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For a digitally savvy community, HN takes on NFTs are surprisingly backwards looking. NFTs most people have seen/heard of are just links to a JPEG with little t

For a digitally savvy community, HN takes on NFTs are surprisingly backwards looking. NFTs most people have seen/heard of are just links to a JPEG with little to no utility. That has caused all the hype/OpenSea volume, but there are many interesting crypto projects that ascribe utility to NFTs (but are also much less accessible). Interesting NFTs are those that: prove identity, serve as a key to a private community, yield tokens with utility, prove ownership of an asset that generates royalties, augment a gaming experience, etc. What's unique about how NFTs solve existing problems is fundamental to crypto - the data layer is open source, so everything is composable. Maybe the folks here working for large cap tech firms in effort to monetize proprietary data are offended by that.

malshe 5y ago
What are some examples where NFTs have solved or are solving fundamental problems?
- exdsq 5y ago
  NFTs help solve a few of the problems in reselling gig tickets 1. Royalties paid to the band 2. Allow you to check they're authentic tickets 3. Allow you to sell them online to people in a trusted away (atomic transactions for money, so no you send it then I pay/you pay then I sent it)
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    You can do all 3 much easier with a database.
58x14 5y ago
I cite ENS (ens.domains) as one of the bedrock technologies in this next cycle. Identity is the biggest flaw in our current social media / search engine / information discovery paradigm. In the next two weeks, I'll have my PGP keys discoverable, on blockchain, two clicks away from anyone with (unrestricted) internet access. Just find me at joshjames.eth and boom, you can virtually guarantee a secure communication channel with me. Outside of a physical abduction or hardware compromise of my private keys, this pattern no longer requires a middleman to host my pubkey.
wmf 5y ago
Interesting NFTs are those that: prove identity, serve as a key to a private community, yield tokens with utility, prove ownership of an asset that generates royalties, augment a gaming experience, etc. If those things want to be taken seriously they need to divorce themselves from the term "NFT", demonstrate that blockchain is necessary, and use the best tech (e.g. privacy-preserving zero-knowledge protocols for anything involving identity/authentication/authorization).

malshe 5y ago

What are some examples where NFTs have solved or are solving fundamental problems?

exdsq 5y ago
NFTs help solve a few of the problems in reselling gig tickets 1. Royalties paid to the band 2. Allow you to check they're authentic tickets 3. Allow you to sell them online to people in a trusted away (atomic transactions for money, so no you send it then I pay/you pay then I sent it)
- Gigachad 5y ago
  You can do all 3 much easier with a database.

58x14 5y ago

I cite ENS (ens.domains) as one of the bedrock technologies in this next cycle. Identity is the biggest flaw in our current social media / search engine / information discovery paradigm. In the next two weeks, I'll have my PGP keys discoverable, on blockchain, two clicks away from anyone with (unrestricted) internet access. Just find me at joshjames.eth and boom, you can virtually guarantee a secure communication channel with me. Outside of a physical abduction or hardware compromise of my private keys, this pattern no longer requires a middleman to host my pubkey.

wmf 5y ago

Interesting NFTs are those that: prove identity, serve as a key to a private community, yield tokens with utility, prove ownership of an asset that generates royalties, augment a gaming experience, etc. If those things want to be taken seriously they need to divorce themselves from the term "NFT", demonstrate that blockchain is necessary, and use the best tech (e.g. privacy-preserving zero-knowledge protocols for anything involving identity/authentication/authorization).