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I someday hope that people realize what you can do with single issue tokens beyond simply having a link to cloud storage. You can create products that utilize t

I someday hope that people realize what you can do with single issue tokens beyond simply having a link to cloud storage. You can create products that utilize this same behavior, but also leverage proof of ownership to create actual unique applications. With even just an ounce of developer ingenuity, you can use NFTs as an access token to whatever service you wish to provide. I put together a collection that is both art + access to an interactive service that relies on ownership of a token. The right-click download picture is completely meaningless as the true power is simply proof of ownership of the piece, having a copy of the image means nothing if you don't own the token and you will be denied access to the service. I guess it's a completely new concept in a lot of ways and not many people have yet implemented this to scale but it's a fascinating concept to me personally.

NicoJuicy 5y ago
The digital piece can disappear when you still have the ownership and there's still nothing the owner can do about it.
- shiohime 5y ago
  In my case, if arweave allows for digital pieces to disappear from the web, then that means they've likely failed as a project considering they've positioned themselves to be a permaweb. However, interestingly if you leverage the token ownership for access, in my collection's case, even if the static image is wiped for whatever reason, they could still access the interactive service and see their art, and interact with it. This of course has the assumption that I'm continuing to host my service indefinitely, which I know is a problem with my current implementation. I am planning to recreate my APIs as onchain programs, and migrate my app to be hosted on arweave. If it works the way I think it does and arweave doesn't fail as a project (which I don't think they will), then I'm hoping that I can have a service that is permanently accessible. I have yet to test that hypothesis of course.
  - NicoJuicy 5y ago
    And how can the "buyer" verify if the creation has unlimited "lifetime"? If the original creator can even delete the artwork, the owner is never sure.
    - shiohime 5y ago
      That's a fair question, and really I think it comes down to degrees of trust. As you say, ultimately I as the creator of the tokens could possibly utilize my update authority to change some of the underlying metadata for the token. The only real reason I can think of that I'd do it for this project is bugfixes if there is something botched in the metadata for specific tokens. I don't quite know the extent of power that I could leverage as a creator over data on arweave. It's not ever crossed my mind as to why I'd possibly want to alter that. At the end of the day you have to have some degree of trust with most services you interact with, and I think this would be no different. Maybe I as a creator could eliminate this ability to update anything on arweave after the initial upload by changing the update authority to a wallet that is programmatically created from an onchain program, and off of the Ed25519 curve. If I am able to do something like that, then it would be impossible to access the wallet since it doesn't have a valid private key, and maybe then it's truly immutable? It's a problem I actually haven't thought of until now. But there's probably something I could do along those lines. Honestly if something like that works then it might be a generalizable solution to the problem you're suggesting.
      - NicoJuicy 5y ago
        But trust is currently easy online. I can initiate a chargeback through traditional currencies. Bought source is available for download as soon as I buy something. So i have it in my possession on my drive when eg. Envato deletes the assets because of copyright infringement. Also, i frequently visit https://rekt.news/ https://rekt.news/ and trust seems to be far-fetched. Even the auditors sometimes keep the 0-days to themselves.
        shiohime 5y ago
verdverm 5y ago
So is the NFT acting like a password to the service? Do you have a way to revoke access in this scheme? (For example an abusive user) How would NFT access work for a service which requires monthly or usage based billing? (As this seems like a one time payment currently)
- shiohime 5y ago
  Not quite. It acts as an access token, in about the purest sense, kind of like an auth token in traditional webapps. I could revoke access by blacklisting the NFT if I really, really wanted to I suppose, but I don't in this specific service I've built, as there would be no reason whatsoever for me to revoke access to the interactive capabilities of my art from someone that purchased it, and never would implement such a thing. Edit - For the other cases you added to your original post, I've thought about the subscription problem some and have ideas but it's outside of the scope of my current project, but I think it is a solvable problem with some underlying changes to token mechanics.
  - verdverm 5y ago
    Sounds more like the NFT is a ticket for entry to an experience. How does this work if a person makes a unique wallet for this NFT and then shares the private key? Does that essentially break the exclusivity mechanics?
    - shiohime 5y ago
      Yeah, that is how I am envisioning it as well. It is a ticket to services I've already created, and services I intend to create in the future. And sure, a user could create a shared wallet and let others see the interactive capabilities of the art in that wallet. Personally I wouldn't mind if someone wanted to do this, my collection will have X number of unique pieces, each of them are a completely different generative piece. So, yeah, you could buy a piece, put it in a shared wallet, and share it with your friends. Up to the purchasers of the piece to do what they want with it :)
throwaway1777 5y ago
it’s not really a new concept, just a better implementation.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
> The right-click download picture is completely meaningless as the true power is simply proof of ownership of the piece, having a copy of the image means nothing if you don't own the token and you will be denied access to the service. Sure, fine. Why do I care? I can use said copy on any other service I want. If your argument is "ah yes, but someone out there believes that's not as valuable because it ignores their 'ownership'", and you can't see why that isn't persuasive, then I really am not sure we share enough of the same reality to discuss this rationally.
- shiohime 5y ago
  I don't think you are understanding at all what I am saying lol. I have a program, think of it as a traditional web app, that has a backend that validates whether you own the asset prior to granting access. You can't use any copy of the png to interact with other services, since there is only *one* service that allows for the interactive capabilities, and it requires ownership of the token to access. Hell, you could even take it a step further, take the png and make a forge of a token from my collection. You still won't be able to access the service with a forged token with the exact same metadata and image, because it will easily be able to detect it is not part of my collection. All you would have is a PNG. Not access to the actual services that are only possible via ownership. I could extend my project and create a plethora of services that are only accessible to people who own one of the NFTs from my collection, and that is what I intend to do.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    > You can't use any copy of the png to interact with other services, since there is only one service that allows for the interactive capabilities, and it requires ownership of the token to access. This makes no sense. Given any possible interaction you could have with a PNG some other service can replicate it. They could choose to do so with alternative NFTs pointing to the same PNGs, or just let you use any PNG at your leisure. Let's give the benefit of the doubt and say your service is utterly unique. That you have somehow invented some kind of super-magic software that does something super incredible with PNGs that no one else can manage, and you've decided that NFTs are the way to determine who can and cannot use the service. What exactly is your reasoning to use NFTs in this way instead of traditional authentication mechanisms? Because the only one I can think of is capitalizing off the NFT hype. Please, convince me that NFTs as a technology have some inherent value instead of all their value being derived from a collective delusion and FOMO. I'm aching to hear a good, concrete usecase for the technology that simply cannot be done better without it.

NicoJuicy 5y ago

The digital piece can disappear when you still have the ownership and there's still nothing the owner can do about it.

shiohime 5y ago
In my case, if arweave allows for digital pieces to disappear from the web, then that means they've likely failed as a project considering they've positioned themselves to be a permaweb. However, interestingly if you leverage the token ownership for access, in my collection's case, even if the static image is wiped for whatever reason, they could still access the interactive service and see their art, and interact with it. This of course has the assumption that I'm continuing to host my service indefinitely, which I know is a problem with my current implementation. I am planning to recreate my APIs as onchain programs, and migrate my app to be hosted on arweave. If it works the way I think it does and arweave doesn't fail as a project (which I don't think they will), then I'm hoping that I can have a service that is permanently accessible. I have yet to test that hypothesis of course.
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  And how can the "buyer" verify if the creation has unlimited "lifetime"? If the original creator can even delete the artwork, the owner is never sure.
  - shiohime 5y ago
    That's a fair question, and really I think it comes down to degrees of trust. As you say, ultimately I as the creator of the tokens could possibly utilize my update authority to change some of the underlying metadata for the token. The only real reason I can think of that I'd do it for this project is bugfixes if there is something botched in the metadata for specific tokens. I don't quite know the extent of power that I could leverage as a creator over data on arweave. It's not ever crossed my mind as to why I'd possibly want to alter that. At the end of the day you have to have some degree of trust with most services you interact with, and I think this would be no different. Maybe I as a creator could eliminate this ability to update anything on arweave after the initial upload by changing the update authority to a wallet that is programmatically created from an onchain program, and off of the Ed25519 curve. If I am able to do something like that, then it would be impossible to access the wallet since it doesn't have a valid private key, and maybe then it's truly immutable? It's a problem I actually haven't thought of until now. But there's probably something I could do along those lines. Honestly if something like that works then it might be a generalizable solution to the problem you're suggesting.
    - NicoJuicy 5y ago
      But trust is currently easy online. I can initiate a chargeback through traditional currencies. Bought source is available for download as soon as I buy something. So i have it in my possession on my drive when eg. Envato deletes the assets because of copyright infringement. Also, i frequently visit https://rekt.news/ https://rekt.news/ and trust seems to be far-fetched. Even the auditors sometimes keep the 0-days to themselves.
      - shiohime 5y ago

verdverm 5y ago

So is the NFT acting like a password to the service? Do you have a way to revoke access in this scheme? (For example an abusive user) How would NFT access work for a service which requires monthly or usage based billing? (As this seems like a one time payment currently)

shiohime 5y ago
Not quite. It acts as an access token, in about the purest sense, kind of like an auth token in traditional webapps. I could revoke access by blacklisting the NFT if I really, really wanted to I suppose, but I don't in this specific service I've built, as there would be no reason whatsoever for me to revoke access to the interactive capabilities of my art from someone that purchased it, and never would implement such a thing. Edit - For the other cases you added to your original post, I've thought about the subscription problem some and have ideas but it's outside of the scope of my current project, but I think it is a solvable problem with some underlying changes to token mechanics.
- verdverm 5y ago
  Sounds more like the NFT is a ticket for entry to an experience. How does this work if a person makes a unique wallet for this NFT and then shares the private key? Does that essentially break the exclusivity mechanics?
  - shiohime 5y ago
    Yeah, that is how I am envisioning it as well. It is a ticket to services I've already created, and services I intend to create in the future. And sure, a user could create a shared wallet and let others see the interactive capabilities of the art in that wallet. Personally I wouldn't mind if someone wanted to do this, my collection will have X number of unique pieces, each of them are a completely different generative piece. So, yeah, you could buy a piece, put it in a shared wallet, and share it with your friends. Up to the purchasers of the piece to do what they want with it :)

throwaway1777 5y ago

it’s not really a new concept, just a better implementation.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

> The right-click download picture is completely meaningless as the true power is simply proof of ownership of the piece, having a copy of the image means nothing if you don't own the token and you will be denied access to the service. Sure, fine. Why do I care? I can use said copy on any other service I want. If your argument is "ah yes, but someone out there believes that's not as valuable because it ignores their 'ownership'", and you can't see why that isn't persuasive, then I really am not sure we share enough of the same reality to discuss this rationally.

shiohime 5y ago
I don't think you are understanding at all what I am saying lol. I have a program, think of it as a traditional web app, that has a backend that validates whether you own the asset prior to granting access. You can't use any copy of the png to interact with other services, since there is only *one* service that allows for the interactive capabilities, and it requires ownership of the token to access. Hell, you could even take it a step further, take the png and make a forge of a token from my collection. You still won't be able to access the service with a forged token with the exact same metadata and image, because it will easily be able to detect it is not part of my collection. All you would have is a PNG. Not access to the actual services that are only possible via ownership. I could extend my project and create a plethora of services that are only accessible to people who own one of the NFTs from my collection, and that is what I intend to do.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  > You can't use any copy of the png to interact with other services, since there is only one service that allows for the interactive capabilities, and it requires ownership of the token to access. This makes no sense. Given any possible interaction you could have with a PNG some other service can replicate it. They could choose to do so with alternative NFTs pointing to the same PNGs, or just let you use any PNG at your leisure. Let's give the benefit of the doubt and say your service is utterly unique. That you have somehow invented some kind of super-magic software that does something super incredible with PNGs that no one else can manage, and you've decided that NFTs are the way to determine who can and cannot use the service. What exactly is your reasoning to use NFTs in this way instead of traditional authentication mechanisms? Because the only one I can think of is capitalizing off the NFT hype. Please, convince me that NFTs as a technology have some inherent value instead of all their value being derived from a collective delusion and FOMO. I'm aching to hear a good, concrete usecase for the technology that simply cannot be done better without it.