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NFTs are technically good, with strong fundamentals, and real world applications, the same way ICOs were. But the way they are used has been absolute shit, and

NFTs are technically good, with strong fundamentals, and real world applications, the same way ICOs were. But the way they are used has been absolute shit, and nothing sort of utterly useless.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
vimacs2 5y ago
What are these "real world applications", pray tell?
- bicx 5y ago
  NFTs don’t have to be digital assets. They can represent ownership or a share of ownership of something unique, like a piece of real estate. All depends on what can be legally recognized as part of the contract.
  - vimacs2 5y ago
    I'll grant you that but we already have something that represents ownership in the real world - contracts. I'm not clear what advantages NFTs bring to the table for non-digital assets.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
I lean in the same direction, I thought ICOs were a very cool way to replace kickstarter: raising funds, staking ownership, if some enterprise was successful you could even sell your share at market value, or cash out early if you're starting to doubt the campaign's ability to ship the product (if you can find someone willing to take the risk at a lower price) Unfortunately even more than that they lend themselves to raising funds for vaporware, and I don't think there was a single ICO that actually resulted in a real-world product. NFTs are essentially a reboot of ICO, except instead of a million tokens each representing a small percentage of ownership, you sell a single token representing 100% ownership. I think they could still be used to fund artists (I think of them more as patronage than trading cards), but very few artists are actually raising funds this way, the market is almost entirely trash being wash traded and plots of land in metaverses that don't exist yet. I think they will suffer the same fate I see in crypto over and over again, any legitimate use case is totally overwhelmed by the number of scams, makes the whole thing wholly unattractive to participate in.
- MacsHeadroom 5y ago
  There are literally thousands of dApps developed and governed by DAOs funded by ICOs which tens of millions of daily active users derive economic value from. Sure, lots of ICOs find vaporware. But so do the overwhelming majority of VC investments.
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    Sorry, by "real world product" I was thinking the kind of thing that gets funded on Kickstarter, e.g. hardware or at least some kind of entertainment production. I'm aware there's thousands of dApps and DAOs but I don't know what any of them actually do besides pay early participants with funds derived from later participants.
- jollybean 5y ago
  This is misunderstanding of the situation derived I think from a believe that the technology somehow changes the use case. ICO's are a scam because they are essentially unregulated securities. If all securities were unregulated, then they would all be scams. The moment you strongly regulate ICO's, then they don't get their pop, they lose their allure, and they make no sense. There's no material or commercial advantage to Crypto or NFT's, or rather, any advantages they might offer are outweighed by the drawbacks. And so the big remaining advantage is for scammers, which is why they take advantage of it.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
lelanthran 5y ago
> NFTs are technically good, with strong fundamentals, and real world applications, the same way ICOs were. But the way they are used has been absolute shit, and nothing sort of utterly useless. I keep thinking that all the use-cases for NFT's can be replaced with current digital certificate signing. Transferring something only needs signing with the private key, right? What are the real-world use-cases for NFT that simple and existing PGP signing won't work for?
- gorgoiler 5y ago
  You don’t even need that level of technology. If I bought an NFT of someone’s cat all they’d need to do is tweet that I did so, from their blue ticked alt.
- kamray23 5y ago
  NFTs are smart contracts and as such come with automatically enforced terms. You can create a token which expires, useful for licensing. You can create a token which pays royalties to an artist with every sale. You can create smart financial instruments which are technically NFTs and which skip the regulation put on the financial industry to perform more risky investments, and even automate functions like profit sharing or paying off a bond. You can even develop various semi-fungible tokens that do all these things! You can't do that with PGP. You'd need to run a bank to get most of that and some of that is illegal on a global level so even as a bank you'd have to dip outside the law. These are the real uses of NFTs, not artificial scarcity magic internet tokens associated with procedurally generated soulless art from templates made in paint over 5 minutes.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    And if the terms support it (and for any nontrivial case they will), with automatically-enforced fraud.
  - lelanthran 5y ago
    > You can create a token which expires, useful for licensing. Can you end the license before expiry? Because if you cannot, then it isn't useful. License holders like to know that they can revoke the license if terms are not met. > You can create a token which pays royalties to an artist with every sale. Can you end the royalties? Who gets the royalty when a dispute arises is frequently decided by the courts. > You can create smart financial instruments which are technically NFTs and which skip the regulation put on the financial industry to perform more risky investments, and even automate functions like profit sharing or paying off a bond. So, enable one to skip the laws? That doesn't sound very much like something society wants. > You'd need to run a bank to get most of that and some of that is illegal on a global level so even as a bank you'd have to dip outside the law. Using a tool or instrument to do something illegal doesn't make it okay to do that thing.
jollybean 5y ago
No, they make no sense at all, they are used as they were effectively designed. That the technology is sound is not hugely relevant. The commercial notion of NFT's is nonsensical.

NFTs are technically good, with strong fundamentals, and real world applications, the same way ICOs were. But the way they are used has been absolute shit, and nothing sort of utterly useless.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

vimacs2 5y ago

What are these "real world applications", pray tell?

bicx 5y ago
NFTs don’t have to be digital assets. They can represent ownership or a share of ownership of something unique, like a piece of real estate. All depends on what can be legally recognized as part of the contract.
- vimacs2 5y ago
  I'll grant you that but we already have something that represents ownership in the real world - contracts. I'm not clear what advantages NFTs bring to the table for non-digital assets.

jazzyjackson 5y ago

I lean in the same direction, I thought ICOs were a very cool way to replace kickstarter: raising funds, staking ownership, if some enterprise was successful you could even sell your share at market value, or cash out early if you're starting to doubt the campaign's ability to ship the product (if you can find someone willing to take the risk at a lower price) Unfortunately even more than that they lend themselves to raising funds for vaporware, and I don't think there was a single ICO that actually resulted in a real-world product. NFTs are essentially a reboot of ICO, except instead of a million tokens each representing a small percentage of ownership, you sell a single token representing 100% ownership. I think they could still be used to fund artists (I think of them more as patronage than trading cards), but very few artists are actually raising funds this way, the market is almost entirely trash being wash traded and plots of land in metaverses that don't exist yet. I think they will suffer the same fate I see in crypto over and over again, any legitimate use case is totally overwhelmed by the number of scams, makes the whole thing wholly unattractive to participate in.

MacsHeadroom 5y ago
There are literally thousands of dApps developed and governed by DAOs funded by ICOs which tens of millions of daily active users derive economic value from. Sure, lots of ICOs find vaporware. But so do the overwhelming majority of VC investments.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  Sorry, by "real world product" I was thinking the kind of thing that gets funded on Kickstarter, e.g. hardware or at least some kind of entertainment production. I'm aware there's thousands of dApps and DAOs but I don't know what any of them actually do besides pay early participants with funds derived from later participants.
jollybean 5y ago
This is misunderstanding of the situation derived I think from a believe that the technology somehow changes the use case. ICO's are a scam because they are essentially unregulated securities. If all securities were unregulated, then they would all be scams. The moment you strongly regulate ICO's, then they don't get their pop, they lose their allure, and they make no sense. There's no material or commercial advantage to Crypto or NFT's, or rather, any advantages they might offer are outweighed by the drawbacks. And so the big remaining advantage is for scammers, which is why they take advantage of it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

lelanthran 5y ago

> NFTs are technically good, with strong fundamentals, and real world applications, the same way ICOs were. But the way they are used has been absolute shit, and nothing sort of utterly useless. I keep thinking that all the use-cases for NFT's can be replaced with current digital certificate signing. Transferring something only needs signing with the private key, right? What are the real-world use-cases for NFT that simple and existing PGP signing won't work for?

gorgoiler 5y ago
You don’t even need that level of technology. If I bought an NFT of someone’s cat all they’d need to do is tweet that I did so, from their blue ticked alt.
kamray23 5y ago
NFTs are smart contracts and as such come with automatically enforced terms. You can create a token which expires, useful for licensing. You can create a token which pays royalties to an artist with every sale. You can create smart financial instruments which are technically NFTs and which skip the regulation put on the financial industry to perform more risky investments, and even automate functions like profit sharing or paying off a bond. You can even develop various semi-fungible tokens that do all these things! You can't do that with PGP. You'd need to run a bank to get most of that and some of that is illegal on a global level so even as a bank you'd have to dip outside the law. These are the real uses of NFTs, not artificial scarcity magic internet tokens associated with procedurally generated soulless art from templates made in paint over 5 minutes.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  And if the terms support it (and for any nontrivial case they will), with automatically-enforced fraud.
- lelanthran 5y ago
  > You can create a token which expires, useful for licensing. Can you end the license before expiry? Because if you cannot, then it isn't useful. License holders like to know that they can revoke the license if terms are not met. > You can create a token which pays royalties to an artist with every sale. Can you end the royalties? Who gets the royalty when a dispute arises is frequently decided by the courts. > You can create smart financial instruments which are technically NFTs and which skip the regulation put on the financial industry to perform more risky investments, and even automate functions like profit sharing or paying off a bond. So, enable one to skip the laws? That doesn't sound very much like something society wants. > You'd need to run a bank to get most of that and some of that is illegal on a global level so even as a bank you'd have to dip outside the law. Using a tool or instrument to do something illegal doesn't make it okay to do that thing.

jollybean 5y ago

No, they make no sense at all, they are used as they were effectively designed. That the technology is sound is not hugely relevant. The commercial notion of NFT's is nonsensical.