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Ask HN: What's the Opposite of an NFT?
I'm an artist / dev, not sure what to make of NFT's but after reading through a lot of this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29159693) I feel like they're problematic at best / yet another boring pyramid scheme at worst.
In any case I'm just wondering if someone (hypothetically) hated NFT's but wanted to make some art, what type of art would represent the polar opposite of an NFT?
Dumb question maybe but just a thought experiment.
- hunterb123 5y agoThe opposite of a non fungible token is a fungible one, a normal token / coin. You're emphasizing too much on the art aspect. It's simply a mechanism to tie ownership to a digital asset.
- snicky 5y agoExcuse my ignorance, but on what basis it is an actual ownership of a digital asset and what is actually the asset? From what I understand NFT is a blockchain record that contains a URL. This URL may point to different resources at different times, no?
- pkdpic 5y agoThats my understanding of them, although I'm sure its more complicated on some level. It was what made me pretty uninterested from the offset.
- pkdpic 5y agoThat's an excellent point, I like the notion of disconnecting them from art entirely. Maybe there really isn't much of a need for anything about NFTs to be thought of as art. The use of the word token (NFTs) rather than art (NFAs), duh...
- based2 5y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/NFTExchange/comments/qe3wec/new_banksy_fungus_datdotxyz_hijacked_claude_monet/ https://www.reddit.com/r/NFTExchange/comments/qe3wec/new_ban...
- kim0 5y agoA fungible token! Contrary to what many would believe, something like Bitcoin is not fungible. Instead a coin without history can be regarded as fungible. For example Monero is a strong privacy coin with good fungibility.
- WhisperingShiba 5y agoTechnically that's true, but as an economic asset, it would be considered fungible, as it can be exchange for another token (which again, is technologically non-fungible) and it would possess the same 'abilities', so to say. I'm still trying to understand frangibility, as a word, so correct me if I'm off target.
- pkdpic 5y agoI feel like when I think about it too hard anything thats "worth" anything starts to seem fungible. Which would make NFTs fungible? I mean I get the distinction but still...
- Finnucane 5y agoOld-school xerox fanzine traded through the mail for stamps and sase.
- pkdpic 5y agoExcellent, that's something I could start on right now to counteract my screen burnout from work. Now all I need is a not-sketchy way to get physical addresses from folks on HN.
- RileyJames 5y agoThere was a service posted here a few days ago, but I can’t find them now. I think the gist was, “get things delivered to you without giving away your address”. Which was effectively mail forwarding. Maybe someone else remembers it.
- Finnucane 5y agoSomeone needs to reboot Factsheet 5.
- pkdpic 5y agoYes! Wondering what it would look like if a similar project were tweaked to be more scalable. Or maybe that would ruin the point?
- potta_coffee 5y agoSend me a zine and I'll send you some of mine. I'll set up a throwaway email if you're interested in communicating.
- pkdpic 5y agoI'm 100% down, I'd love the excuse to finish up some zine stuff I've been messing around with!
- 5y ago
- jrootabega 5y agoAn ugly embarrassing asset that you don't want to have. When you own it, you agree to a smart contract that drains away some of your currency every day. If someone gives you one, the only way to rid yourself of it is to give two copies to two other people, resulting in it become more and more common and hated. Kinda like Gremlins, Velvet Elvis, and a chain letter rolled into one.
- pkdpic 5y agoLol, I love it. It strikes me as pretty solid conceptually and it definitely works on some kind of anarchist poetic level too. Also love / hate that it would triple-down on the burning-the-rainforest NFT issue too :^)
- staticautomatic 5y agoSounds a lot like a timeshare.
- shervinafshar 5y agoI don't really hate NFTs but I'm very critical to (a) the way models of digital scarcity is introduced to digital artist by the blockchain (maximalist) tribes effectively making the whole thing very similar to pyramid schemes as you suggested, (b) carbon emission footprint of Proof of Work. But to your question, I suppose any work in digital media which is fungible could be reluctantly considered as "polar opposite of an NFT". One could even do better than that and release the artworks under an open license like CC.
- pkdpic 5y agoOh that's a fantastic idea, I need to read up more on how an open license could apply to a physical artwork. If anyone has any further reading suggestions on that let me know. First thought is maybe drawings / paintings / collages that are optimized for universal 8x11 printing where there is no original available and all copies are equal. Or maybe the same thing for a high-quality / printable 3D scan of a sculpture? Seriously inspiring thought, thank you!
- sp332 5y agoAndrew Plotkin just posted about selling fake NFTs. They're not that much different for the uninformed end-user than a normal NFT, and much better for the environment. https://twitter.com/zarfeblong/status/1458140086030061576 https://twitter.com/zarfeblong/status/1458140086030061576 Oh and there was some art that did something pretty similar to NFTs, but using a normal contract instead of a "smart" contract. https://dangiordan.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/a-tool-to-deceive-and-slaughter%E2%80%A6an-introduction-to-abstract-transactionism/ https://dangiordan.wordpress.com/2010/02/05/a-tool-to-deceiv...
- pkdpic 5y agoExcellent links thank you!
- znpy 5y agoA fungible token?
- quickthrower2 5y agoLike a dollar
- pkdpic 5y agoLike a dollar with the serial number scratched off :^)
- the_only_law 5y agoA fungible non-token
- pkdpic 5y agoYessss :O
- a-dub 5y agonfts are about proving ownership and binding a protocol to the transfer of the ability to prove that ownership in an attempt to secure it, so i would call the opposite a public declaration that a piece of art or property belongs to everyone and is in the public domain.
- mikewarot 5y agoMy 1901 United States Liberty Dollar, minted in New Orleans would be a good example of the opposite of an NFT. It's fungible, a token, and hardly unique. It also makes a nice "twing" when you flip it with your thumb.
- quickthrower2 5y ago“Buildings made with fungi could live, grow — and then biodegrade” https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/what-on-earth-mycelium-fungi-building-1.5963938 https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/what-on-earth-mycelium-fungi...
- nicbou 5y agoPerhaps something that makes energy instead of wasting it
- pkdpic 5y agoOmg thats such an excellent thought! I need to ponder on that one...
- mattbrewsbytes 5y agoMy beginner understanding of NFTs leads me to think the polar opposite would achieve the goals of: 1. No ownership / everyone owns it 2. No limits to copying/editing/republishing 3. No royalties or payment of any kind So maybe just posting your digital art online with an open-source license of some kind (usually that is for code) that indicates anyone can use it, copy it, do whatever they want with it and pay you no money/royalties. People have pointed out that the actual art isn't in the NFT. This means anyone that knows how to capture a screenshot can duplicate anything they see online. This makes me think of stock photography sites. How do they enforce people aren't just copying/pasting the photos? Is this even enforceable/preventable? How would NFT's solve enforcement/prevention? Since this is partly a thought experiment... one way for enforcement/prevention is for the digital artwork to be only used in closed source systems where validation with an NFT marketplace could be used. Websites are open source, maybe not legally but in essence you can copy anything that shows up on your screen, download images, etc. Closed source systems where people are paying to enter, like old school installable Enterprise software, could prevent or at least make copying extremely difficult and easier to trace. Another closed source system is video games - heavy on the artwork and lots of (much hated) micro-transactions to purchase cosmetic items.
- clay-dreidels 5y agoThat is a very good analogy. Stallman was right.
- pkdpic 5y agoThanks for the well thought out / well written response! I definitely agree. And the closed source / walled garden examples are super on point. It feels like a reminder that anti-scarcity / universal access / unrestrained reproducibility really seems like its at the heart of the web and maybe just digital information technology in general. We do so much work to fight it on different levels even with things as simple as user auth but its a never ending battle. Oddly though it feels now like openly sharing things in a way that will reach anyone is a similarly difficult fight against all the corporate entities with so much financial incentive to fight the webs natural stateless state. In any case your comment makes me want to keep it simple and start just posting art on unsplash :^p
- max_ 5y agoERC-20
- dropnerd 5y agomake it non-commercial and don't tokenize it so basically like 99% of the art on the internet