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I thought "the real" NFT is determined by what people decide "the real" one is. This is not actually a problem. NFTs are (or at least can be) a certificate of a

I thought "the real" NFT is determined by what people decide "the real" one is. This is not actually a problem. NFTs are (or at least can be) a certificate of authenticity within a cryptographic framework. You can forge any physical certificate of authenticity with enough time and effort, but if you manage to forge a cryptographic one in our lifetime then congratulations! You just broke encryption. Tangentially related: It amazes me how poorly people seem to understand anything in this space but especially cryptocurrency. In maybe one out of hundred discussions on cryptocurrency do I see any mention of a ledger, which is the entire point. If you use Venmo or any similar cash exchange app then you automatically stand to benefit from the use of a cryptocurrency. Venmo is a ledger. The only reason you are able to send $1 a thousand times a day to your friend with no transaction fee is because you're not actually sending any money to anyone (as most people would understand it). You're changing values in Venmo's database which is an implementation of a digital ledger. Only when you "square up" with Venmo by transferring money out of Venmo into your own bank account does any money move anywhere (in a way that would cost Venmo a non negligible amount of money themselves). Cryptocurrencies are digital ledgers that, unlike Venmo, are decentralized and cryptographically backed. This means its physically impossible for Venmo (or anyone) to freeze or seize your assets, and impossible for your balances to be hacked or manipulated by a bad actor with too much authority (although your private keys can certainly still be hacked through side channels). Is that worth the energy cost of supporting a system like Bitcoin for every transaction? Not in my opinion, but I wish people would at least make an attempt at understanding what they hell they're talking about. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4 EDIT: a certificate of authenticity with proof of ownership included and modifiable only by the owner.

marcan_42 5y ago
> NFTs are (or at least can be) a certificate of authenticity within a cryptographic framework. NFTs are a cryptographic certificate of authenticity for... themselves. There is nothing about NFTs that authenticates anything tangible, digital or otherwise. That is what makes them useless. It's a self referencing, pointless exercise. Anyone can mint an NFT and buy and sell it... but all you've done is create an abstract digital object. The actual copyrightable asset the NFT points to is not authenticated, protected, or otherwise related in any way other than by trust - it's literally a URL, it could be anything. And if you're trusting people again, that's neither decentralized nor any different from traditional auction/trade platforms.
- grog454 5y ago
  Your knowledge of NFTs is likely greater than mine so correct me if I'm wrong. Pointing to a URL is fine if you trust URL digital signatures. Hypothetical situation: I'm a famous artist X. I produce great painting 123 and want to issue a certificate of authenticity for it. So I post on my webpage X.com/123 a sentence "I just produced painting 123 and generated NFT 456 for it on the Ethereum blockchain" NFT 456 points to X.com/123 and the Ethereum blockchain contains the ownership information (namely that X currently owns it). Since this is on the Ethereum blockchain, I assume dilettante Y can now purchase NFT 456 from me for 1M Ethereum as a single transaction. Is this not how it's supposed to work? Is there an obvious attack vector here I'm missing? Edit: maybe the obvious attack vector is the mutability of the sentence posted to X.com/123, so I feel like I'm close to a good system but missing something.
  - clhodapp 5y ago
    Also: Someone else can generate an NFT with the same URL in it. Thus, it becomes an exercise to verify the NFT out of band. At that point, in a lot of situations, it's not the NFT that's certifying the ownership, it's the public announcement by the artist. There's maybe a little to be gained because from that point forward, any transfers may be verified but... In the end the root of trust remains the public, out-of-band announcement of the NFT. It is also worth noting that, in a lot of cases, NFTs don't actually confer any sort of special rights or ownership over the art. Often, NFTs are really just signed links to a thing that was not actually sold to you, with the actual legal ownership of the art staying with the seller.
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    > I just produced painting 123 and generated NFT 456 for it on the Ethereum blockchain" Upon which you have to trust the artist that they actually did produce the painting themselves, and own the copyright to it, and are authorized to mint an NFT of it. If it later turns out they didn't, the NFT is a fraud. So you're still relying on centralized trust. You also have to trust the artist not to "double-spend" their work and put it up as an NFT elsewhere or sell its copyright. The NFT itself is not tied to copyright, so there is no legal nor technical protection here. NFTs are solid blockchain technology resting on a foundation of centralized trust (sure, distributed, but still individually centralized). It's completely against everything those crypto people claim they stand for and they don't even realize it. It's in the damn name too. Non-Fungible Token. Token. Not Picture. The only thing you're buying and selling is a meaningless token. I say this every time NFTs come up: go commission some custom artwork from your favorite artist instead, the normal way. At least that way you'll have something unique and personal instead of a procedurally generated monkey, and you don't need cryptononsense to know it's yours.

marcan_42 5y ago

> NFTs are (or at least can be) a certificate of authenticity within a cryptographic framework. NFTs are a cryptographic certificate of authenticity for... themselves. There is nothing about NFTs that authenticates anything tangible, digital or otherwise. That is what makes them useless. It's a self referencing, pointless exercise. Anyone can mint an NFT and buy and sell it... but all you've done is create an abstract digital object. The actual copyrightable asset the NFT points to is not authenticated, protected, or otherwise related in any way other than by trust - it's literally a URL, it could be anything. And if you're trusting people again, that's neither decentralized nor any different from traditional auction/trade platforms.

grog454 5y ago
Your knowledge of NFTs is likely greater than mine so correct me if I'm wrong. Pointing to a URL is fine if you trust URL digital signatures. Hypothetical situation: I'm a famous artist X. I produce great painting 123 and want to issue a certificate of authenticity for it. So I post on my webpage X.com/123 a sentence "I just produced painting 123 and generated NFT 456 for it on the Ethereum blockchain" NFT 456 points to X.com/123 and the Ethereum blockchain contains the ownership information (namely that X currently owns it). Since this is on the Ethereum blockchain, I assume dilettante Y can now purchase NFT 456 from me for 1M Ethereum as a single transaction. Is this not how it's supposed to work? Is there an obvious attack vector here I'm missing? Edit: maybe the obvious attack vector is the mutability of the sentence posted to X.com/123, so I feel like I'm close to a good system but missing something.
- clhodapp 5y ago
  Also: Someone else can generate an NFT with the same URL in it. Thus, it becomes an exercise to verify the NFT out of band. At that point, in a lot of situations, it's not the NFT that's certifying the ownership, it's the public announcement by the artist. There's maybe a little to be gained because from that point forward, any transfers may be verified but... In the end the root of trust remains the public, out-of-band announcement of the NFT. It is also worth noting that, in a lot of cases, NFTs don't actually confer any sort of special rights or ownership over the art. Often, NFTs are really just signed links to a thing that was not actually sold to you, with the actual legal ownership of the art staying with the seller.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  > I just produced painting 123 and generated NFT 456 for it on the Ethereum blockchain" Upon which you have to trust the artist that they actually did produce the painting themselves, and own the copyright to it, and are authorized to mint an NFT of it. If it later turns out they didn't, the NFT is a fraud. So you're still relying on centralized trust. You also have to trust the artist not to "double-spend" their work and put it up as an NFT elsewhere or sell its copyright. The NFT itself is not tied to copyright, so there is no legal nor technical protection here. NFTs are solid blockchain technology resting on a foundation of centralized trust (sure, distributed, but still individually centralized). It's completely against everything those crypto people claim they stand for and they don't even realize it. It's in the damn name too. Non-Fungible Token. Token. Not Picture. The only thing you're buying and selling is a meaningless token. I say this every time NFTs come up: go commission some custom artwork from your favorite artist instead, the normal way. At least that way you'll have something unique and personal instead of a procedurally generated monkey, and you don't need cryptononsense to know it's yours.