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But then it’s just back to trust based web2, you’re trusting internet archive. That’s his point: this isn’t leading to trust less decentralization in practice.

But then it’s just back to trust based web2, you’re trusting internet archive. That’s his point: this isn’t leading to trust less decentralization in practice. To do that, you’d have to store the NFT data on chain, which is prohibitively expensive

toomuchtodo 5y ago
> But then it’s just back to trust based web2, you’re trusting internet archive. Correct, because it's clear storing the content in web2 Internet Archive is superior ("you’d have to store the NFT data on chain, which is prohibitively expensive"). They will persist regardless of web3 shenanigans, and hash addressing ensures content integrity. You could even use a torrent to store and serve the content (again, which uses hashes to identify and preserve integrity of content). Why would one trust a distributed ledger over a centralized archive run by folks whose primary focus is on preservation of the bits they're storing? The economic benefit of running storage nodes of encrypted content is unlikely to ever be sufficient to provide the same economic incentives a corporation or non profit realizes by offering the durability a centralized service provides (due to scale). EDIT: @Ragnarork It seems like web3 is making some promises it can't keep?
- Ragnarork 5y ago
  > Why would one trust a distributed ledger over a centralized archive Isn't that the polar opposite of the promise of web3...?
- dlubarov 5y ago
  I'm not sure it's even necessary to use Internet Archive or a torrent? If I own an NFT whose hash is stored on-chain, I can just ensure the availability of the preimage by storing it myself. Then when I want to interact with a centralized NFT marketplace, I can upload the preimage to their server. They'd verify the hash and store the image. I'd continue storing it myself though, so if that marketplace goes away, I can follow the same process with another one.
  - greenreptar 5y ago
    tying back to the article... so you want to own a server?
micromacrofoot 5y ago
This is where it falls apart for me too, people are paying huge sums for artificially scarce links to someone else’s server? I keep feeling like I’m missing something.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  No, they are paying huge sums for a digital certificate of ownership of the content on some else’s server; the link is just the description of what they are certified to own, like the address on a deed. (There's all kinds of problems with it, sure, but they aren't paying for the link.)
  - readams 5y ago
    But they don't even get the ownership of the content. The original creator still owns the copyright, and as a the buyer you don't even get a license to use the work in the NFT. The copyright is the only meaningful way you can own digital art.
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    ok so you own a certificate that describes the content of a link
    - AlexandrB 5y ago
      I think it's worse than that since, as described in the article, NFTs don't include a hash of what the link points to. So you own a certificate that describes the content of a link in the very literal sense of describing the characters in the link URL and not really anything more.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > ok so you own a certificate that describes the content of a link More precisely you have a certificate that says you own something (often ambiguous, though this could be precise; ambiguity is a choice in the minting of an NFT rather than a fundamental issue with the technology) relating to the content described by means of a link (the NFT may or may not include additional description of the content via metadata.)
magicalhippo 5y ago
If the NFT contained the content hash, your and the creators public keys, a signed timestamp, and the signature of those parts by the content creator, then the content could be stored elsewhere no? Obviously you'd want to keep a copy yourself, but at least you could then prove to others the file you have really is the one the creator sold, no? No expert at these crypto things, in either sense, am I missing something?
- spyder 5y ago
  Yes, but the problem is many of them don't even include the hash, and you also need a way to verify the creator and his/her public key.
- _heimdall 5y ago
  Say you add all that information to the transaction, to verify it in the future you still need to run the original file through the same hash function to prove they match. Its common for image files to be modified, many times even automatically by the hosting service. They might compress it, remove unnecessary metadata, or add metadata for themselves. Any of that would break the hash, so you'd need to make sure any host you use to store the original absolutely never changes the file. Then what? Well the image exists and you can verify it wasn't changed off-chain since the transaction finalized, so that's good. There's now an image publicly available online BUT a specific block chain says you own it, so that's also cool. But wait, that hash isn't guaranteed to be unique so really anyone could make another NFT pointing to the same URL and file hash, now they also own it? And anyone could just download the file, so they own it to? And there are no legal protections for NFTs, so what was the benefit of paying to have one block chain transaction say you own it in the first place?
  - colordrops 5y ago
    I thought we were talking about the problem of someone pulling the rug out from under you by changing the content at a URL. The hash solves the problem, but what you are talking about is an entirely different subject, and a problem which all NFTs suffer. Or not a problem, but just a general property of NFTs and crypto as well. The network effect is extremely important with blockchains. You could also fork BTC right now and claim you own everything on the chain. Doesn't mean people will honor it.
searchableguy 5y ago
There is arweave which is trying to bring permanent storage. You could store the nft on arweave chain and mint the NFT on the same. https://www.arweave.org/ https://www.arweave.org/ Though, I'm not sure how this will "scale".
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  > Though, I'm not sure how this will "scale". It fundamentally can't - you need X amounts of storage * replication factor to store X amounts of data * replication factor.
- acdha 5y ago
  It’ll scale like S3, et al.: replicated storage requires ongoing payments because sysadmins need to be paid, storage needs to be bought & replaced, network bandwidth is metered, etc. It could be cheaper if someone can finally make a P2P network which becomes and stays popular[1] but it’ll always require more than a one-time payment. That could be donor funded (Internet Archive) but I’d be leery of assuming anything long-term unless you’re paying for it. 1. Abuse is the hard problem here: if I host a node, when the police download something illicit my IP is the one they see and I have to prove that it was done without my knowledge. This is why nobody does this except for known sources.
  - searchableguy 5y ago
    > It’ll scale like S3, et al.: replicated storage requires ongoing payments because sysadmins need to be paid, storage needs to be bought & replaced, network bandwidth is metered, etc. That's what they are trying to solve with their tokenomics model. The value of token will appreciate over time whereas the price of storage will keep getting cheaper. It's simpler than s3 in many aspects so I'm not sure you would need a system administrator. Everyone can run a node and things are replicated many times over. The failover model is to look for the next node. There are no API, security, access, etc consideration to be maintained at the node level. Data itself is public by default. > Abuse is the hard problem here: if I host a node, when the police download something illicit my IP is the one they see and I have to prove that it was done without my knowledge. This is why nobody does this except for known sources Yeah, that's important.
Thorrez 5y ago
You're not fully trusting them. They can't change the content.
- diab0lic 5y ago
  They can change the content, you’ll just know they did it. Much like if my watch gets stolen I’ll know, but I still don’t have a watch anymore.
  - Thorrez 5y ago
    They can delete the content. That's the only "change" they can do. It's like your watch analogy, except you can easily back up an image, but cannot back up a watch.
    - diab0lic 5y ago
      I see no reason they couldn’t change the content rather than just delete it. In fact the article shows an example of exactly that in practice. Sure you can back up an image, but the backup is worth the same as a copy of the NFT: zip. You now own a pointer on the blockchain to nothing and a jpeg on your disk. I’ve got a lot of that going on already with zero expenditure.
      - Thorrez 5y ago
        The article was about the NFT containing a name. This thread is about "NFT points to a content hash", to quote toomuchtodo. You can't change the content and keep the same hash. Similarly, you can prove to others that the version on your disk the version pointed to by the blockchain by having people check the hash.
can16358p 5y ago
What if the URL points to a decentralized and immutable file storage system instead of a regular URL with a domain/IP?
- hk__2 5y ago
  This solves the problem while creating a new (big) one: make this decentralized and immutable file storage work.
  - sildur 5y ago
    They already exist, and work. IPFS, for example.
    - acdha 5y ago
      IPFS is famously slow/unreliable, not widely used, and you still need to pay for hosting of anything you don’t want to lose because storage, bandwidth, and operator time aren’t free and someone needs to get paid to deal with abuse.
colordrops 5y ago
No you're not - it could be stored in multiple places. It's, a hash, not a URL, and if it's a properly constructed hash it would hard or impossible to fake. The content on server other than internet archive would have the same hash.
abi 5y ago
Why's there a need to trust internet archive in this situation? If the content hash is no the ETH blockchain, then it's immutable. You can make as many copies of the underlying image as you want so that sticks around permanently.
fiachamp 5y ago
Isn't the solve for this to store it on a decentralized storage network like Filecoin?!?

toomuchtodo 5y ago

> But then it’s just back to trust based web2, you’re trusting internet archive. Correct, because it's clear storing the content in web2 Internet Archive is superior ("you’d have to store the NFT data on chain, which is prohibitively expensive"). They will persist regardless of web3 shenanigans, and hash addressing ensures content integrity. You could even use a torrent to store and serve the content (again, which uses hashes to identify and preserve integrity of content). Why would one trust a distributed ledger over a centralized archive run by folks whose primary focus is on preservation of the bits they're storing? The economic benefit of running storage nodes of encrypted content is unlikely to ever be sufficient to provide the same economic incentives a corporation or non profit realizes by offering the durability a centralized service provides (due to scale). EDIT: @Ragnarork It seems like web3 is making some promises it can't keep?

Ragnarork 5y ago
> Why would one trust a distributed ledger over a centralized archive Isn't that the polar opposite of the promise of web3...?
dlubarov 5y ago
I'm not sure it's even necessary to use Internet Archive or a torrent? If I own an NFT whose hash is stored on-chain, I can just ensure the availability of the preimage by storing it myself. Then when I want to interact with a centralized NFT marketplace, I can upload the preimage to their server. They'd verify the hash and store the image. I'd continue storing it myself though, so if that marketplace goes away, I can follow the same process with another one.
- greenreptar 5y ago
  tying back to the article... so you want to own a server?

micromacrofoot 5y ago

This is where it falls apart for me too, people are paying huge sums for artificially scarce links to someone else’s server? I keep feeling like I’m missing something.

dragonwriter 5y ago
No, they are paying huge sums for a digital certificate of ownership of the content on some else’s server; the link is just the description of what they are certified to own, like the address on a deed. (There's all kinds of problems with it, sure, but they aren't paying for the link.)
- readams 5y ago
  But they don't even get the ownership of the content. The original creator still owns the copyright, and as a the buyer you don't even get a license to use the work in the NFT. The copyright is the only meaningful way you can own digital art.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  ok so you own a certificate that describes the content of a link
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    I think it's worse than that since, as described in the article, NFTs don't include a hash of what the link points to. So you own a certificate that describes the content of a link in the very literal sense of describing the characters in the link URL and not really anything more.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > ok so you own a certificate that describes the content of a link More precisely you have a certificate that says you own something (often ambiguous, though this could be precise; ambiguity is a choice in the minting of an NFT rather than a fundamental issue with the technology) relating to the content described by means of a link (the NFT may or may not include additional description of the content via metadata.)

magicalhippo 5y ago

If the NFT contained the content hash, your and the creators public keys, a signed timestamp, and the signature of those parts by the content creator, then the content could be stored elsewhere no? Obviously you'd want to keep a copy yourself, but at least you could then prove to others the file you have really is the one the creator sold, no? No expert at these crypto things, in either sense, am I missing something?

spyder 5y ago
Yes, but the problem is many of them don't even include the hash, and you also need a way to verify the creator and his/her public key.
_heimdall 5y ago
Say you add all that information to the transaction, to verify it in the future you still need to run the original file through the same hash function to prove they match. Its common for image files to be modified, many times even automatically by the hosting service. They might compress it, remove unnecessary metadata, or add metadata for themselves. Any of that would break the hash, so you'd need to make sure any host you use to store the original absolutely never changes the file. Then what? Well the image exists and you can verify it wasn't changed off-chain since the transaction finalized, so that's good. There's now an image publicly available online BUT a specific block chain says you own it, so that's also cool. But wait, that hash isn't guaranteed to be unique so really anyone could make another NFT pointing to the same URL and file hash, now they also own it? And anyone could just download the file, so they own it to? And there are no legal protections for NFTs, so what was the benefit of paying to have one block chain transaction say you own it in the first place?
- colordrops 5y ago
  I thought we were talking about the problem of someone pulling the rug out from under you by changing the content at a URL. The hash solves the problem, but what you are talking about is an entirely different subject, and a problem which all NFTs suffer. Or not a problem, but just a general property of NFTs and crypto as well. The network effect is extremely important with blockchains. You could also fork BTC right now and claim you own everything on the chain. Doesn't mean people will honor it.

searchableguy 5y ago

There is arweave which is trying to bring permanent storage. You could store the nft on arweave chain and mint the NFT on the same. https://www.arweave.org/ https://www.arweave.org/ Though, I'm not sure how this will "scale".

tsimionescu 5y ago
> Though, I'm not sure how this will "scale". It fundamentally can't - you need X amounts of storage * replication factor to store X amounts of data * replication factor.
acdha 5y ago
It’ll scale like S3, et al.: replicated storage requires ongoing payments because sysadmins need to be paid, storage needs to be bought & replaced, network bandwidth is metered, etc. It could be cheaper if someone can finally make a P2P network which becomes and stays popular[1] but it’ll always require more than a one-time payment. That could be donor funded (Internet Archive) but I’d be leery of assuming anything long-term unless you’re paying for it. 1. Abuse is the hard problem here: if I host a node, when the police download something illicit my IP is the one they see and I have to prove that it was done without my knowledge. This is why nobody does this except for known sources.
- searchableguy 5y ago
  > It’ll scale like S3, et al.: replicated storage requires ongoing payments because sysadmins need to be paid, storage needs to be bought & replaced, network bandwidth is metered, etc. That's what they are trying to solve with their tokenomics model. The value of token will appreciate over time whereas the price of storage will keep getting cheaper. It's simpler than s3 in many aspects so I'm not sure you would need a system administrator. Everyone can run a node and things are replicated many times over. The failover model is to look for the next node. There are no API, security, access, etc consideration to be maintained at the node level. Data itself is public by default. > Abuse is the hard problem here: if I host a node, when the police download something illicit my IP is the one they see and I have to prove that it was done without my knowledge. This is why nobody does this except for known sources Yeah, that's important.

Thorrez 5y ago

You're not fully trusting them. They can't change the content.

diab0lic 5y ago
They can change the content, you’ll just know they did it. Much like if my watch gets stolen I’ll know, but I still don’t have a watch anymore.
- Thorrez 5y ago
  They can delete the content. That's the only "change" they can do. It's like your watch analogy, except you can easily back up an image, but cannot back up a watch.
  - diab0lic 5y ago
    I see no reason they couldn’t change the content rather than just delete it. In fact the article shows an example of exactly that in practice. Sure you can back up an image, but the backup is worth the same as a copy of the NFT: zip. You now own a pointer on the blockchain to nothing and a jpeg on your disk. I’ve got a lot of that going on already with zero expenditure.
    - Thorrez 5y ago
      The article was about the NFT containing a name. This thread is about "NFT points to a content hash", to quote toomuchtodo. You can't change the content and keep the same hash. Similarly, you can prove to others that the version on your disk the version pointed to by the blockchain by having people check the hash.

can16358p 5y ago

What if the URL points to a decentralized and immutable file storage system instead of a regular URL with a domain/IP?

hk__2 5y ago
This solves the problem while creating a new (big) one: make this decentralized and immutable file storage work.
- sildur 5y ago
  They already exist, and work. IPFS, for example.
  - acdha 5y ago
    IPFS is famously slow/unreliable, not widely used, and you still need to pay for hosting of anything you don’t want to lose because storage, bandwidth, and operator time aren’t free and someone needs to get paid to deal with abuse.

colordrops 5y ago

No you're not - it could be stored in multiple places. It's, a hash, not a URL, and if it's a properly constructed hash it would hard or impossible to fake. The content on server other than internet archive would have the same hash.

abi 5y ago

Why's there a need to trust internet archive in this situation? If the content hash is no the ETH blockchain, then it's immutable. You can make as many copies of the underlying image as you want so that sticks around permanently.

fiachamp 5y ago

Isn't the solve for this to store it on a decentralized storage network like Filecoin?!?