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> You're wrong. I hold many NFTs that I want just for the sake of the art. This is an old debate and not really the subject at hand, but I'll still bite (again

by bambax 5y ago

> You're wrong. I hold many NFTs that I want just for the sake of the art. This is an old debate and not really the subject at hand, but I'll still bite (against my better judgement). You don't need to own an NFT to enjoy the art. That's the fundamental difference between art in the real world and digital art (NFT or not). When you own a piece of art you get to look at the original; this is a unique experience in the case of a painting, and sometimes a rare experience in the case of limited editions of photos. But the digital art is the same whether you "own it" or not. From an esthetic experience (not a financial one, obviously), it's pointless to "own" digital art. The only thing that would influence the esthetic experience of digital art is the medium. Buy a better screen. Better speakers. Etc. > People spend countless hours hanging out on Discord Sure. That I don't doubt.

chrisco255 5y ago
You don't need an original art work to enjoy the art either. You can print out photorealistic copies. You can buy a fake Rembrandt. You can buy a fake Gucci purse. It's perfectly okay to do that...however... What you lose is a direct connection to the original artist. Art is as much about the story of that artwork as it is the art itself. If an artist mints an NFT and that NFT has has provenance that's generally accepted by the community at large, then it has all the properties of an original physical artwork. Except that you can be more sure of its origin, because the blockchain history is immutable and you can trace the transactions back to the original creator. Music NFTs have been created, although they are certainly still nascent, it's possible to create an MP3-based NFT that has the same or better quality as a CD album. One could imagine NFT albums being minted just like CD and record albums of yore. One could imagine people collecting the NFTs just for the sake of actually owning the rights to backup and play that music without having to stream through Spotify or YouTube. One could imagine the user retaining the right to resell that album just like they had the right to resell a used CD back in the day. I already gave many examples above about how NFTs can be used beyond the basic use-case of attaching a JPEG (access to services, access to software, use in cross-game or cross-app experiences, etc). Some people are collecting them as Proofs of Attendance (POAPS), which are free NFTs used as badges. They're quite popular and fun to collect. I do so for the pure enjoyment of them. Sometimes the badges above are used for things like giveaways. If I want to reward loyal community members, I can issue a POAP for attending a particular video chat, and then give out random rewards to anyone holding one of my community's POAPs. That's cool, and fun. I've been in communities where we create our own POAPs as funny shared inside jokes.
- kylebyproxy 5y ago
  To my ear, this all sounds like you're saying participation in NFT is performance art, which I hadn't really considered before, but I can kinda make sense of the appeal in that light. It just seems in bad taste to me that a person would claim ownership of someone else's work. But to each their own.
  - chrisco255 5y ago
    An NFT is a complex abstraction, that can mean many things in many contexts. It's quite powerful as a tool, as a technology. Art is honestly just a fraction of what an NFT can represent. But you won't develop any kind of intuition for that without engaging with it. As for claiming ownership, yes, if I paid some amount for the ownership of a particular piece of art (commercial rights or otherwise), that is called an exchange or a trade or a transaction. It's quite common in capitalist societies. Not sure why that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. But to each their own.
- kordlessagain 5y ago
  Basically, you are saying NFT creators can create any type of digital artwork in any type of media that they want, and NFT collectors can collect them for any number of reasons. Maybe some of that is stored on chain, maybe some is not. So then, what is a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) actually good for? The answer seems to be proofs of provenance, ownership, and authenticity. Provenance is defined as the place where something originally came or began, or a record tracing the ownership history of certain items that helps to confirm their authenticity and value. How many things in the world need a proof of provenance? Paper towels? No. Corn? No. Cars? Yes, maybe. Art? Yes, as established, but not everyone likes art like they do their cars, at least in the West. So, market sizes matter. A good idea is only as good as the market, and NFTs aren't an idea that is actually sold, it's an idea on an idea of selling something. Like marketing, NFTs are more like a meme than a product or service. (I realize some people consider marketing to include market analysis, which is something else entirely.) But, who runs the car provenance proofs? Do we put all the data about the car on the chain? That would be too much data for current chains. I suspect, like the speed of computers, an increase in throughput will just result in more junk on the chain. How much junk can a chain take? Not much, I'd hazard. How do you sell your car NFT to grandpa when the car chain is full of junk? You probably don't. But, there isn't really much in which I need to prove ownership. My house and my truck have titles. It's pointless to make NFTs for them, given the state runs the database and the state is pretty good at this by now, especially given they take money from me for property tax and plates. I don't care to prove ownership of anything else. What I have in my possession is enough proof. The police would take a photo of my 3d printer as proof of ownership if it were stolen and then located in my neighbor's house. The whole idea about using NFTs to share(holder) out my house or truck is also pointless. To make me pay someone that held an NFT on a share of my house is going to be a challenge. There's probably a contract somewhere that would do more good in forcing my hand to pay up, like the mortgage company would do if I had a mortgage and defaulted. But, is it useful? I guarantee attorneys will get involved if that happens. Authenticity? Who cares? In this age of mass consumption, the focus of NFTs on art defines a very small market. In fact, I'd say the desire by some to "collect", of a certain generation maybe, is pretty pointless. It reminds me of my friend buying a bunch of Hot Wheels in his 20s because he thought not opening them and playing with them would make them worth more in the future. He had a huge collection in his attic. I don't trade things like this, but many do, and I appreciate that they may think NFTs help with their "hobby". At the end of the day NFTs are made for the imagination - which is why the conversation always turns to gaming. They cater to it like nothing else. They make people think that "value" is a real thing and that it can somehow be "preserved" by using a series of calculations. I get that some people love the idea of NFTs so much, they can't help but spread that love to others. The only problem I see with that is that there really is no killer use case here. Instead, we get things like NFTs of blocks of tungsten that can only be touched once a year or saving that "special moment" in game that will be forgotten by the mind in a year.
kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
If someone says they enjoy thing A and don’t enjoy thing B, we should take that at face value rather than arguing about the logic of that position. Some people don’t enjoy owning original art either, and who am I to say they’re objectively wrong to not enjoy it?

by bambax 5y ago

chrisco255 5y ago

You don't need an original art work to enjoy the art either. You can print out photorealistic copies. You can buy a fake Rembrandt. You can buy a fake Gucci purse. It's perfectly okay to do that...however... What you lose is a direct connection to the original artist. Art is as much about the story of that artwork as it is the art itself. If an artist mints an NFT and that NFT has has provenance that's generally accepted by the community at large, then it has all the properties of an original physical artwork. Except that you can be more sure of its origin, because the blockchain history is immutable and you can trace the transactions back to the original creator. Music NFTs have been created, although they are certainly still nascent, it's possible to create an MP3-based NFT that has the same or better quality as a CD album. One could imagine NFT albums being minted just like CD and record albums of yore. One could imagine people collecting the NFTs just for the sake of actually owning the rights to backup and play that music without having to stream through Spotify or YouTube. One could imagine the user retaining the right to resell that album just like they had the right to resell a used CD back in the day. I already gave many examples above about how NFTs can be used beyond the basic use-case of attaching a JPEG (access to services, access to software, use in cross-game or cross-app experiences, etc). Some people are collecting them as Proofs of Attendance (POAPS), which are free NFTs used as badges. They're quite popular and fun to collect. I do so for the pure enjoyment of them. Sometimes the badges above are used for things like giveaways. If I want to reward loyal community members, I can issue a POAP for attending a particular video chat, and then give out random rewards to anyone holding one of my community's POAPs. That's cool, and fun. I've been in communities where we create our own POAPs as funny shared inside jokes.

kylebyproxy 5y ago
To my ear, this all sounds like you're saying participation in NFT is performance art, which I hadn't really considered before, but I can kinda make sense of the appeal in that light. It just seems in bad taste to me that a person would claim ownership of someone else's work. But to each their own.
- chrisco255 5y ago
  An NFT is a complex abstraction, that can mean many things in many contexts. It's quite powerful as a tool, as a technology. Art is honestly just a fraction of what an NFT can represent. But you won't develop any kind of intuition for that without engaging with it. As for claiming ownership, yes, if I paid some amount for the ownership of a particular piece of art (commercial rights or otherwise), that is called an exchange or a trade or a transaction. It's quite common in capitalist societies. Not sure why that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. But to each their own.
kordlessagain 5y ago
Basically, you are saying NFT creators can create any type of digital artwork in any type of media that they want, and NFT collectors can collect them for any number of reasons. Maybe some of that is stored on chain, maybe some is not. So then, what is a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) actually good for? The answer seems to be proofs of provenance, ownership, and authenticity. Provenance is defined as the place where something originally came or began, or a record tracing the ownership history of certain items that helps to confirm their authenticity and value. How many things in the world need a proof of provenance? Paper towels? No. Corn? No. Cars? Yes, maybe. Art? Yes, as established, but not everyone likes art like they do their cars, at least in the West. So, market sizes matter. A good idea is only as good as the market, and NFTs aren't an idea that is actually sold, it's an idea on an idea of selling something. Like marketing, NFTs are more like a meme than a product or service. (I realize some people consider marketing to include market analysis, which is something else entirely.) But, who runs the car provenance proofs? Do we put all the data about the car on the chain? That would be too much data for current chains. I suspect, like the speed of computers, an increase in throughput will just result in more junk on the chain. How much junk can a chain take? Not much, I'd hazard. How do you sell your car NFT to grandpa when the car chain is full of junk? You probably don't. But, there isn't really much in which I need to prove ownership. My house and my truck have titles. It's pointless to make NFTs for them, given the state runs the database and the state is pretty good at this by now, especially given they take money from me for property tax and plates. I don't care to prove ownership of anything else. What I have in my possession is enough proof. The police would take a photo of my 3d printer as proof of ownership if it were stolen and then located in my neighbor's house. The whole idea about using NFTs to share(holder) out my house or truck is also pointless. To make me pay someone that held an NFT on a share of my house is going to be a challenge. There's probably a contract somewhere that would do more good in forcing my hand to pay up, like the mortgage company would do if I had a mortgage and defaulted. But, is it useful? I guarantee attorneys will get involved if that happens. Authenticity? Who cares? In this age of mass consumption, the focus of NFTs on art defines a very small market. In fact, I'd say the desire by some to "collect", of a certain generation maybe, is pretty pointless. It reminds me of my friend buying a bunch of Hot Wheels in his 20s because he thought not opening them and playing with them would make them worth more in the future. He had a huge collection in his attic. I don't trade things like this, but many do, and I appreciate that they may think NFTs help with their "hobby". At the end of the day NFTs are made for the imagination - which is why the conversation always turns to gaming. They cater to it like nothing else. They make people think that "value" is a real thing and that it can somehow be "preserved" by using a series of calculations. I get that some people love the idea of NFTs so much, they can't help but spread that love to others. The only problem I see with that is that there really is no killer use case here. Instead, we get things like NFTs of blocks of tungsten that can only be touched once a year or saving that "special moment" in game that will be forgotten by the mind in a year.

kwertyoowiyop 5y ago

If someone says they enjoy thing A and don’t enjoy thing B, we should take that at face value rather than arguing about the logic of that position. Some people don’t enjoy owning original art either, and who am I to say they’re objectively wrong to not enjoy it?