21 ms·

It is difficult for the average person to conceive of how useless NFTs are

363 points by billpg 5y ago

cartoonfoxes 5y ago
I've used the analogy that NFTs are just a fancy notary public, and exactly as exciting.
- zwkrt 5y ago
  Well it’s a less fancy version, considering that a notary public can legally notarize a binding contract between two parties. The analogy I have been using with my artist friend (who is interested in their use for selling digital art) is a global bulletin board.
  - gspr 5y ago
    I think that's what the cryptocurrency/NFT folks are dreaming about: a society in which there are no official services (no official money, no officially sanctioned notaries, etc.), so that you'll instead have an every-man-for-himself kind of society where their kind reign supreme. Then they throw in examples of how official services can be corrupt and how fiat currency can be abused as a reason that we should all get on board with throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I can't fucking wait for the cryptocurrency/NFT scene to come crashing down. Not because I want to see people hurt, but because that should (hopefully?) shut these people up for a generation.
- jacknews 5y ago
  Except, would you trust a notary public in, say, Sudan? NFT gif collections are obviously speculative money/crypto-laundering garbage, but there is a real use hiding in there somewhere.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    With so much horseshit, there has to be a pony in there somewhere.
    - jfk13 5y ago
      Pony? I was hoping for at least a unicorn.
  - matsemann 5y ago
    > Except, would you trust a notary public in, say, Sudan? How can I trust an NFT? I don't know if the person minting it was the true owner, or just someone uploading stolen content. I don't know what the URL used to point to or if the content has changed. It's basically useless without something external verifying it.
    - thebean11 5y ago
      You're right that you do have to verify it's origin, but the benefit is that you only have to verify it once, then the entire chain of custody can be derived. With a piece of physical art, the original creator cannot just give you an identifier that allows you to, with 100% certainty, check authenticity. You need expensive, manual, and fallible inspection of the physical object.
- yawnxyz 5y ago
  Notaries are kind of exciting, when you can program them to execute code. It's like having a notary that can notarize NEW things in a way that you won't tell every new notary how to notarize it. I think that's kind of cool
basisword 5y ago
>> If people are making so much noise about this technology-- if it IS technology, at all-- then surely it does SOMETHING... right? >> (The answer is, no. It does absolutely nothing.) >> It records a crytocurrency transaction and appends arbitrary data to the transaction. Seems contradictory. They do nothing...except this thing that they do. Seems like just another "old man yelling at the clouds" style thread to cause controversy and generate engagement without saying anything remotely new or interesting.
- antonvs 5y ago
  > Seems contradictory. They do nothing...except this thing that they do. Any and every blockchain supports that thing. The objection seems to be that what NFTs "add" are an unenforced and unenforceable agreement. There's no new technical (or legal!) feature. This makes them seem more like a (poor) proof of concept than anything else.
- Mashimo 5y ago
  It's trying to explain NFS for people who don't know how they work. If you already know it, then yes, it's nothing new.
- batch12 5y ago
  You are editorializing with your copypasta. The author is saying that the NFT does none of that. > It records a crytocurrency transaction and appends arbitrary data to the transaction. That's it. > None of those functions are inherent to the NFT. They all rely on external infrastructure, which exists independent of the NFT. If you're wondering what role the NFT does play, then, the answer is nothing-- it parted a fool from his Monopoly money. That's it.
frereubu 5y ago
I can picture the person who "invented" NFTs reading The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin, and an evil grin spreading slowly across their face.
- thom 5y ago
  Purely out of curiosity I went back and searched Twitter, first mention I can find is: https://twitter.com/PEntremont/status/901349495027445760 https://twitter.com/PEntremont/status/901349495027445760
  - WickyNilliams 5y ago
    Anil Dash and Kevin McCoy invented them in 2014. https://techcrunch.com/2014/05/09/monegraph https://techcrunch.com/2014/05/09/monegraph
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  Please write more about this. We lack any serious cultural commentary about this. Artists are jumping on NFTs because they want to make money from millionaires, there's no theory to be found with the "creators" unlike previous art movements
jdpigeon 5y ago
I'm not pro-NFT in any way, but this other Twitter thread raises some interesting counter-arguments to this common criticism: https://twitter.com/dabit3/status/1456399715646513153 https://twitter.com/dabit3/status/1456399715646513153 TL;DR NFTs that point to centralized mutable databases like s3 are a bad idea, but people are working on immutable data storage technologies like IPFS.
- pinko 5y ago
  How does this increase the utility of what is essentially a pointer written on a global bulletin board? (I'm not being rhetorical -- I'm not sure why the immutability of the thing pointed to increases the utility of the NFT pointer.)
  - jdpigeon 5y ago
    Well, if it's not immutable then someone can replace the asset that you "own" just by updating what's served when you try to access that url: https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1448066579611234305 https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1448066579611234305 If the asset hosting is both immutable then you're guaranteed to always get the thing that you bought from the url your NFT points too. By being "distributed" I think the idea is the immutability is more guaranteed since no one person will be able to control the database.
    - pinko 5y ago
      I can see the potential utility of an immutable public pointer to immutable public data, I guess -- but not the utility of "ownership" of that pointer.
    - croon 5y ago
      > If the asset hosting is both immutable then you're guaranteed to always get the thing that you bought from the url your NFT points too. You are not answering the question posed. What do you think you are "getting"? Sure, the pointer will always be the same, and the target will always be the same, and you will always have bought that pointer from some other wallet. Now what? Can I make other pointers to the same target? Can I make a first pointer to a target I did not create? Can I duplicate a target to a new URI and make a pointer to that and sell? Who enforces my ownership rights? The value of contracts are the enforcability of them, not the properties of the paper. It can be a CNC cut piece of aluminum or a napkin, the contents and the signatures are what's relevant. To connect this to main issues with NFTs (currently at least): * A wallet ID will never change, but I could lose my wallet to someone else, thus the immutability of the signage does not guarantee the immutable connection to a person. * NFTs (afaik) contain a tokenID, tokenURI, baseURI. I guess that can be read as "wallet X signs over this URI which contains an image of the Mona Lisa to wallet Y". Which is entirely different from explicitly stating "wallet X signs over all rights to the Mona Lisa to wallet Y".
wrnr 5y ago
The only feature NFTs have is it makes people money
- fron 5y ago
  Only because the NFT marketplace is just the Greater Fool Theory at work.
dvh1990 5y ago
Here we go again. NFTs is a technology that goes hand in hand with a social contract to abide by the ledger. People disregard that social contract as if it wasn't here, but it IS there. Just like patents are written to some database but are enforced by a social contract, NFTs are written to some database but are enforced by a social contract.
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  You are delusional
- VHRanger 5y ago
  If your argument is full "code is law!" then you need to take the flipside: When someone inevitably hacks the shitty solidity code and steals your stuff you don't get to cry to twitter or the police
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  They are enormously different strengths of social contract though both in terms of number of participants and consequences for breaching it. Five of my friends agreeing to share a dirt bike is a social contract after all.
  - dvh1990 5y ago
    Yes, but the point of blockchain tech is to enable such social contracts to be formed, and over time, strengthened. Isn't that the point of decentralized anything? You can decentralized tech all you want, but without a social contract to use it...
    - meheleventyone 5y ago
      You don't need decentralized tech to do that though as the dirt bike sharing example amply demonstrates... We can also see that many blockchain projects actually rely on more mundane social contracts like our legal system and governments with actual terms and conditions, registered companies and the like. If you think NFTs are going to radically alter social contracts around ownership on a wider scale I've got a lovely plot on the moon to sell you.
je_bailey 5y ago
Friend of mine wanted to know what a NFT is and I wrote down a URL and gave it to him on a piece of paper. That's an NFT. You can sell that paper, use it if you want but what ever is at the other end of the URL isn't yours and you can't guarantee it will be there or be consistent between the times you go. But by god you have a piece of paper.
- rattlesnakedave 5y ago
  "And then everyone clapped." This is not what an NFT is.
  - je_bailey 5y ago
    Then you don't understand NFTs
    - rattlesnakedave 5y ago
      I really encourage you to read EIP-721 and EIP-1155, then think a bit more creatively about the use-cases of non fungible, transferrable data, the possession of which is easily cryptographically verifiable.
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        Despite the common saying, possession and ownership often aren't the same thing.
        rattlesnakedave 5y ago
        What?
        ceejayoz 5y ago
        You said "non fungible, transferrable data, the possession of which is easily cryptographically verifiable", but NFT advocates talk about ownership a lot. I can possess all the bored ape JPEGs. So can anyone else in the world who can right-click or screenshot or download a .zip of them.
the_lonely_road 5y ago
I have no cryptocurrencies and feel good every time it goes down because it validates my decision. That said, is this guy even correct about having no recourse to enforce your ownership? If I buy a NFT from a guy in Germany don’t I have the same recourse as if I bought a Rembrandt from a guy in Germany? Sure if it’s $100 good luck getting any movement or if it’s from a guy in Iran also good luck getting any recourse but if it’s from a guy in Georgia (the US state) don’t I have the same small claims court infrastructure as if I bought a used PlayStation from him? Same goes for that German guy, if it’s above some threshold there is also certainly some kind of reciprocal treaty in place for me to engage with the local German court/police infrastructure to seek compensation.
- fabian2k 5y ago
  Buying an NFT does not grant you any ownership unless you have a separate agreement or contract along with it that does. How is a court in Germany supposed to know what it means that you paid some amount of cryptocurrency in exchange for an NFT? This has no meaning outside the blockchain.
  - the_lonely_road 5y ago
    Courts don’t play games like this. Everything is under their jurisdiction whether it’s novel or 1,000 years old. Worst case scenario you entered into a verbal contract where $100 of consideration was exchanged for x and you are engaging the courts because you believe the counter party failed to deliver x. If both parties are German it will not matter that blockchain was the medium of exchange anymore than it would if napkins at the bar were the medium of the exchange.
    - fabian2k 5y ago
      But what exactly are the rights you get when you buy an NFT? I'm assuming the absence of any other communication here, as that part would then be more like a verbal contract. The NFT is a link to something, and buying the NFT means I get the ownership of the NFT. But I've no idea what this actually means in the end, which rights do you get by that? I paid someone $100 and got a link back, everything else is completely unclear. I've no idea how a court would be able to fill in all the blanks here.
udbhavs 5y ago
Random thought dump of observations from someone who's dabbled in the space a bit (but is not a cryptobro by any means) - Here's a thing about NFTs that I've seen a lot crypto evangelists and haters miss, and a sentiment that I think will grow once the novelty dies out: The "art" is irrelevant. It's no more than a thumbnail or a poster marketing it's utility, and that's exactly the actual important part - what I can do with it. Can I use it as an in-game item? Do I get access to your next podcast episode early in a patreon-like service? Do I unlock your next online course for free or get a 50% discount on your next concert? This sense of multiple applications is what I think people may or may not mean when they use the term "creator economy", but I think it fits nicely. People argue that interoperability of assets is useless because "no two games would ever want to share an item, developers don't want that". But another angle to this is that creators can give utility to a single asset across a wide variety of applications for their fans. Regardless, none of this has been realised yet and maybe this is just a pipe dream if the majority of hype in the space continues to revolve around useless, ugly ass monkeys that are shown off on twitter for some ego-inflating sense of elitism. It could go either way I guess
- tw04 5y ago
  None of that requires NFT though. Literally all of that can be accomplished as well if not better without crypto being involved in any way.
  - udbhavs 5y ago
    Yes, that is another debate. My comment was more of a response to the many others I've seen debating whether NFT implies ownership of the art or what happens if the server hosting the image goes down (less of a problem if IPFS is utilised). My point is, it's irrelevant. And it never implied ownership of the art, so people who try to pass it off as such are woefully misunderstanding the technology and are probably scammers, and the people buying them are idiots. Cryptokitties, cryptopunks etc. are only valuable because they were the first ones doing these things, sort of like the "million dollar webpage" back in the day. There is literally no point in making an NFT without utility now, unless the minter is someone popular and in that case the NFT is a bet on their fame rising in the future and becomes a speculative asset (just like regular celebrity art).
crmd 5y ago
An NFT is permission to record your name in a public ledger in exchange for money, with the only utility being the pleasure of conspicuous consumption. They are strong evidence of a huge surplus of wealth in certain pockets of society.
- geerlingguy 5y ago
  Maybe the crypto bubble popping will cool down the trend. If it actually pops.
jgilias 5y ago
I've come to terms that people are gonna people and trade in anything that can be traded. Especially if there's some scarcity involved. The Million Dollar Homepage is still up. Coincidentally, I just clicked on one of the banners there, and it opened to some website advertising some crypto token. So, in a way, NFTs are just the latest instance of the same phenomenon.
rattlesnakedave 5y ago
Stopped reading at: "The idea that this is "your" monkey jpeg pretty much just relies on social consensus, since you have no tools to enforce ownership." Yes. Social consensus is how we confer all forms of "ownership." NFTs make it easier to reach consensus, as ownership is cryptographically verifiable. This person is thinking far too small. NFTs are not only about art, apes. etc. Any non fungible asset or piece of data can be represented as an NFT (not exclusively for trading / speculation).
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  But we have a social consensus on JPEG copyright, and not on NFTs. "It might, speculatively, become as good as the existing thing accepted by society and most crucially the legal system" isn't a great selling point.
  - rattlesnakedave 5y ago
    I don't understand what point you're trying to make. We can already enforce these existing property rights on digital assets. It's even better because transfer and ownership verification are easier.
    - gspr 5y ago
      > I don't understand what point you're trying to make. We can already enforce these existing property rights on digital assets I guess that's exactly their point: We have this. What the hell are NFTs supposed to bring to the game?
      - rattlesnakedave 5y ago
        If that’s their point, I encourage them to re read my original comment. It makes ownership cryptographically verifiable, and easily transferrable. You can even do more! Fractionalization to distribute ownership rights among groups, bearer authentication to web services for owners of tokens, etc.
dqpb 5y ago
If you think NFT’s are bad, you should check out CRDT’s. The sheer volume of pointless text that they produce is proof enough that they’re nothing but a huge grift.
hnuser847 5y ago
People who buy NFTs are playing a game of chicken against other investors/gamblers. It’s not about art or novel technology or anything like that. It’s just a gambling game. Nobody wants to hold the bag. Was anybody else around for CryptoCelebs back in 2017/2018? It was literally the same thing. You’d buy a million dollar NFT of Zuckerberg and hope somebody else would buy it from you for two million. They called them “hot potato” games back then.
recursivedoubts 5y ago
I am glad NFTs exist: they have provided another pressure-relief valve for the massive money printing by the Fed, so that money doesn't all go into real-estate and commodity speculation, which really harms normal people. It isn't a huge market, but every little bit helps. The crash will be biblical, obviously.
- TheCondor 5y ago
  Doesn’t the NFT and crypto bubble hurt normal people when it bursts? At least with commodity speculation, you potentially have some overpriced goods, here you literally have some nothing. I really like the efficiency and utility of cryptocurrency but I suspect it will all be set back decades, there will likely be efforts to outright ban/outlaw it after the crash.
- lexapro 5y ago
  >The crash will be biblical, obviously. You don't know that and you especially don't know when. So please don't use words like "obviously" for things that aren't obvious at all.
  - dbancajas 5y ago
    > , and they can reissue another one to replace it. I can make my own website that accepts only apes with mustaches into my site's private area. What's not obvious to you? If you pick up a unique stone off the street with an art printed on it and value that at 50K USD (remember anybody can pickup a stone and it's not difficult to put art on a stone). And then you have a group of people trading that at 50K isn't it obvious the value will go to 0$ when their interest dries up?
    - bostonpete 5y ago
      I'm inclined to agree as I'm extremely skeptical of NFT's but I'd note that your "stone" thought exercise could also be applied to things like trading cards or other collectibles, which also have no objective value but often preserve their value over time (though not always).
jollybean 5y ago
The author went a bit too much into the technical weeds to point out the more glaring failure: you don't own copyrights to the image. Talking about who 'owns' the jpeg isn't the big deal, it's content that matters. That the image is at a URL which is fixed is a 'bad technical issue' that might even be fixable in some way in the future. But you buy make an NFT of Mickey Mouse, and literally it would be illegal to show it anyone publicly.
yawnxyz 5y ago
NFTs are kind of terrible because it makes people think "links to images" are everything smart contracts can do. They're just a simple use of smart contracts, which are basically functions that don't live on a server. I can choose to deploy something onto Cloudflare Workers or on a chain. Most code I'm still deploying on CF! But there's a few functions - like signing functions that bind ownership of a piece of submitted genome sequence data - that I want to live on-chain, bc if it's off-chain, I (or someone else) could more easily become a bad actor, by deploying bad code.
phkahler 5y ago
It's difficult fo the average person to conceive what an NFT IS. Once one crosses that bridge, seeing how useless they are is easy. This problem is far more common than you might thing. It has relevance far beyond NFTs.
balr0g 5y ago
zivkovicp 5y ago
I like the idea of public blockchains because it gives anyone an opportunity to record a message that is persisted and visible globally. That doesn't necessarily make it worth much, but the utility of it is great. Want to make a declaration, and be able to prove you said X on Y date? Just create a transaction on the blockchain with your message and you have millions of nodes committing it to a public ledger. The current NFT craze seems more like a simple money grab, but I still hope the technology finds a way to survive and become mainstream.
johannes1234321 5y ago
An issue with a bubble like "crypto currency" and "NFT" is that many people don't understand it, but they see the loud buzz around it, so they have to conclude that all this Blockchain stuff must be great and if then a company comes and sells Blockchain and crypto etc. to a government they fall for it ... while often a) it's not needed and b) what is being sold actually isn't a "Blockchain" in the Bitcoin-style definition (distributed manipulation-safe ledger plus consensus)
haolez 5y ago
I like the ideas of cryptocurrency and blockchain tech in general, but for me NFTs sound like something stupid (if not a scam).
- antocv 5y ago
  NFTs are stupid. The masses however can not read out a word to its fullest letter like "cryptocurrency" they stop at "crypt" oh, and say "crypto". These are the people in the "crypto market" now to buy "coins" and "tokens" to get rich because "they believe in it" (but because theyve been told and seen someone made x1000 buying a token and selling it later to someone else) They are like flat earthers and evolution-deniers and "covid is ebola black bubonic plague vaxx everyone 110%" people. These people can not pick between 1000 coins which one is real innovation in consensus algorithms or whatever, and which one is a scam, like BitConnect or IOTA. These people know this, so they do the next best thing which is hunt for coins based on logos and overall marketing looks of the coin. This was not enough because the cryptoh projects used fancy words, its easier to just pick on logos, and even easier than logos with a project and website is to trade logos marked as NFTs.
andrewla 5y ago
The only use case that is unambiguously present and difficult to achieve by other means is having access to cryptographic proof of point-in-time association with piece of data. The Bored Ape Yacht Club is an example of this -- you "own" an ape. What that means is that you have the ability to access a restricted section of the website, that only ape owners can access. This membership is transferable without the consent or interaction with the issuer. HOWEVER -- this membership is not irrevocable. The hash that you "own" is listed on their website as a substring of the concatenated hashes of all apes, which is in turn hashed to make a master hash. That hash can be changed at any time, as can the associated access to the restricted area. New apes can be issued that grant access; old apes can have their access revoked at will. If you sell your ape to the Supreme Leader of Iran, then the government can force the BAYC to revoke the ape, and they can reissue another one to replace it. I can make my own website that accepts only apes with mustaches into my site's private area. So really the only thing you get is that the tokens can be traded on third party services.
- bombcar 5y ago
  The real use case of NFT is that you could have a token that you can trade. We'll call the token a "coin" (and since it's digital, a "bit"coin) and you can trade it with other people.
  - andrewla 5y ago
    I get where you're going, but unfortunately this is not apt -- the fungibility of coins was specific design point for Bitcoin (and for money in general, which is where the analogy surfaces). NFTs are by design and intention not fungible; they are not divisible nor combineable nor substitutable.
    - dpark 5y ago
      > NFTs are by design and intention not fungible; they are not divisible nor combineable nor substitutable. Except that they are, right? You just described a scenario where a token can be revoked and replaced. This is by any sane definition a substitute. I suppose you could argue that they cannot be divided or combined, and in that sense you are correct that they are not really usable currency. But I honestly fail to see how NFTs are actually non-fungible. If an indefinite number of equivalent tokens can be minted, what does it matter if each one is technically unique?
jokoon 5y ago
It's always the same problem: this technology is not recognized by any country, which makes it completely pointless. Just like bitcoin: no country will attempt to prevent your coins from being stolen, and no country will attempt to regulate bitcoin to avoid volatility. It's weird how technologists build things without ever researching the philosophical concepts understood by humans, not just machines and algorithms. That's the real dystopia: when technology is not understood by humans, it becomes useless. The success of computing was about making computers usable by non programmer. I guess the new trend is programmers trying to scam non-programmers.
- bombcar 5y ago
  The problem is deeper - even IF a country wanted to and successfully used a blockchain to store information on, say, property deeds, it would EITHER have to have no recourse in case of any fraud, theft, or abuse OR it would just be a centralized managed database. IF there is a mechanism for someone (or someones) to certify changing or reissuing a token in case of the death of the holder (the passphrase dies with him but the land continues to exist) THEN that same mechanism can be used or abused by the authority to do other transfers and reissues.
PaulHoule 5y ago
Getting money from a greater fool is an important application for lesser fools.
ivanech 5y ago
Not a big NFT fan, but this thread is weak. NFTs do try to solve the very real problem of indicating ownership of a purely digital item. Not my preferred way of solving the problem but whatever. A lot of these critiques betray discomfort with abstraction.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  Ultimately there has to be a central authority to verify it or it's all just bits in the bit bucket. In that case it would be just as good to have a certificate of authority from the original artist or a contract of such
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  Now try to explain this to the average people. These critiques are true. It's hard to understand.
theknocker 5y ago
jbverschoor 5y ago
Paper with a signature doesn't do anything either. However, NFTs are notarized, instantly transferrable, and trackable pieces of paper. s/instantly/fast -> NFT
IAmPym 5y ago
Maybe because the average user sees something special about them and wants to learn more. Maybe taking a mindset of curiosity and learning will lead to more understanding than criticism
dekhn 5y ago
it's a cult and HN is worse for people even talking about it. Also, ban twitter posts from HN!
andreygrehov 5y ago
> and often the data is abstract or imaginary. You "own" a gun in a video game, but that gun may or may not actually exist. There may or may not be a way to equip, shoot, or even look at it. Well, If a baseball player signs a cap of yours, then that cap suddenly has a value, however there is no way to say that you "own" a signature/cap pair. If it hangs on your wall, then you own it. But I can go buy the same cap, copy the player's signature and hang that fake autographed cap on my wall. NFT is pretty much the same thing, imho.
- ViViDboarder 5y ago
  But you do actually own that cap. Someone can’t take your cap away. An NFT pointing to a central server can be taken away. There is some robustness to IPFS of course. And while it’s true that the player can “mint” new autographed hats, it’s different than the fact that anyone can make duplicate NFTs of what you own. The cost of doing so is much less than getting a busy player to take hours signing hats. This is also why value of such things tends to go up after the player dies. It’s no longer possible to make similar works so the scarcity is locked. Again, not true with an NFT.
  - ViViDboarder 5y ago
    This is also why value of such things tends to go up after the player dies. It’s no longer possible to make similar works so the scarcity is locked. Again, not true with an NFT.
resiros 5y ago
I find the concept of a technology that allows the transfer of ownership of digital artifacts fascinating. However, NFTs in their current form do not allow that. They are just systems that logs who "owns" the token for an item. This is quite useful for proving that a physical item (e.g. a piece of art) is genuine (or in fact proving that the person who is selling owns at that point of time a genuine version of the item), however that does not work for digital arts for the following reasons. What does it mean to own a digital item? I think that a minimal definition should include a unique access to it/or its capabilities: people who own the item are the only ones who can access it. Clearly, the current system does not allow this (everyone can access a picture sold as an NFT). Moreover, it is not clear whether such a system can be built for digital items. In fact, it seems to me, that a system that transfers the ownership of digital items can only work if the items cannot be copied; if I buy a digital item, copy it, then sell it, I still own it after selling it, which means I did not transfer it. This brings the question, what are the properties of items that cannot be copied (or are hard to be copied)? Complex systems could be such examples. For example, neural networks where inferring the network is extremely hard to be done from input and output. Assume that the item is a neural network that can generate a voice of an artificial character, or an interactive 3d model of an avatar. If, the system gives me exclusive access to the network, I would be able to use it to generate the voice or the 3d model of my avatar in a metaverse, however, I would not have access to the code that generates this data, only to the results of this simulation. TL;DR A digital ownership system (like NFT) is only meaningful for items that cannot be copied. These can only be complex systems where the ownership scheme gives access to the output of the system and not its totality (think voice generation system)
kache_ 5y ago
lkxijlewlf 5y ago
They're only useless if you're the one paying for them. If you're getting paid, well... not so useless.
yodelshady 5y ago
I get that an NFT typically contains just a URL, because actual data is too expensive to store on the Enormous Work Disposal Unit(TM). Surely it's at least possible that accessing the actual asset behind the URL is authenticated by the same public key that verifies your "ownership"? And indeed for the rest of the concept of ownership of the asset to be taken seriously - i.e. I the buyer can tell the hoster "I have made a local copy, or just plain feel like burning stuff, delete your copy please". Or "please move the asset to this hosting service instead". Obviously that still has the same copying issues that the RIAA and MPAA and whoever else have failed to deal with so you probably aren't going to do any better. But, at least try?
DarylZero 5y ago
NFTs are exactly as useless, in exactly the same way, as any and every fiat currency.
- ViViDboarder 5y ago
  That’s so far from true. I can buy anything I want with USD and it has a relatively stable value compared to the goods I’m buying. Certainly more stable than NFTs or Bitcoin. The ubiquity and stability are the value. Other than that, theoretically, sure. They are no different. But that difference makes all the difference.
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    Just like any NFT, the USD is stable and ubiquitous exactly as long as some collective delusion makes it so. Some currencies have more stable collective delusions than others. So I'm not trying to claim all fiat currencies (including NFTs) are equally valuable. But they're all valuable _in the same way_. You can't attack the very concept of NFT. It's identical in concept to fiat currency. It has no inherent value, but it can't be easily forged. The only technical difference is NFTs are even more resistant to forgery than minted money.
robbrown451 5y ago
I think NFTs are mostly only useful as a parody of the concept of intellectual property and artificial scarcity. They take the concept of "owning" something that can be infinitely copied to the absurd extreme. When the average person conceives of just how useless they are, they might start to see the ridiculous inefficiencies of our intellectual property system.
vikingcaffiene 5y ago
The best explanation of NFTs I’ve heard: You are married. Your spouse is cheating on you right in front of you with multiple people. But you have the marriage certificate.
- AccountToUse 5y ago
  Thank you for the laugh.
echopurity 5y ago
kgin 5y ago
https://twitter.com/dmarti/status/1477389651849756674?s=21 https://twitter.com/dmarti/status/1477389651849756674?s=21 > An NFT is like being the Foursquare Mayor of a JPEG
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
>> if you can't delete the jpeg, alter the jpeg, move the jpeg, hide the location of the jpeg from public scrutiny, or stop other people from downloading, copying, modifying, and redistributing the jpeg, in what sense do you own it? You are not paying for the jpeg, you are paying for the (digital) signature of jpeg's author, or some other famous person. For example, a picture of sunflowers bearing my signature is worth zero, but if it were signed by someone with the name van gogh, it's worth millions. However, the signature of the latter can be forged, and has been forged many times successfully. It's very expensive to verify authenticity of a physical signature. That's the problem the digital signature on a blockchain solves. The NFT site verifies the famous person's identity, and appends an unforgeable timestamp. There are a finite number of famous people, so the resulting digitally signed item is scarce. That's where it's monetary value comes from.
dan_mctree 5y ago
Disclaimer: I'm not an NFT owner Why do so many here seem to be so proud of their lack of understanding of the value of NFTs? If you have an NFT, you get to do things others cannot. That's the value right there. At the very least, holding an NFT gives you the ability to transfer it to someone else and make them the holder. Anyone can confirm that you did in fact transfer it and made the other person the holder. In addition, you potentially get access to other benefits, such as acceptance of some alternate meaning in the NFT social circle as well as potential benefits in software written that respects the NFT. What seems to have taken off most is that the NFT social circle will accept ownership of some linked item within the NFTs data. They see the NFT record as a register of provenance that they're willing to recognize. Do NFTs signal legal ownership? I imagine we're going to find out that it probably depends. But even where they don't, they certainly signify something akin to ownership or possession. And that ownership of scarce goods is precisely something that is valued by certain communities, especially the art trade community. That you can mint your own NFT with the same data, or that a link in an NFT stops working don't really change the nature of the kind of ownership. What NFTs offer sort of mimics the 'realness' of a piece of art. I can make a picture of the Mona Lisa too, but no one will respect that picture as the real Mona Lisa. While you might lose out on the pretty physical object, you gain in cryptographic provability and potential software integration
- Spivak 5y ago
  Nothing you're saying disagrees with the posted Twitter thread. Without the IRL arcade prize counter agreeing to turn ownership of a token into a tangible privilege the NFT is worthless. And if you already have the prize counter then you don't really need the NFT since you have a central trusted authority. You could maybe argue that using an NFT is easier than minting your own system for arcade coins but binding goods to and transferring them between "accounts" (which you have to have already to access your goods) has worked for decades. The auction house in WoW, and the Steam marketplace has been doing digital marketplaces long enough to prove it works just fine. > Why do so many here seem to be so proud of their lack of understanding of the value of NFTs? I think most people are proud of their very concrete understanding of the value of NFTs -- which is zero to anyone not trying to make money on them.
- 5y ago
Hakashiro 5y ago
I am getting quite tired of the NFT and blockchain hate. Every argument against it has been heard. We get it, you don't like blockchain. You don't like expensive inflated art. You think the art has no artistic value. I actually don't care about the artistic value. But this isn't even about the "Boring Apes" bullshit. So what if someone buys an "URL" to the picture of a monkey? Really, who cares? Well. Apparently a lot of people. I disagree that NFTs are "useless". The "Boring Ape" whatever may be a dumb (but popular) implementation of NFT technology. But NFTs are not useless. NFTs are a way for people to record data on the blockchain and claim their ownership. If what you're worried about is dumb people buying things that actually have no inherent value, I have some bad news for you. I don't even hold NFTs. I think their (current) implementation gives me nothing of value. But that doesn't mean they are useless. It's like saying IRC is useless because you can't post pictures directly or something like that. Technology is technology. Maybe more or less efficient but technology is not inherently useless. What we do with it is what matters and I agree NFTs aren't bringing real value at this time.
- mmcnl 5y ago
  I think NFT and blockchain are legitimate technologies. However, the hype around them is totally inflated by a gold rush on the premise of a pyramid scheme (cryptocurrencies literally are pyramid schemes). NFTs are real, but also 99% scam.
  - chillacy 5y ago
    This is at least a real measurable prediction, which one can actually act upon by shorting various NFT projects or cryptocurrencies to the USD.
- dpark 5y ago
  This is not a defense of NFTs as they are being discussed. “NFTs” in this conversation are exactly the dumb ape pictures. Maybe NFT technology has some valuable applications, but don’t muddy the conversation trying to argue semantics. Your defense of hypothetical use cases of the same technology looks like a defense of the current use case. And it’s entirely reasonable that people would be worried about gullible people buying worthless things. We call these scams and they are bad for society in general. I also worry about old ladies being conned into unnecessary roof repairs and I worry about dumb people falling prey to email scams and I worry about all sorts of other con artist activity because it’s bad stuff and harmful to society.
trizuz 5y ago
Krisjohn 5y ago
The NFT market is made up mostly of people that got accidentally rich by, by chance, "investing in" (playing with) a new thing called cryptocurrency before it blew up. They likely didn't gain any marketable skills doing this. They didn't really learn anything, per se. But, by god, they like the money; how can they get more? Oh, look, another upcoming crypto-thingy. Let's chuck some of my luck-money at it to see if it makes more! Annoyingly, some of them will be right.
dukes82 5y ago
NFTs are just proof of ownership in a purely digital realm. Aside from the "contents" of an NFT, it is proof that the holder is a customer, or provides a provenance chain of ownership from the original customer. Advantages exist for both the customer and the seller. Far from useless.
clxxx 5y ago
A lot of negative backlash towards NFT’s seem to based on the hype and seemingly worthlessness of ‘owning’ a monkey jpg. And I think to an extent it’s valid, and much of these ‘meme’ nft’s will devalue significantly as the narrative progresses. But what we have here is an overblown reaction to a working proof of concept of a valuable idea. NFT’s as I understand is just a digital sign of ownership. The twitter author suggests this is useless because “you don’t really own a gun in a shooting game” (paraphrasing here) but downplaying digital ownership of things people find value in is downright silly. If people find something to have value, it does, and that’s that. Being able to transfer digital signatures of ownership for digital assets is a good way of trading that value without much third party intervention (in theory). For example one idea I can see working if implemented properly is digital ownership of games (some of the GME hype seems to be based on this). Transferring ownership for games used to be owning the CD and having a serial code. Moving proof of ownership to an immutable ledger seems like a great way to ensure only one copy belongs to one person, and opens a digital good’s ability to be bought and sold like a physical good. Or perhaps a way of tokenizing real estate cheaply and securely. Or tokenizing digital brand good from artists. All with less takeaway from a middle man (hopefully). I find the whole scene fascinating, and although I’m not invested in anything because I think the proof of concept is overblown and the value attributed will dwindle as people realize that the use cases of NFT’s are much much broader than just art, I find the technology to be a promising use case for blockchain in the real world. The entire scene still feels like it’s in its infant stages and it’s putting a lot of value on memey things (I guess that’s just for the times call for) but I think the value proposition of NFT’s could potentially be massive. Time will tell.

363 points by billpg 5y ago

cartoonfoxes 5y ago

I've used the analogy that NFTs are just a fancy notary public, and exactly as exciting.

zwkrt 5y ago
Well it’s a less fancy version, considering that a notary public can legally notarize a binding contract between two parties. The analogy I have been using with my artist friend (who is interested in their use for selling digital art) is a global bulletin board.
- gspr 5y ago
  I think that's what the cryptocurrency/NFT folks are dreaming about: a society in which there are no official services (no official money, no officially sanctioned notaries, etc.), so that you'll instead have an every-man-for-himself kind of society where their kind reign supreme. Then they throw in examples of how official services can be corrupt and how fiat currency can be abused as a reason that we should all get on board with throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I can't fucking wait for the cryptocurrency/NFT scene to come crashing down. Not because I want to see people hurt, but because that should (hopefully?) shut these people up for a generation.
jacknews 5y ago
Except, would you trust a notary public in, say, Sudan? NFT gif collections are obviously speculative money/crypto-laundering garbage, but there is a real use hiding in there somewhere.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ncmncm 5y ago
  With so much horseshit, there has to be a pony in there somewhere.
  - jfk13 5y ago
    Pony? I was hoping for at least a unicorn.
- matsemann 5y ago
  > Except, would you trust a notary public in, say, Sudan? How can I trust an NFT? I don't know if the person minting it was the true owner, or just someone uploading stolen content. I don't know what the URL used to point to or if the content has changed. It's basically useless without something external verifying it.
  - thebean11 5y ago
    You're right that you do have to verify it's origin, but the benefit is that you only have to verify it once, then the entire chain of custody can be derived. With a piece of physical art, the original creator cannot just give you an identifier that allows you to, with 100% certainty, check authenticity. You need expensive, manual, and fallible inspection of the physical object.
yawnxyz 5y ago
Notaries are kind of exciting, when you can program them to execute code. It's like having a notary that can notarize NEW things in a way that you won't tell every new notary how to notarize it. I think that's kind of cool

basisword 5y ago

>> If people are making so much noise about this technology-- if it IS technology, at all-- then surely it does SOMETHING... right? >> (The answer is, no. It does absolutely nothing.) >> It records a crytocurrency transaction and appends arbitrary data to the transaction. Seems contradictory. They do nothing...except this thing that they do. Seems like just another "old man yelling at the clouds" style thread to cause controversy and generate engagement without saying anything remotely new or interesting.

antonvs 5y ago
> Seems contradictory. They do nothing...except this thing that they do. Any and every blockchain supports that thing. The objection seems to be that what NFTs "add" are an unenforced and unenforceable agreement. There's no new technical (or legal!) feature. This makes them seem more like a (poor) proof of concept than anything else.
Mashimo 5y ago
It's trying to explain NFS for people who don't know how they work. If you already know it, then yes, it's nothing new.
batch12 5y ago
You are editorializing with your copypasta. The author is saying that the NFT does none of that. > It records a crytocurrency transaction and appends arbitrary data to the transaction. That's it. > None of those functions are inherent to the NFT. They all rely on external infrastructure, which exists independent of the NFT. If you're wondering what role the NFT does play, then, the answer is nothing-- it parted a fool from his Monopoly money. That's it.

frereubu 5y ago

I can picture the person who "invented" NFTs reading The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin, and an evil grin spreading slowly across their face.

thom 5y ago
Purely out of curiosity I went back and searched Twitter, first mention I can find is: https://twitter.com/PEntremont/status/901349495027445760 https://twitter.com/PEntremont/status/901349495027445760
- WickyNilliams 5y ago
  Anil Dash and Kevin McCoy invented them in 2014. https://techcrunch.com/2014/05/09/monegraph https://techcrunch.com/2014/05/09/monegraph
thinkingemote 5y ago
Please write more about this. We lack any serious cultural commentary about this. Artists are jumping on NFTs because they want to make money from millionaires, there's no theory to be found with the "creators" unlike previous art movements

jdpigeon 5y ago

I'm not pro-NFT in any way, but this other Twitter thread raises some interesting counter-arguments to this common criticism: https://twitter.com/dabit3/status/1456399715646513153 https://twitter.com/dabit3/status/1456399715646513153 TL;DR NFTs that point to centralized mutable databases like s3 are a bad idea, but people are working on immutable data storage technologies like IPFS.

pinko 5y ago
How does this increase the utility of what is essentially a pointer written on a global bulletin board? (I'm not being rhetorical -- I'm not sure why the immutability of the thing pointed to increases the utility of the NFT pointer.)
- jdpigeon 5y ago
  Well, if it's not immutable then someone can replace the asset that you "own" just by updating what's served when you try to access that url: https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1448066579611234305 https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1448066579611234305 If the asset hosting is both immutable then you're guaranteed to always get the thing that you bought from the url your NFT points too. By being "distributed" I think the idea is the immutability is more guaranteed since no one person will be able to control the database.
  - pinko 5y ago
    I can see the potential utility of an immutable public pointer to immutable public data, I guess -- but not the utility of "ownership" of that pointer.
  - croon 5y ago
    > If the asset hosting is both immutable then you're guaranteed to always get the thing that you bought from the url your NFT points too. You are not answering the question posed. What do you think you are "getting"? Sure, the pointer will always be the same, and the target will always be the same, and you will always have bought that pointer from some other wallet. Now what? Can I make other pointers to the same target? Can I make a first pointer to a target I did not create? Can I duplicate a target to a new URI and make a pointer to that and sell? Who enforces my ownership rights? The value of contracts are the enforcability of them, not the properties of the paper. It can be a CNC cut piece of aluminum or a napkin, the contents and the signatures are what's relevant. To connect this to main issues with NFTs (currently at least): * A wallet ID will never change, but I could lose my wallet to someone else, thus the immutability of the signage does not guarantee the immutable connection to a person. * NFTs (afaik) contain a tokenID, tokenURI, baseURI. I guess that can be read as "wallet X signs over this URI which contains an image of the Mona Lisa to wallet Y". Which is entirely different from explicitly stating "wallet X signs over all rights to the Mona Lisa to wallet Y".

wrnr 5y ago

The only feature NFTs have is it makes people money

fron 5y ago
Only because the NFT marketplace is just the Greater Fool Theory at work.

dvh1990 5y ago

Here we go again. NFTs is a technology that goes hand in hand with a social contract to abide by the ledger. People disregard that social contract as if it wasn't here, but it IS there. Just like patents are written to some database but are enforced by a social contract, NFTs are written to some database but are enforced by a social contract.

gameswithgo 5y ago
You are delusional
VHRanger 5y ago
If your argument is full "code is law!" then you need to take the flipside: When someone inevitably hacks the shitty solidity code and steals your stuff you don't get to cry to twitter or the police
meheleventyone 5y ago
They are enormously different strengths of social contract though both in terms of number of participants and consequences for breaching it. Five of my friends agreeing to share a dirt bike is a social contract after all.
- dvh1990 5y ago
  Yes, but the point of blockchain tech is to enable such social contracts to be formed, and over time, strengthened. Isn't that the point of decentralized anything? You can decentralized tech all you want, but without a social contract to use it...
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    You don't need decentralized tech to do that though as the dirt bike sharing example amply demonstrates... We can also see that many blockchain projects actually rely on more mundane social contracts like our legal system and governments with actual terms and conditions, registered companies and the like. If you think NFTs are going to radically alter social contracts around ownership on a wider scale I've got a lovely plot on the moon to sell you.

je_bailey 5y ago

Friend of mine wanted to know what a NFT is and I wrote down a URL and gave it to him on a piece of paper. That's an NFT. You can sell that paper, use it if you want but what ever is at the other end of the URL isn't yours and you can't guarantee it will be there or be consistent between the times you go. But by god you have a piece of paper.

rattlesnakedave 5y ago
"And then everyone clapped." This is not what an NFT is.
- je_bailey 5y ago
  Then you don't understand NFTs
  - rattlesnakedave 5y ago
    I really encourage you to read EIP-721 and EIP-1155, then think a bit more creatively about the use-cases of non fungible, transferrable data, the possession of which is easily cryptographically verifiable.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      Despite the common saying, possession and ownership often aren't the same thing.
      - rattlesnakedave 5y ago
        What?
        ceejayoz 5y ago
        You said "non fungible, transferrable data, the possession of which is easily cryptographically verifiable", but NFT advocates talk about ownership a lot. I can possess all the bored ape JPEGs. So can anyone else in the world who can right-click or screenshot or download a .zip of them.

the_lonely_road 5y ago

I have no cryptocurrencies and feel good every time it goes down because it validates my decision. That said, is this guy even correct about having no recourse to enforce your ownership? If I buy a NFT from a guy in Germany don’t I have the same recourse as if I bought a Rembrandt from a guy in Germany? Sure if it’s $100 good luck getting any movement or if it’s from a guy in Iran also good luck getting any recourse but if it’s from a guy in Georgia (the US state) don’t I have the same small claims court infrastructure as if I bought a used PlayStation from him? Same goes for that German guy, if it’s above some threshold there is also certainly some kind of reciprocal treaty in place for me to engage with the local German court/police infrastructure to seek compensation.

fabian2k 5y ago
Buying an NFT does not grant you any ownership unless you have a separate agreement or contract along with it that does. How is a court in Germany supposed to know what it means that you paid some amount of cryptocurrency in exchange for an NFT? This has no meaning outside the blockchain.
- the_lonely_road 5y ago
  Courts don’t play games like this. Everything is under their jurisdiction whether it’s novel or 1,000 years old. Worst case scenario you entered into a verbal contract where $100 of consideration was exchanged for x and you are engaging the courts because you believe the counter party failed to deliver x. If both parties are German it will not matter that blockchain was the medium of exchange anymore than it would if napkins at the bar were the medium of the exchange.
  - fabian2k 5y ago
    But what exactly are the rights you get when you buy an NFT? I'm assuming the absence of any other communication here, as that part would then be more like a verbal contract. The NFT is a link to something, and buying the NFT means I get the ownership of the NFT. But I've no idea what this actually means in the end, which rights do you get by that? I paid someone $100 and got a link back, everything else is completely unclear. I've no idea how a court would be able to fill in all the blanks here.

udbhavs 5y ago

Random thought dump of observations from someone who's dabbled in the space a bit (but is not a cryptobro by any means) - Here's a thing about NFTs that I've seen a lot crypto evangelists and haters miss, and a sentiment that I think will grow once the novelty dies out: The "art" is irrelevant. It's no more than a thumbnail or a poster marketing it's utility, and that's exactly the actual important part - what I can do with it. Can I use it as an in-game item? Do I get access to your next podcast episode early in a patreon-like service? Do I unlock your next online course for free or get a 50% discount on your next concert? This sense of multiple applications is what I think people may or may not mean when they use the term "creator economy", but I think it fits nicely. People argue that interoperability of assets is useless because "no two games would ever want to share an item, developers don't want that". But another angle to this is that creators can give utility to a single asset across a wide variety of applications for their fans. Regardless, none of this has been realised yet and maybe this is just a pipe dream if the majority of hype in the space continues to revolve around useless, ugly ass monkeys that are shown off on twitter for some ego-inflating sense of elitism. It could go either way I guess

tw04 5y ago
None of that requires NFT though. Literally all of that can be accomplished as well if not better without crypto being involved in any way.
- udbhavs 5y ago
  Yes, that is another debate. My comment was more of a response to the many others I've seen debating whether NFT implies ownership of the art or what happens if the server hosting the image goes down (less of a problem if IPFS is utilised). My point is, it's irrelevant. And it never implied ownership of the art, so people who try to pass it off as such are woefully misunderstanding the technology and are probably scammers, and the people buying them are idiots. Cryptokitties, cryptopunks etc. are only valuable because they were the first ones doing these things, sort of like the "million dollar webpage" back in the day. There is literally no point in making an NFT without utility now, unless the minter is someone popular and in that case the NFT is a bet on their fame rising in the future and becomes a speculative asset (just like regular celebrity art).

crmd 5y ago

An NFT is permission to record your name in a public ledger in exchange for money, with the only utility being the pleasure of conspicuous consumption. They are strong evidence of a huge surplus of wealth in certain pockets of society.

geerlingguy 5y ago
Maybe the crypto bubble popping will cool down the trend. If it actually pops.

jgilias 5y ago

I've come to terms that people are gonna people and trade in anything that can be traded. Especially if there's some scarcity involved. The Million Dollar Homepage is still up. Coincidentally, I just clicked on one of the banners there, and it opened to some website advertising some crypto token. So, in a way, NFTs are just the latest instance of the same phenomenon.

rattlesnakedave 5y ago

Stopped reading at: "The idea that this is "your" monkey jpeg pretty much just relies on social consensus, since you have no tools to enforce ownership." Yes. Social consensus is how we confer all forms of "ownership." NFTs make it easier to reach consensus, as ownership is cryptographically verifiable. This person is thinking far too small. NFTs are not only about art, apes. etc. Any non fungible asset or piece of data can be represented as an NFT (not exclusively for trading / speculation).

ceejayoz 5y ago
But we have a social consensus on JPEG copyright, and not on NFTs. "It might, speculatively, become as good as the existing thing accepted by society and most crucially the legal system" isn't a great selling point.
- rattlesnakedave 5y ago
  I don't understand what point you're trying to make. We can already enforce these existing property rights on digital assets. It's even better because transfer and ownership verification are easier.
  - gspr 5y ago
    > I don't understand what point you're trying to make. We can already enforce these existing property rights on digital assets I guess that's exactly their point: We have this. What the hell are NFTs supposed to bring to the game?
    - rattlesnakedave 5y ago
      If that’s their point, I encourage them to re read my original comment. It makes ownership cryptographically verifiable, and easily transferrable. You can even do more! Fractionalization to distribute ownership rights among groups, bearer authentication to web services for owners of tokens, etc.

dqpb 5y ago

If you think NFT’s are bad, you should check out CRDT’s. The sheer volume of pointless text that they produce is proof enough that they’re nothing but a huge grift.

hnuser847 5y ago

People who buy NFTs are playing a game of chicken against other investors/gamblers. It’s not about art or novel technology or anything like that. It’s just a gambling game. Nobody wants to hold the bag. Was anybody else around for CryptoCelebs back in 2017/2018? It was literally the same thing. You’d buy a million dollar NFT of Zuckerberg and hope somebody else would buy it from you for two million. They called them “hot potato” games back then.

recursivedoubts 5y ago

I am glad NFTs exist: they have provided another pressure-relief valve for the massive money printing by the Fed, so that money doesn't all go into real-estate and commodity speculation, which really harms normal people. It isn't a huge market, but every little bit helps. The crash will be biblical, obviously.

TheCondor 5y ago
Doesn’t the NFT and crypto bubble hurt normal people when it bursts? At least with commodity speculation, you potentially have some overpriced goods, here you literally have some nothing. I really like the efficiency and utility of cryptocurrency but I suspect it will all be set back decades, there will likely be efforts to outright ban/outlaw it after the crash.
lexapro 5y ago
>The crash will be biblical, obviously. You don't know that and you especially don't know when. So please don't use words like "obviously" for things that aren't obvious at all.
- dbancajas 5y ago
  > , and they can reissue another one to replace it. I can make my own website that accepts only apes with mustaches into my site's private area. What's not obvious to you? If you pick up a unique stone off the street with an art printed on it and value that at 50K USD (remember anybody can pickup a stone and it's not difficult to put art on a stone). And then you have a group of people trading that at 50K isn't it obvious the value will go to 0$ when their interest dries up?
  - bostonpete 5y ago
    I'm inclined to agree as I'm extremely skeptical of NFT's but I'd note that your "stone" thought exercise could also be applied to things like trading cards or other collectibles, which also have no objective value but often preserve their value over time (though not always).

jollybean 5y ago

The author went a bit too much into the technical weeds to point out the more glaring failure: you don't own copyrights to the image. Talking about who 'owns' the jpeg isn't the big deal, it's content that matters. That the image is at a URL which is fixed is a 'bad technical issue' that might even be fixable in some way in the future. But you buy make an NFT of Mickey Mouse, and literally it would be illegal to show it anyone publicly.

yawnxyz 5y ago

NFTs are kind of terrible because it makes people think "links to images" are everything smart contracts can do. They're just a simple use of smart contracts, which are basically functions that don't live on a server. I can choose to deploy something onto Cloudflare Workers or on a chain. Most code I'm still deploying on CF! But there's a few functions - like signing functions that bind ownership of a piece of submitted genome sequence data - that I want to live on-chain, bc if it's off-chain, I (or someone else) could more easily become a bad actor, by deploying bad code.

phkahler 5y ago

It's difficult fo the average person to conceive what an NFT IS. Once one crosses that bridge, seeing how useless they are is easy. This problem is far more common than you might thing. It has relevance far beyond NFTs.

balr0g 5y ago

zivkovicp 5y ago

I like the idea of public blockchains because it gives anyone an opportunity to record a message that is persisted and visible globally. That doesn't necessarily make it worth much, but the utility of it is great. Want to make a declaration, and be able to prove you said X on Y date? Just create a transaction on the blockchain with your message and you have millions of nodes committing it to a public ledger. The current NFT craze seems more like a simple money grab, but I still hope the technology finds a way to survive and become mainstream.

johannes1234321 5y ago

An issue with a bubble like "crypto currency" and "NFT" is that many people don't understand it, but they see the loud buzz around it, so they have to conclude that all this Blockchain stuff must be great and if then a company comes and sells Blockchain and crypto etc. to a government they fall for it ... while often a) it's not needed and b) what is being sold actually isn't a "Blockchain" in the Bitcoin-style definition (distributed manipulation-safe ledger plus consensus)

haolez 5y ago

I like the ideas of cryptocurrency and blockchain tech in general, but for me NFTs sound like something stupid (if not a scam).

antocv 5y ago
NFTs are stupid. The masses however can not read out a word to its fullest letter like "cryptocurrency" they stop at "crypt" oh, and say "crypto". These are the people in the "crypto market" now to buy "coins" and "tokens" to get rich because "they believe in it" (but because theyve been told and seen someone made x1000 buying a token and selling it later to someone else) They are like flat earthers and evolution-deniers and "covid is ebola black bubonic plague vaxx everyone 110%" people. These people can not pick between 1000 coins which one is real innovation in consensus algorithms or whatever, and which one is a scam, like BitConnect or IOTA. These people know this, so they do the next best thing which is hunt for coins based on logos and overall marketing looks of the coin. This was not enough because the cryptoh projects used fancy words, its easier to just pick on logos, and even easier than logos with a project and website is to trade logos marked as NFTs.

andrewla 5y ago

The only use case that is unambiguously present and difficult to achieve by other means is having access to cryptographic proof of point-in-time association with piece of data. The Bored Ape Yacht Club is an example of this -- you "own" an ape. What that means is that you have the ability to access a restricted section of the website, that only ape owners can access. This membership is transferable without the consent or interaction with the issuer. HOWEVER -- this membership is not irrevocable. The hash that you "own" is listed on their website as a substring of the concatenated hashes of all apes, which is in turn hashed to make a master hash. That hash can be changed at any time, as can the associated access to the restricted area. New apes can be issued that grant access; old apes can have their access revoked at will. If you sell your ape to the Supreme Leader of Iran, then the government can force the BAYC to revoke the ape, and they can reissue another one to replace it. I can make my own website that accepts only apes with mustaches into my site's private area. So really the only thing you get is that the tokens can be traded on third party services.

bombcar 5y ago
The real use case of NFT is that you could have a token that you can trade. We'll call the token a "coin" (and since it's digital, a "bit"coin) and you can trade it with other people.
- andrewla 5y ago
  I get where you're going, but unfortunately this is not apt -- the fungibility of coins was specific design point for Bitcoin (and for money in general, which is where the analogy surfaces). NFTs are by design and intention not fungible; they are not divisible nor combineable nor substitutable.
  - dpark 5y ago
    > NFTs are by design and intention not fungible; they are not divisible nor combineable nor substitutable. Except that they are, right? You just described a scenario where a token can be revoked and replaced. This is by any sane definition a substitute. I suppose you could argue that they cannot be divided or combined, and in that sense you are correct that they are not really usable currency. But I honestly fail to see how NFTs are actually non-fungible. If an indefinite number of equivalent tokens can be minted, what does it matter if each one is technically unique?

jokoon 5y ago

It's always the same problem: this technology is not recognized by any country, which makes it completely pointless. Just like bitcoin: no country will attempt to prevent your coins from being stolen, and no country will attempt to regulate bitcoin to avoid volatility. It's weird how technologists build things without ever researching the philosophical concepts understood by humans, not just machines and algorithms. That's the real dystopia: when technology is not understood by humans, it becomes useless. The success of computing was about making computers usable by non programmer. I guess the new trend is programmers trying to scam non-programmers.

bombcar 5y ago
The problem is deeper - even IF a country wanted to and successfully used a blockchain to store information on, say, property deeds, it would EITHER have to have no recourse in case of any fraud, theft, or abuse OR it would just be a centralized managed database. IF there is a mechanism for someone (or someones) to certify changing or reissuing a token in case of the death of the holder (the passphrase dies with him but the land continues to exist) THEN that same mechanism can be used or abused by the authority to do other transfers and reissues.

PaulHoule 5y ago

Getting money from a greater fool is an important application for lesser fools.

ivanech 5y ago

Not a big NFT fan, but this thread is weak. NFTs do try to solve the very real problem of indicating ownership of a purely digital item. Not my preferred way of solving the problem but whatever. A lot of these critiques betray discomfort with abstraction.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
Ultimately there has to be a central authority to verify it or it's all just bits in the bit bucket. In that case it would be just as good to have a certificate of authority from the original artist or a contract of such
thinkingemote 5y ago
Now try to explain this to the average people. These critiques are true. It's hard to understand.

theknocker 5y ago

jbverschoor 5y ago

Paper with a signature doesn't do anything either. However, NFTs are notarized, instantly transferrable, and trackable pieces of paper. s/instantly/fast -> NFT

IAmPym 5y ago

Maybe because the average user sees something special about them and wants to learn more. Maybe taking a mindset of curiosity and learning will lead to more understanding than criticism

dekhn 5y ago

it's a cult and HN is worse for people even talking about it. Also, ban twitter posts from HN!

andreygrehov 5y ago

> and often the data is abstract or imaginary. You "own" a gun in a video game, but that gun may or may not actually exist. There may or may not be a way to equip, shoot, or even look at it. Well, If a baseball player signs a cap of yours, then that cap suddenly has a value, however there is no way to say that you "own" a signature/cap pair. If it hangs on your wall, then you own it. But I can go buy the same cap, copy the player's signature and hang that fake autographed cap on my wall. NFT is pretty much the same thing, imho.

ViViDboarder 5y ago
But you do actually own that cap. Someone can’t take your cap away. An NFT pointing to a central server can be taken away. There is some robustness to IPFS of course. And while it’s true that the player can “mint” new autographed hats, it’s different than the fact that anyone can make duplicate NFTs of what you own. The cost of doing so is much less than getting a busy player to take hours signing hats. This is also why value of such things tends to go up after the player dies. It’s no longer possible to make similar works so the scarcity is locked. Again, not true with an NFT.
- ViViDboarder 5y ago
  This is also why value of such things tends to go up after the player dies. It’s no longer possible to make similar works so the scarcity is locked. Again, not true with an NFT.

resiros 5y ago

I find the concept of a technology that allows the transfer of ownership of digital artifacts fascinating. However, NFTs in their current form do not allow that. They are just systems that logs who "owns" the token for an item. This is quite useful for proving that a physical item (e.g. a piece of art) is genuine (or in fact proving that the person who is selling owns at that point of time a genuine version of the item), however that does not work for digital arts for the following reasons. What does it mean to own a digital item? I think that a minimal definition should include a unique access to it/or its capabilities: people who own the item are the only ones who can access it. Clearly, the current system does not allow this (everyone can access a picture sold as an NFT). Moreover, it is not clear whether such a system can be built for digital items. In fact, it seems to me, that a system that transfers the ownership of digital items can only work if the items cannot be copied; if I buy a digital item, copy it, then sell it, I still own it after selling it, which means I did not transfer it. This brings the question, what are the properties of items that cannot be copied (or are hard to be copied)? Complex systems could be such examples. For example, neural networks where inferring the network is extremely hard to be done from input and output. Assume that the item is a neural network that can generate a voice of an artificial character, or an interactive 3d model of an avatar. If, the system gives me exclusive access to the network, I would be able to use it to generate the voice or the 3d model of my avatar in a metaverse, however, I would not have access to the code that generates this data, only to the results of this simulation. TL;DR A digital ownership system (like NFT) is only meaningful for items that cannot be copied. These can only be complex systems where the ownership scheme gives access to the output of the system and not its totality (think voice generation system)

kache_ 5y ago

lkxijlewlf 5y ago

They're only useless if you're the one paying for them. If you're getting paid, well... not so useless.

yodelshady 5y ago

I get that an NFT typically contains just a URL, because actual data is too expensive to store on the Enormous Work Disposal Unit(TM). Surely it's at least possible that accessing the actual asset behind the URL is authenticated by the same public key that verifies your "ownership"? And indeed for the rest of the concept of ownership of the asset to be taken seriously - i.e. I the buyer can tell the hoster "I have made a local copy, or just plain feel like burning stuff, delete your copy please". Or "please move the asset to this hosting service instead". Obviously that still has the same copying issues that the RIAA and MPAA and whoever else have failed to deal with so you probably aren't going to do any better. But, at least try?

DarylZero 5y ago

NFTs are exactly as useless, in exactly the same way, as any and every fiat currency.

ViViDboarder 5y ago
That’s so far from true. I can buy anything I want with USD and it has a relatively stable value compared to the goods I’m buying. Certainly more stable than NFTs or Bitcoin. The ubiquity and stability are the value. Other than that, theoretically, sure. They are no different. But that difference makes all the difference.
- DarylZero 5y ago
  Just like any NFT, the USD is stable and ubiquitous exactly as long as some collective delusion makes it so. Some currencies have more stable collective delusions than others. So I'm not trying to claim all fiat currencies (including NFTs) are equally valuable. But they're all valuable _in the same way_. You can't attack the very concept of NFT. It's identical in concept to fiat currency. It has no inherent value, but it can't be easily forged. The only technical difference is NFTs are even more resistant to forgery than minted money.

robbrown451 5y ago

I think NFTs are mostly only useful as a parody of the concept of intellectual property and artificial scarcity. They take the concept of "owning" something that can be infinitely copied to the absurd extreme. When the average person conceives of just how useless they are, they might start to see the ridiculous inefficiencies of our intellectual property system.

vikingcaffiene 5y ago

The best explanation of NFTs I’ve heard: You are married. Your spouse is cheating on you right in front of you with multiple people. But you have the marriage certificate.

AccountToUse 5y ago
Thank you for the laugh.

echopurity 5y ago

kgin 5y ago

https://twitter.com/dmarti/status/1477389651849756674?s=21 https://twitter.com/dmarti/status/1477389651849756674?s=21 > An NFT is like being the Foursquare Mayor of a JPEG

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago

>> if you can't delete the jpeg, alter the jpeg, move the jpeg, hide the location of the jpeg from public scrutiny, or stop other people from downloading, copying, modifying, and redistributing the jpeg, in what sense do you own it? You are not paying for the jpeg, you are paying for the (digital) signature of jpeg's author, or some other famous person. For example, a picture of sunflowers bearing my signature is worth zero, but if it were signed by someone with the name van gogh, it's worth millions. However, the signature of the latter can be forged, and has been forged many times successfully. It's very expensive to verify authenticity of a physical signature. That's the problem the digital signature on a blockchain solves. The NFT site verifies the famous person's identity, and appends an unforgeable timestamp. There are a finite number of famous people, so the resulting digitally signed item is scarce. That's where it's monetary value comes from.

dan_mctree 5y ago

Disclaimer: I'm not an NFT owner Why do so many here seem to be so proud of their lack of understanding of the value of NFTs? If you have an NFT, you get to do things others cannot. That's the value right there. At the very least, holding an NFT gives you the ability to transfer it to someone else and make them the holder. Anyone can confirm that you did in fact transfer it and made the other person the holder. In addition, you potentially get access to other benefits, such as acceptance of some alternate meaning in the NFT social circle as well as potential benefits in software written that respects the NFT. What seems to have taken off most is that the NFT social circle will accept ownership of some linked item within the NFTs data. They see the NFT record as a register of provenance that they're willing to recognize. Do NFTs signal legal ownership? I imagine we're going to find out that it probably depends. But even where they don't, they certainly signify something akin to ownership or possession. And that ownership of scarce goods is precisely something that is valued by certain communities, especially the art trade community. That you can mint your own NFT with the same data, or that a link in an NFT stops working don't really change the nature of the kind of ownership. What NFTs offer sort of mimics the 'realness' of a piece of art. I can make a picture of the Mona Lisa too, but no one will respect that picture as the real Mona Lisa. While you might lose out on the pretty physical object, you gain in cryptographic provability and potential software integration

Spivak 5y ago
Nothing you're saying disagrees with the posted Twitter thread. Without the IRL arcade prize counter agreeing to turn ownership of a token into a tangible privilege the NFT is worthless. And if you already have the prize counter then you don't really need the NFT since you have a central trusted authority. You could maybe argue that using an NFT is easier than minting your own system for arcade coins but binding goods to and transferring them between "accounts" (which you have to have already to access your goods) has worked for decades. The auction house in WoW, and the Steam marketplace has been doing digital marketplaces long enough to prove it works just fine. > Why do so many here seem to be so proud of their lack of understanding of the value of NFTs? I think most people are proud of their very concrete understanding of the value of NFTs -- which is zero to anyone not trying to make money on them.
5y ago

Hakashiro 5y ago

I am getting quite tired of the NFT and blockchain hate. Every argument against it has been heard. We get it, you don't like blockchain. You don't like expensive inflated art. You think the art has no artistic value. I actually don't care about the artistic value. But this isn't even about the "Boring Apes" bullshit. So what if someone buys an "URL" to the picture of a monkey? Really, who cares? Well. Apparently a lot of people. I disagree that NFTs are "useless". The "Boring Ape" whatever may be a dumb (but popular) implementation of NFT technology. But NFTs are not useless. NFTs are a way for people to record data on the blockchain and claim their ownership. If what you're worried about is dumb people buying things that actually have no inherent value, I have some bad news for you. I don't even hold NFTs. I think their (current) implementation gives me nothing of value. But that doesn't mean they are useless. It's like saying IRC is useless because you can't post pictures directly or something like that. Technology is technology. Maybe more or less efficient but technology is not inherently useless. What we do with it is what matters and I agree NFTs aren't bringing real value at this time.

mmcnl 5y ago
I think NFT and blockchain are legitimate technologies. However, the hype around them is totally inflated by a gold rush on the premise of a pyramid scheme (cryptocurrencies literally are pyramid schemes). NFTs are real, but also 99% scam.
- chillacy 5y ago
  This is at least a real measurable prediction, which one can actually act upon by shorting various NFT projects or cryptocurrencies to the USD.
dpark 5y ago
This is not a defense of NFTs as they are being discussed. “NFTs” in this conversation are exactly the dumb ape pictures. Maybe NFT technology has some valuable applications, but don’t muddy the conversation trying to argue semantics. Your defense of hypothetical use cases of the same technology looks like a defense of the current use case. And it’s entirely reasonable that people would be worried about gullible people buying worthless things. We call these scams and they are bad for society in general. I also worry about old ladies being conned into unnecessary roof repairs and I worry about dumb people falling prey to email scams and I worry about all sorts of other con artist activity because it’s bad stuff and harmful to society.

trizuz 5y ago

Krisjohn 5y ago

The NFT market is made up mostly of people that got accidentally rich by, by chance, "investing in" (playing with) a new thing called cryptocurrency before it blew up. They likely didn't gain any marketable skills doing this. They didn't really learn anything, per se. But, by god, they like the money; how can they get more? Oh, look, another upcoming crypto-thingy. Let's chuck some of my luck-money at it to see if it makes more! Annoyingly, some of them will be right.

dukes82 5y ago

NFTs are just proof of ownership in a purely digital realm. Aside from the "contents" of an NFT, it is proof that the holder is a customer, or provides a provenance chain of ownership from the original customer. Advantages exist for both the customer and the seller. Far from useless.

clxxx 5y ago

A lot of negative backlash towards NFT’s seem to based on the hype and seemingly worthlessness of ‘owning’ a monkey jpg. And I think to an extent it’s valid, and much of these ‘meme’ nft’s will devalue significantly as the narrative progresses. But what we have here is an overblown reaction to a working proof of concept of a valuable idea. NFT’s as I understand is just a digital sign of ownership. The twitter author suggests this is useless because “you don’t really own a gun in a shooting game” (paraphrasing here) but downplaying digital ownership of things people find value in is downright silly. If people find something to have value, it does, and that’s that. Being able to transfer digital signatures of ownership for digital assets is a good way of trading that value without much third party intervention (in theory). For example one idea I can see working if implemented properly is digital ownership of games (some of the GME hype seems to be based on this). Transferring ownership for games used to be owning the CD and having a serial code. Moving proof of ownership to an immutable ledger seems like a great way to ensure only one copy belongs to one person, and opens a digital good’s ability to be bought and sold like a physical good. Or perhaps a way of tokenizing real estate cheaply and securely. Or tokenizing digital brand good from artists. All with less takeaway from a middle man (hopefully). I find the whole scene fascinating, and although I’m not invested in anything because I think the proof of concept is overblown and the value attributed will dwindle as people realize that the use cases of NFT’s are much much broader than just art, I find the technology to be a promising use case for blockchain in the real world. The entire scene still feels like it’s in its infant stages and it’s putting a lot of value on memey things (I guess that’s just for the times call for) but I think the value proposition of NFT’s could potentially be massive. Time will tell.