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Personally, I don't see how the NFTs of today will have any long term value. Maybe a few, simply for the history/novelty. The blockchain itself has no legal a

by timmg 5y ago

Personally, I don't see how the NFTs of today will have any long term value. Maybe a few, simply for the history/novelty. The blockchain itself has no legal authority. It's just a transaction log. You could buy a link to an image that seller doesn't own. Then what? Now the transaction log assigns ownership to someone with no rights to it. If it ever came to it, the courts would override it. Then what happens to the block chain "asserting" that ownership? I think it's possible that the NFTs of today will be the progenitor of something that does make sense longer term. But even for that, I'm a bit skeptical.

kranke155 5y ago
Yep. NFTs right now are proof of concept. That doesn't make them any less interesting. They'll be A LOT more interesting when AR/XR become commonplace. I can imagine people having NFT AI companions, NFT XR art that's only distributed to token holders. Digital Fashion will also become a "Real" thing when XR becomes commonplace.
- pupppet 5y ago
  But why do you need an NFT for user 53245 has unique item xyz? Isn’t that just…software?
  - kranke155 5y ago
    NFTs are actually a good way to enforce data portability. A big NFT website recently was deleted by its webmaster. Since everything was open source, and the JPEGs/art were hosted on IPFS, the commnity quite simply rebuilt the website frontend and nothing was lost. You can read more about this here: https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2021/11/18/what-hic-et-nuncs-resurrection-says-about-decentralized-infrastructure/ https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2021/11/18/what-hic-et-nuncs-r... This is the strength of having a decentralised open source blockchain - suddenly digital asset ownership can be "established" even if their utility for now is close to nil. But that's allowed a vibrant digital art market to explode.
    - pupppet 5y ago
      Probably an ignorant question here, but what's stopping someone from taking someone's jpg, changing a few pixels, and adding it to the blockchain. How do you know which is the original?
      - kranke155 5y ago
        At this moment nothing. The more centralised markets - SuperRare, Nifty Gateway - probably do some form of KYC. That's the risk you take when using fully permissionless markets, but I'd say if you are a collector, you take 5 minutes to check whether the artist exists. I don't buy anything unless the artist is on Twitter/instagram linked to his profile. There are ways to verify identities on both Tezos and Ethereum blockchains which is usually how I look into and make sure the artist is legit. I myself own an Ethereum Name Service and Tezos domain (.eth and .tez). For a few dollars the owner of one of the main tezos scan websites also creates verified identities using Twitter profiles. Takes a bit of effort but it is worth it. Having an active twitter account is also a big thing in the NFT space, it helps enforce a minimum level of difficulty to art stealing.
      - jazzyjackson 5y ago
        Blockchain records provenance : who owned the token before you, so the nft is not “I own this jpeg”, it’s “I bought this jpeg from the artist with public key X”
- timmg 5y ago
  I don't see how AR/VR assets are any different than jpegs, etc. If enough systems integrate with the blockchains to allow transfer of ownership, maybe it will take hold. I think central authorities with interop would be a better solution. The problem with both of those solutions is how much incentive systems have for interop. I get that some people see NFTs as a way to break from the tyranny of the tech monoliths. I'm just skeptical that we'll get there. It's kinda like "Linux on the Desktop."
  - kranke155 5y ago
    Central authorities have refused to interop even on text messaging, up to the point where text messaging was possible between apps 10 years ago but has been made impossible. We went from Pidgin to 10 messaging apps that don't interop basic text. The incentives on central authorities is always to abuse their power. That's how we got Facebook. Blockchain is not a promise of an utopia, but the incentives are radically different. And in some ways, "central authorities with interop" is a description of blockchain where not everyone is running a full node.

by timmg 5y ago

kranke155 5y ago

Yep. NFTs right now are proof of concept. That doesn't make them any less interesting. They'll be A LOT more interesting when AR/XR become commonplace. I can imagine people having NFT AI companions, NFT XR art that's only distributed to token holders. Digital Fashion will also become a "Real" thing when XR becomes commonplace.

pupppet 5y ago
But why do you need an NFT for user 53245 has unique item xyz? Isn’t that just…software?
- kranke155 5y ago
  NFTs are actually a good way to enforce data portability. A big NFT website recently was deleted by its webmaster. Since everything was open source, and the JPEGs/art were hosted on IPFS, the commnity quite simply rebuilt the website frontend and nothing was lost. You can read more about this here: https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2021/11/18/what-hic-et-nuncs-resurrection-says-about-decentralized-infrastructure/ https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2021/11/18/what-hic-et-nuncs-r... This is the strength of having a decentralised open source blockchain - suddenly digital asset ownership can be "established" even if their utility for now is close to nil. But that's allowed a vibrant digital art market to explode.
  - pupppet 5y ago
    Probably an ignorant question here, but what's stopping someone from taking someone's jpg, changing a few pixels, and adding it to the blockchain. How do you know which is the original?
    - kranke155 5y ago
      At this moment nothing. The more centralised markets - SuperRare, Nifty Gateway - probably do some form of KYC. That's the risk you take when using fully permissionless markets, but I'd say if you are a collector, you take 5 minutes to check whether the artist exists. I don't buy anything unless the artist is on Twitter/instagram linked to his profile. There are ways to verify identities on both Tezos and Ethereum blockchains which is usually how I look into and make sure the artist is legit. I myself own an Ethereum Name Service and Tezos domain (.eth and .tez). For a few dollars the owner of one of the main tezos scan websites also creates verified identities using Twitter profiles. Takes a bit of effort but it is worth it. Having an active twitter account is also a big thing in the NFT space, it helps enforce a minimum level of difficulty to art stealing.
    - jazzyjackson 5y ago
      Blockchain records provenance : who owned the token before you, so the nft is not “I own this jpeg”, it’s “I bought this jpeg from the artist with public key X”
timmg 5y ago
I don't see how AR/VR assets are any different than jpegs, etc. If enough systems integrate with the blockchains to allow transfer of ownership, maybe it will take hold. I think central authorities with interop would be a better solution. The problem with both of those solutions is how much incentive systems have for interop. I get that some people see NFTs as a way to break from the tyranny of the tech monoliths. I'm just skeptical that we'll get there. It's kinda like "Linux on the Desktop."
- kranke155 5y ago
  Central authorities have refused to interop even on text messaging, up to the point where text messaging was possible between apps 10 years ago but has been made impossible. We went from Pidgin to 10 messaging apps that don't interop basic text. The incentives on central authorities is always to abuse their power. That's how we got Facebook. Blockchain is not a promise of an utopia, but the incentives are radically different. And in some ways, "central authorities with interop" is a description of blockchain where not everyone is running a full node.