blockchain and aren’t tied to off-chain assets. A digital ID, a in-game asset, a digital license, a ENS name, etc… are all NFTs and don’t need to reference any odd-chain URLs or images.

dwater 5y ago
Can you explain what non-fungible digital assets are? Because the reason I think NFTs are a scam is that I think of digital assets as inherently fungible.
- paraknight 5y ago
  E.g. a digital concert ticket
  - pornel 5y ago
    The concert organizer acts is an inherent central authority. The whole problem is easily solvable with a QR code and a web API. Using a trust-no-one arctic-melting decentralised layer on top of a thing that is inherently decided by a single real-world entity makes no sense whatsoever.
    - paraknight 5y ago
      I think that the true value of NFTs will come from interoperability, where there is no central authority, and you can treat it as a sort of cross-platform standard for verifying ownership of digital assets. This doesn't really apply to concert tickets (except if someone grants some special privileges to people who went to a certain concert in some unrelated virtual space), but there are advantages to not centralising authority for certain things (say, domain name ownership, why should ICAAN control that).
  - friendzis 5y ago
    What stops me from copying ticket data from the NFT and using it to enter the concert? If the concert venue somehow checks ownership of private key associated with the NFT it means they are effectively using some form of identity verification and blockchain is really really bad for this purpose
    - paraknight 5y ago
      You don't use the blockchain to verify ownership of a private key. You know the public key, and the owner of the private key can sign any message to prove that they indeed have the private key associated with that public key. This can be done completely offline. Isn't a crypto wallet, literally a key pair, the purest form of identity verification? It's something you have (private key) and something you know (passphrase). No need for some central authority, no need for privacy concerns.
      - friendzis 5y ago
        You are right on the latter point, a keypair itself is a pretty good method to verify pseudonymous identity. However, we are talking about NFTs as tickets. Traditional ticketing relies on secrecy, or in other words possession of ticked-id grants entry. Data embedded in NFTs is (and has to be) public, therefore token auth model does not work, you must use challenge-response model. The very point here is that ticket data has to be linked with a keypair and provided at the moment of sale to be verified upon entry. Public key must be provided at moment of sale, blockchains are one way to store that link, private database of ticketing system is another. Blockchains bring their own disadvantages and the only advantage is trustless transfer. In what scenario trustless pseudonymous transfer of a ticket is an advantage worth disadvantages of the blockchain.
  - aj3 5y ago
    What's the benefit of making those resellable? To encourage scalping?
    - paraknight 5y ago
      NFTs can be created that are non-resellable, you just build that into the smart contract. Even if they were, you can see the full transaction history and decide to reject anyone but first owners
- noetic_techy 5y ago
  I think NFT's applied to art make only nominal sense. I myself had to come to the realization that NFT's are 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 the digital world. Want to own some unique special edition sword with rare attributes in the Zelda-verse? Buy the NFT block chain address to it that says you and only you can have it. Want to own the penthouse apartment in the zucker-verse? Buy the NFT key that says only you have ownership rights. Want to be a unique character with unique pets in World-of-crypto-craft? Buy the NFT's to unlock these. Sell them if you get bored for more money, and the game developer gets a cut! The gaming 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.
  - eropple 5y ago
    "Only you have it. We definitely didn't copypaste the meshes and logic and sell it to somebody else because the idea of digital non-fungibility is a neat joke. We promise. BTW: when you buy this, our execs are buying Porsches and other things that are real. Cool, huh?" This holds no water and the streak remains unbroken: nobody I've seen describe blockchain-fiddling with respect to games describes the process as anything that anyone who plays games wants. Nobody actually wants this except for the people who want to make everybody else play involuntarily into weird cryptocurrency schemes while the schemer still holds the bag. Diablo could have individual uniques right now if they wanted and you could trade them if you wanted and nobody needs to burn a dumpster full of coal to do it. It is genuinely a social toxin and you should stop.
  - elevader 5y ago
    But how does the NFT actually help with that? Couldn't developers/companies just create copies of that item/asset and sell them as often as they want to? If they want to sell assets/items exactly once nothing is stopping them from doing so right now, they are the only ones who can actually enforce that anyways.
- madacol 5y ago
  I'm no expert at all, but this is how see it from an outsider perspective. With an NFT you can prove the ownership of X digital asset, that proof of ownership is what is non-fungible In order for NFTs-art to make sense to me, artist must attest that "whoever owns that digital asset in the ______ (ethereum blockchain?) " has the artist's recognition of ownership, and is a big UX problem for artists to really prove that, which I believe it's "solved" by platforms like opensea attesting on behalf of artist So in practice, your buying the recognition of opensea that you own X asset, which opensea claims that is approved by X artist (it's also claimed by the artist on social networks or alike). there's still a problem there if the relationship between artist and opensea will be intact in the future, I don't know if or how they try to solve it So in practice, most of it could have been done with a centralized database, but that would be missing the point. There surely are knowledgeable NFT-creators who knows what they are doing and they can provide the attestation by themselfs, without any intermediary party, and that's where things get interesting with NFTs, look for example in gaming, especially where assets are shared among multiple games (otherwise it still could have been done with a database), it's just all impractical for non crypto-savvy folks
  - pornel 5y ago
    NFT can't prove ownership of anything but itself. Anyone can make a new NFT for the same artwork/game-asset/bridge/moon-plot and claim they own it. There isn't even a uniqueness check, so there's no limit to copying other people's NFTs. It's like buying a copy of an artwork in a museum gift shop. Your print is yours, but there can be thousands of other copies and there can be printed more at any time. None of them are the original artwork anyway.
    - cslarson 5y ago
      > and claim they own it. But that claim means nothing if the in-game asset is not recognized in the game, and that copied artwork is for some crazy reason not recognized by other interested parties as the actual original NFT. None of them are the original NFT, minted by the creator.
      - 5y ago
ehnto 5y ago
> For some reason, NFT art took off (which I don’t understand) Status and money laundering, so no different to regular art sales.
mrow84 5y ago
For digital underlying assets, what is the social value of imposing scarcity? For non-digital underlying assets, what is it that ensures the link between the NFT and the asset?
giantrobot 5y ago
> A digital ID, a in-game asset, a digital license, a ENS name, etc… These are literally things tied to off-chain assets. Your "ownership" of any of those things only matters if someone else cares about the particular block chain it lives on. If you "own" a game asset on blockchain A and I only care about blockchain B, as far as I'm concerned you don't "own" anything. There's nothing stopping anyone from starting yet another blockchain and reselling all NFTs on that new chain. Besides, unless a URL a token "owns" lives on the blockchain it literally points to some off-chain resource. If that URL in any way becomes inaccessible the thing you "own" is meaningless.
- kryptk 5y ago
  A game that exists in two blockchains would offer a way to bridge assets between them, or succeeded by one that does. In fact the opposite is starting to be true: assets from game A being usable in game B.
  - acdha 5y ago
    This only works if the developers choose to spend time implementing an import/export system. That’s a lot of work and since they need to have an arrangement for that anyway, why wouldn’t they use their existing billing system to retain control of it and a greater share of the profits?
  - giantrobot 5y ago
    Again, assets on a blockchain only matter if someone cares about that blockchain. If I only support blockchain B, it doesn't matter how many assets you have on blockchain A as I will never support it. If I'm invested in blockchain B there's little reason to add to my expenses to support other blockchains. Even in the most practical terms, if I sell in game assets they're ones I made for my game. I know they work with my game. Why would I put in extra effort to import third party assets I don't make money on? If your assets are in a proprietary format I'd need to spend more money licensing some importer or build my own.
acdha 5y ago
> a in-game asset, a digital license Neither of these are good examples: the real value comes from the outside legal relationships. If you have an in-game asset, what matters is whether EA thinks you own it and you get what they choose to implement. Similarly, a Windows license key is valid to the extent that you have a legal agreement with Microsoft — if you transfer it and the license doesn’t cover that, the blockchain doesn’t mean anything. If they do allow transfers, you don’t need a blockchain since their SQL Server database is what matters and it does the job faster and so much cheaper. Very few NFT concepts are different than this: the legal weight comes from the outside world and the cheaper alternatives are likely to win out once the VCs drop the subsidies and start trying to get money out of the system.
friendzis 5y ago
NFTs essentially are blobs of data on the blokchain. As soon as that data references anything off chain you need off-chain methods to sync data with a blockchain, at which point the blockchain becomes merely a datastore. > A digital ID, a in-game asset, a digital license All of which require off chain sync. For NFTs to have any meaning at all, the embedded data must be world readable. At which point that digital ID, in-game asset, license all are usable by anyone else. In order for that "ownership" to have any meaning at all it must be exclusive and therefore the service must check your identity one way or another, be it somehow checking that you actually own the private key corresponding to NFT, or using any other mutually agreed authentication method. If the service does not recognize the particular blockchain fork your NFT resides in your NFT is more than useless, because it does not prove absolutely anything to the service provider. Proving identity via blockchain is probably the most inefficient method known. NFTs can only make viable statements about on-chain assets. As far as I am aware, there are no other on-chain assets than cryptotokens, therefore all NFTs do are provide a level of indirection to cryptotokens.

dwater 5y ago

Can you explain what non-fungible digital assets are? Because the reason I think NFTs are a scam is that I think of digital assets as inherently fungible.

paraknight 5y ago
E.g. a digital concert ticket
- pornel 5y ago
  The concert organizer acts is an inherent central authority. The whole problem is easily solvable with a QR code and a web API. Using a trust-no-one arctic-melting decentralised layer on top of a thing that is inherently decided by a single real-world entity makes no sense whatsoever.
  - paraknight 5y ago
    I think that the true value of NFTs will come from interoperability, where there is no central authority, and you can treat it as a sort of cross-platform standard for verifying ownership of digital assets. This doesn't really apply to concert tickets (except if someone grants some special privileges to people who went to a certain concert in some unrelated virtual space), but there are advantages to not centralising authority for certain things (say, domain name ownership, why should ICAAN control that).
- friendzis 5y ago
  What stops me from copying ticket data from the NFT and using it to enter the concert? If the concert venue somehow checks ownership of private key associated with the NFT it means they are effectively using some form of identity verification and blockchain is really really bad for this purpose
  - paraknight 5y ago
    You don't use the blockchain to verify ownership of a private key. You know the public key, and the owner of the private key can sign any message to prove that they indeed have the private key associated with that public key. This can be done completely offline. Isn't a crypto wallet, literally a key pair, the purest form of identity verification? It's something you have (private key) and something you know (passphrase). No need for some central authority, no need for privacy concerns.
    - friendzis 5y ago
      You are right on the latter point, a keypair itself is a pretty good method to verify pseudonymous identity. However, we are talking about NFTs as tickets. Traditional ticketing relies on secrecy, or in other words possession of ticked-id grants entry. Data embedded in NFTs is (and has to be) public, therefore token auth model does not work, you must use challenge-response model. The very point here is that ticket data has to be linked with a keypair and provided at the moment of sale to be verified upon entry. Public key must be provided at moment of sale, blockchains are one way to store that link, private database of ticketing system is another. Blockchains bring their own disadvantages and the only advantage is trustless transfer. In what scenario trustless pseudonymous transfer of a ticket is an advantage worth disadvantages of the blockchain.
- aj3 5y ago
  What's the benefit of making those resellable? To encourage scalping?
  - paraknight 5y ago
    NFTs can be created that are non-resellable, you just build that into the smart contract. Even if they were, you can see the full transaction history and decide to reject anyone but first owners
noetic_techy 5y ago
I think NFT's applied to art make only nominal sense. I myself had to come to the realization that NFT's are 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 the digital world. Want to own some unique special edition sword with rare attributes in the Zelda-verse? Buy the NFT block chain address to it that says you and only you can have it. Want to own the penthouse apartment in the zucker-verse? Buy the NFT key that says only you have ownership rights. Want to be a unique character with unique pets in World-of-crypto-craft? Buy the NFT's to unlock these. Sell them if you get bored for more money, and the game developer gets a cut! The gaming 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.
- eropple 5y ago
  "Only you have it. We definitely didn't copypaste the meshes and logic and sell it to somebody else because the idea of digital non-fungibility is a neat joke. We promise. BTW: when you buy this, our execs are buying Porsches and other things that are real. Cool, huh?" This holds no water and the streak remains unbroken: nobody I've seen describe blockchain-fiddling with respect to games describes the process as anything that anyone who plays games wants. Nobody actually wants this except for the people who want to make everybody else play involuntarily into weird cryptocurrency schemes while the schemer still holds the bag. Diablo could have individual uniques right now if they wanted and you could trade them if you wanted and nobody needs to burn a dumpster full of coal to do it. It is genuinely a social toxin and you should stop.
- elevader 5y ago
  But how does the NFT actually help with that? Couldn't developers/companies just create copies of that item/asset and sell them as often as they want to? If they want to sell assets/items exactly once nothing is stopping them from doing so right now, they are the only ones who can actually enforce that anyways.
madacol 5y ago
I'm no expert at all, but this is how see it from an outsider perspective. With an NFT you can prove the ownership of X digital asset, that proof of ownership is what is non-fungible In order for NFTs-art to make sense to me, artist must attest that "whoever owns that digital asset in the ______ (ethereum blockchain?) " has the artist's recognition of ownership, and is a big UX problem for artists to really prove that, which I believe it's "solved" by platforms like opensea attesting on behalf of artist So in practice, your buying the recognition of opensea that you own X asset, which opensea claims that is approved by X artist (it's also claimed by the artist on social networks or alike). there's still a problem there if the relationship between artist and opensea will be intact in the future, I don't know if or how they try to solve it So in practice, most of it could have been done with a centralized database, but that would be missing the point. There surely are knowledgeable NFT-creators who knows what they are doing and they can provide the attestation by themselfs, without any intermediary party, and that's where things get interesting with NFTs, look for example in gaming, especially where assets are shared among multiple games (otherwise it still could have been done with a database), it's just all impractical for non crypto-savvy folks
- pornel 5y ago
  NFT can't prove ownership of anything but itself. Anyone can make a new NFT for the same artwork/game-asset/bridge/moon-plot and claim they own it. There isn't even a uniqueness check, so there's no limit to copying other people's NFTs. It's like buying a copy of an artwork in a museum gift shop. Your print is yours, but there can be thousands of other copies and there can be printed more at any time. None of them are the original artwork anyway.
  - cslarson 5y ago
    > and claim they own it. But that claim means nothing if the in-game asset is not recognized in the game, and that copied artwork is for some crazy reason not recognized by other interested parties as the actual original NFT. None of them are the original NFT, minted by the creator.
    - 5y ago

ehnto 5y ago

> For some reason, NFT art took off (which I don’t understand) Status and money laundering, so no different to regular art sales.

mrow84 5y ago

For digital underlying assets, what is the social value of imposing scarcity? For non-digital underlying assets, what is it that ensures the link between the NFT and the asset?

giantrobot 5y ago

> A digital ID, a in-game asset, a digital license, a ENS name, etc… These are literally things tied to off-chain assets. Your "ownership" of any of those things only matters if someone else cares about the particular block chain it lives on. If you "own" a game asset on blockchain A and I only care about blockchain B, as far as I'm concerned you don't "own" anything. There's nothing stopping anyone from starting yet another blockchain and reselling all NFTs on that new chain. Besides, unless a URL a token "owns" lives on the blockchain it literally points to some off-chain resource. If that URL in any way becomes inaccessible the thing you "own" is meaningless.

kryptk 5y ago
A game that exists in two blockchains would offer a way to bridge assets between them, or succeeded by one that does. In fact the opposite is starting to be true: assets from game A being usable in game B.
- acdha 5y ago
  This only works if the developers choose to spend time implementing an import/export system. That’s a lot of work and since they need to have an arrangement for that anyway, why wouldn’t they use their existing billing system to retain control of it and a greater share of the profits?
- giantrobot 5y ago
  Again, assets on a blockchain only matter if someone cares about that blockchain. If I only support blockchain B, it doesn't matter how many assets you have on blockchain A as I will never support it. If I'm invested in blockchain B there's little reason to add to my expenses to support other blockchains. Even in the most practical terms, if I sell in game assets they're ones I made for my game. I know they work with my game. Why would I put in extra effort to import third party assets I don't make money on? If your assets are in a proprietary format I'd need to spend more money licensing some importer or build my own.

acdha 5y ago

> a in-game asset, a digital license Neither of these are good examples: the real value comes from the outside legal relationships. If you have an in-game asset, what matters is whether EA thinks you own it and you get what they choose to implement. Similarly, a Windows license key is valid to the extent that you have a legal agreement with Microsoft — if you transfer it and the license doesn’t cover that, the blockchain doesn’t mean anything. If they do allow transfers, you don’t need a blockchain since their SQL Server database is what matters and it does the job faster and so much cheaper. Very few NFT concepts are different than this: the legal weight comes from the outside world and the cheaper alternatives are likely to win out once the VCs drop the subsidies and start trying to get money out of the system.

friendzis 5y ago

NFTs essentially are blobs of data on the blokchain. As soon as that data references anything off chain you need off-chain methods to sync data with a blockchain, at which point the blockchain becomes merely a datastore. > A digital ID, a in-game asset, a digital license All of which require off chain sync. For NFTs to have any meaning at all, the embedded data must be world readable. At which point that digital ID, in-game asset, license all are usable by anyone else. In order for that "ownership" to have any meaning at all it must be exclusive and therefore the service must check your identity one way or another, be it somehow checking that you actually own the private key corresponding to NFT, or using any other mutually agreed authentication method. If the service does not recognize the particular blockchain fork your NFT resides in your NFT is more than useless, because it does not prove absolutely anything to the service provider. Proving identity via blockchain is probably the most inefficient method known. NFTs can only make viable statements about on-chain assets. As far as I am aware, there are no other on-chain assets than cryptotokens, therefore all NFTs do are provide a level of indirection to cryptotokens.