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The only thing the distributed encrypted ledger does is tell you what wallet owns what token. It does not tell you if the artist has sold the piece multiple ti

The only thing the distributed encrypted ledger does is tell you what wallet owns what token. It does not tell you if the artist has sold the piece multiple times.

breakfastduck 5y ago
Yes exactly. It can certify the owner...
- XorNot 5y ago
  No it can't because it has no legal standing whatsoever to do so. No court and no law creates any legally binding standing for an NFT, because an NFT sale does not establish any sort of recognized contract between the parties - it does not even establish the the terms of use or ownership under which the NFT can be recognized. The nature of NFTs at most would lead to a recognition of the the token being legal property, if your wallet was stolen, but not whatever you think the property actually is.
johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago
>It does not tell you if the artist has sold the piece multiple times. If you purchased a NON-FUNGIBLE-token, you can be sure that nobody else owns the same array of bytes which may or may not prove that you own a piece of art. There may be many prints of the same original work created in multiple NFTs as there are in the art world... but it's not possible to sell the same NFT twice... on the blockchain at least... without re-acquiring it first. Plenty of NFT sellers sell multiple issues/prints/copies of the same original artwork. I think digital prints in NFT format are ridiculous but I digress.
- stagas 5y ago
  If you have the NFT signed by the artist's PGP key is the same thing though, no? You're the owner. Or the person you sign it to afterwards. What does the public blockchain offer in this case, except for fees?
  - qqii 5y ago
    A signature is simply that, a signature. It doesn't guarantee uniqueness and doesn't prevent you copying it any number of times. An identity + timestamping mechanism would guarantee uniqueness of ownership, and a blockchain performs this in a relatively decentralised and trustless manner.
    - stagas 5y ago
      The blockchain sounds very centralised if it's the only place I can participate to verify my ownership. Decentralised would be if there was no third party(in this case the blockchain) necessary for verifying ownership. Which it actually isn't, because all that is needed is the signature of the author and maybe a timestamp or some other metadata signed along.
      - qqii 5y ago
        Of course! The blockchain is only decentralised compared to a centralised service such as Sotheby's and doesn't remove the third party entirely. The thing is unless you restrict the requirements of the artwork and the transaction not involving a third party actually restricts future guarentees that can be made to third parties. If the restrictions of never involving third parties (in proofs of ownership or otherwise) is acceptable, then there's no need for any schema bar making the transaction itself. The issue with removing the third party entirely (as the auther suggests) is the verifiability of the timestamp to any interested third parties. The simplest scenario is proof of existence of the artwork at time T. Without a timestamping mechanism there's nothing stopping the creator lying about when it was created, or when this transaction took place.
  - 317070 5y ago
    It prevents the artist from signing the same thing twice. So with PGP you might be the owner of a thing, but you might not be the only owner of a thing.
  - dangoor 5y ago
    I wondered about that, too, and thought of a difference: if you sign it over to someone else with PGP, the first owner still has a file that was provably sold to them. They could fraudulently sell it again. A public blockchain would contain the whole chain of ownership, so you could tell who the current owner is.

The only thing the distributed encrypted ledger does is tell you what wallet owns what token. It does not tell you if the artist has sold the piece multiple times.

breakfastduck 5y ago

Yes exactly. It can certify the owner...

XorNot 5y ago
No it can't because it has no legal standing whatsoever to do so. No court and no law creates any legally binding standing for an NFT, because an NFT sale does not establish any sort of recognized contract between the parties - it does not even establish the the terms of use or ownership under which the NFT can be recognized. The nature of NFTs at most would lead to a recognition of the the token being legal property, if your wallet was stolen, but not whatever you think the property actually is.

johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago

>It does not tell you if the artist has sold the piece multiple times. If you purchased a NON-FUNGIBLE-token, you can be sure that nobody else owns the same array of bytes which may or may not prove that you own a piece of art. There may be many prints of the same original work created in multiple NFTs as there are in the art world... but it's not possible to sell the same NFT twice... on the blockchain at least... without re-acquiring it first. Plenty of NFT sellers sell multiple issues/prints/copies of the same original artwork. I think digital prints in NFT format are ridiculous but I digress.

stagas 5y ago
If you have the NFT signed by the artist's PGP key is the same thing though, no? You're the owner. Or the person you sign it to afterwards. What does the public blockchain offer in this case, except for fees?
- qqii 5y ago
  A signature is simply that, a signature. It doesn't guarantee uniqueness and doesn't prevent you copying it any number of times. An identity + timestamping mechanism would guarantee uniqueness of ownership, and a blockchain performs this in a relatively decentralised and trustless manner.
  - stagas 5y ago
    The blockchain sounds very centralised if it's the only place I can participate to verify my ownership. Decentralised would be if there was no third party(in this case the blockchain) necessary for verifying ownership. Which it actually isn't, because all that is needed is the signature of the author and maybe a timestamp or some other metadata signed along.
    - qqii 5y ago
      Of course! The blockchain is only decentralised compared to a centralised service such as Sotheby's and doesn't remove the third party entirely. The thing is unless you restrict the requirements of the artwork and the transaction not involving a third party actually restricts future guarentees that can be made to third parties. If the restrictions of never involving third parties (in proofs of ownership or otherwise) is acceptable, then there's no need for any schema bar making the transaction itself. The issue with removing the third party entirely (as the auther suggests) is the verifiability of the timestamp to any interested third parties. The simplest scenario is proof of existence of the artwork at time T. Without a timestamping mechanism there's nothing stopping the creator lying about when it was created, or when this transaction took place.
- 317070 5y ago
  It prevents the artist from signing the same thing twice. So with PGP you might be the owner of a thing, but you might not be the only owner of a thing.
- dangoor 5y ago
  I wondered about that, too, and thought of a difference: if you sign it over to someone else with PGP, the first owner still has a file that was provably sold to them. They could fraudulently sell it again. A public blockchain would contain the whole chain of ownership, so you could tell who the current owner is.