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A semantic distinction without an actual difference. At the end of the day all an NFT does is state "author X gives ownership of Y to Z", if you trust the publi

A semantic distinction without an actual difference. At the end of the day all an NFT does is state "author X gives ownership of Y to Z", if you trust the public key of X a signed text file stating "author X gives ownership of Y to Z" gives you identical guarantees to a blockchain NFT stating the same thing. Nothing stops author X from minting a blockchain NFT that states "author X gives ownership of Y to Z" and also an additional blockchain NFT stating "author X gives ownership of Y to Q"... it's literally just a digitally signed string.

saurik 5y ago
What blockchains provide is transaction ordering as a service. If Y is an NFT, what prevents that from happening is the code on the blockchain: the same kind of code (literally, on Ethereum) that prevents Y from being a fungible token for a cryptocurrency that they send to two people (aka "double spend"). If Y is not an NFT, but you know the original owner X, and you wish to create an NFT, the same kind of mechanisms work: the first time you attempt to assign ownership is the canonical one. Which you seemed to get up-thread, you just failed to "do the math" to see why digital signatures alone don't support that as you are so sure cryptocurrencies have no value. If you send two digital signatures to two people claiming they both own something, the big issue is that the second person might not even know the first person exists. You need some kind of mechanism to invalidate the second one by exposing the first one in a trustless global ledger of events.... that's what blockchains provide. If you only care about the semantics of disputes--which is potentially fair for claims over a physical object: it acts as a kind of "second factor"--you get a long way by just including the entire chain back to the root whenever you transfer ownership, allowing people to show prominence over other chains they obviously dominate... ...but any time there is a conflict--and not just on the original sale!--in your histories you can't compare timestamps to resolve the dispute as you can't trust them: digital signatures cannot show that one thing happened before the other thing as any timestamp is just data being signed, attached by the signer, and is meaningless. To resolve these conflicts you need to use your distributed ledger to establish that no such signature has been signed previously: you need a way to authoritatively assign prominence. If you have a solution for this, what you have invented is a cryptocurrency and could be used as such (as there is no relevant difference between fungible and non-fungible tokens). (And note that this is true even if you try to solve this by using some complex web-of trust of a ton of random third-parties or overlapping sets of parties that different people haphazardly might choose to trust instead of a linear blockchain... you are just talking about systems like Holochain or Stellar or Avalanche instead of systems like Bitcoin or Ethereum.)
aboodman 5y ago
> all an NFT does is state "author X gives ownership of Y to Z", Incorrect. As @saurik says, but I'll just restate: an NFT also tells you the ordering of all such statements within one context (a single blockchain). So you can know whether this was the first such transfer by this owner or a subsequent one. This is the entire purpose of distributed databases, including blockchains.
- grey-area 5y ago
  Actually you can’t know it was by an ‘owner’ because nfts are not tied to the real world. You own nothing but the digital signature. There are so many problems being skated over here about provenance and ownership and nfts provide nothing of value in that domain, they’re just a get rich quick scheme.
  - miracle2k 5y ago
    > because nfts are not tied to the real world. You own nothing but the digital signature. The digital signature is thing that people want to own in the real world!
    - grey-area 5y ago
      And yet all the talk is not about the signature, but the thing it refers to. Why is that distinction constantly elided? Is it because the digital signature has no value on its own?
      - miracle2k 5y ago
        It's because there is no other meaningful way to "own" the thing the signature refers to, if you apply a concept of ownership as you would to a physical piece of art. Being in physical possession of the bytes to a JPEG is not what gives people the sense that they own this piece of art in the way they might own a painting, because the bytes are so cheaply copied. Owning the intellectual property behind a JPEG is an entirely different kind of ownership; the value is in the commercial exploitation of those rights, and the buyer is now taking over from the creator in being responsible for said exploitation to get their money's worth. This is not what artists or art collectors want. The whole point is to artificially recreate the traditional experience of ownership, but for immaterial/digital goods. People talk about owning the work (or an edition of it), not the signature, because that is the whole point of the exercise. Immaterial artworks such as video art, performances etc. are already being sold in the art market; what you get is a piece of paper stating that you own the work. It's exactly the same as an NFT. It may seem utterly useless for people who don't care about owning editions of immaterial works of art, but there is nothing scammy about it. It is done entirely in earnest.
jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
I think you are confusing the image of an NFT with the token itself. That two tokens point to the same JPG (for example) doesn't make them the same NFT. They are two distinct tokens.

saurik 5y ago

What blockchains provide is transaction ordering as a service. If Y is an NFT, what prevents that from happening is the code on the blockchain: the same kind of code (literally, on Ethereum) that prevents Y from being a fungible token for a cryptocurrency that they send to two people (aka "double spend"). If Y is not an NFT, but you know the original owner X, and you wish to create an NFT, the same kind of mechanisms work: the first time you attempt to assign ownership is the canonical one. Which you seemed to get up-thread, you just failed to "do the math" to see why digital signatures alone don't support that as you are so sure cryptocurrencies have no value. If you send two digital signatures to two people claiming they both own something, the big issue is that the second person might not even know the first person exists. You need some kind of mechanism to invalidate the second one by exposing the first one in a trustless global ledger of events.... that's what blockchains provide. If you only care about the semantics of disputes--which is potentially fair for claims over a physical object: it acts as a kind of "second factor"--you get a long way by just including the entire chain back to the root whenever you transfer ownership, allowing people to show prominence over other chains they obviously dominate... ...but any time there is a conflict--and not just on the original sale!--in your histories you can't compare timestamps to resolve the dispute as you can't trust them: digital signatures cannot show that one thing happened before the other thing as any timestamp is just data being signed, attached by the signer, and is meaningless. To resolve these conflicts you need to use your distributed ledger to establish that no such signature has been signed previously: you need a way to authoritatively assign prominence. If you have a solution for this, what you have invented is a cryptocurrency and could be used as such (as there is no relevant difference between fungible and non-fungible tokens). (And note that this is true even if you try to solve this by using some complex web-of trust of a ton of random third-parties or overlapping sets of parties that different people haphazardly might choose to trust instead of a linear blockchain... you are just talking about systems like Holochain or Stellar or Avalanche instead of systems like Bitcoin or Ethereum.)

aboodman 5y ago

> all an NFT does is state "author X gives ownership of Y to Z", Incorrect. As @saurik says, but I'll just restate: an NFT also tells you the ordering of all such statements within one context (a single blockchain). So you can know whether this was the first such transfer by this owner or a subsequent one. This is the entire purpose of distributed databases, including blockchains.

grey-area 5y ago
Actually you can’t know it was by an ‘owner’ because nfts are not tied to the real world. You own nothing but the digital signature. There are so many problems being skated over here about provenance and ownership and nfts provide nothing of value in that domain, they’re just a get rich quick scheme.
- miracle2k 5y ago
  > because nfts are not tied to the real world. You own nothing but the digital signature. The digital signature is thing that people want to own in the real world!
  - grey-area 5y ago
    And yet all the talk is not about the signature, but the thing it refers to. Why is that distinction constantly elided? Is it because the digital signature has no value on its own?
    - miracle2k 5y ago
      It's because there is no other meaningful way to "own" the thing the signature refers to, if you apply a concept of ownership as you would to a physical piece of art. Being in physical possession of the bytes to a JPEG is not what gives people the sense that they own this piece of art in the way they might own a painting, because the bytes are so cheaply copied. Owning the intellectual property behind a JPEG is an entirely different kind of ownership; the value is in the commercial exploitation of those rights, and the buyer is now taking over from the creator in being responsible for said exploitation to get their money's worth. This is not what artists or art collectors want. The whole point is to artificially recreate the traditional experience of ownership, but for immaterial/digital goods. People talk about owning the work (or an edition of it), not the signature, because that is the whole point of the exercise. Immaterial artworks such as video art, performances etc. are already being sold in the art market; what you get is a piece of paper stating that you own the work. It's exactly the same as an NFT. It may seem utterly useless for people who don't care about owning editions of immaterial works of art, but there is nothing scammy about it. It is done entirely in earnest.

jallen_dot_dev 5y ago

I think you are confusing the image of an NFT with the token itself. That two tokens point to the same JPG (for example) doesn't make them the same NFT. They are two distinct tokens.