6 ms·

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/

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".
croon 5y ago
And what will be at the IPFS URI? A copy of keyboardcat.gif? At some junction in this chain (as far as I know as an NFT skeptic, to put it mildly), you (want to) pay for ownership of something non-fungible, be it meatspace or digital. So sure, that thing at the IPFS URI might never change, but I can still copy it, or it might not have originated there, or it's some representation of a real world item, where the representation of course can be reproduced. You've added another layer of immutability, but I have yet to see where that's relevant to anyone who understands what they would be buying, as there are always more layers.
- jdpigeon 5y ago
  Yea, I agree. The dark thing about NFTs IMO is that they only seem like they would work in a "world" where everything was locked down and rights-protected to the detriment of the user experience. In other words, all those "layers" where digital ownership could get fuzzy were removed by operating on some aggressive platform or protocol, like a Fortnite style Metaverse without copy + paste, local file storage, or self-hosting.
  - nivenkos 5y ago
    https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html - Stallman was right.
- zcw100 5y ago
  I was waiting for someone to bring up IPFS. Unfortunately it only serves to obscure the absurdity of NFTs. It makes what the NFT points to immutable, nothing else and it still doesn't guarantee that it's actually available. I really wish IPFS would stop flirting with NFTs. I rather like the technology and it doesn't really have anything to do with NFTs but I'm afraid there will be a stigma attached to it when this thing finally explodes. One thing I haven't seen anyone mention is that even the thing referenced by the ipfs url must by bit for bit identical. There's no notion of semantic ownership where you can own an image of the Mona Lisa and we can all agree that slightly different versions are still pictures of the Mona Lisa. I can flip one bit and sell that as another NFT. I can even make those changes in the image meta-data so the actual image is bit for bit identical. Also IPFS does not provide unique id's. An image can have multiple IPFS id's. The uniqueness constraint goes the other way, and IPFS id references one and only one unique resource.
falcolas 5y ago
Even if the property pointed to by an NFT will never go away (for some value of never), an NFT conveys no control over that property. To do that, you have to fall back on centralized control, namely laws and governments to enforce them.

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".

croon 5y ago

And what will be at the IPFS URI? A copy of keyboardcat.gif? At some junction in this chain (as far as I know as an NFT skeptic, to put it mildly), you (want to) pay for ownership of something non-fungible, be it meatspace or digital. So sure, that thing at the IPFS URI might never change, but I can still copy it, or it might not have originated there, or it's some representation of a real world item, where the representation of course can be reproduced. You've added another layer of immutability, but I have yet to see where that's relevant to anyone who understands what they would be buying, as there are always more layers.

jdpigeon 5y ago
Yea, I agree. The dark thing about NFTs IMO is that they only seem like they would work in a "world" where everything was locked down and rights-protected to the detriment of the user experience. In other words, all those "layers" where digital ownership could get fuzzy were removed by operating on some aggressive platform or protocol, like a Fortnite style Metaverse without copy + paste, local file storage, or self-hosting.
- nivenkos 5y ago
  https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html - Stallman was right.
zcw100 5y ago
I was waiting for someone to bring up IPFS. Unfortunately it only serves to obscure the absurdity of NFTs. It makes what the NFT points to immutable, nothing else and it still doesn't guarantee that it's actually available. I really wish IPFS would stop flirting with NFTs. I rather like the technology and it doesn't really have anything to do with NFTs but I'm afraid there will be a stigma attached to it when this thing finally explodes. One thing I haven't seen anyone mention is that even the thing referenced by the ipfs url must by bit for bit identical. There's no notion of semantic ownership where you can own an image of the Mona Lisa and we can all agree that slightly different versions are still pictures of the Mona Lisa. I can flip one bit and sell that as another NFT. I can even make those changes in the image meta-data so the actual image is bit for bit identical. Also IPFS does not provide unique id's. An image can have multiple IPFS id's. The uniqueness constraint goes the other way, and IPFS id references one and only one unique resource.

falcolas 5y ago

Even if the property pointed to by an NFT will never go away (for some value of never), an NFT conveys no control over that property. To do that, you have to fall back on centralized control, namely laws and governments to enforce them.