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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. S

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.
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        > It makes ownership cryptographically verifiable... It really doesn't. Ownership is a jurisdiction-dependent, item-dependent, legal concept. In the US, your bored ape JPEG will become public domain either 70 years after the creator dies, or after 95 years if they put together a LLC or something to sell them. You can wave the NFT around all you like at that point, but you no longer own the artwork, at least where the US is concerned.
        rattlesnakedave 5y ago
        In the common case, as they exist today, with current popular NFT projects, possession is generally sufficient to prove ownership. There are instances of theft, other forms of illegitimate ownership, weird IP conflicts, etc. but these are not the common case as NFTs exist today. Getting hung up on edge cases is missing the forrest for the trees.
        gspr 5y ago
        > In the common case, as they exist today, with current popular NFT projects, possession is generally sufficient to prove ownership. You're skipping something important: ownership of what exactly?
top_sigrid 5y ago
Well with the small difference that this social consensus is backed by countries, laws, regulation and law enforcement, etc. This is the same kind of libertarian argument as that money is only a construct and virtual without any real value.
- rattlesnakedave 5y ago
  What are you talking about? Do you not think ownership of a digital asset is enforceable in our current legal system?
  - top_sigrid 5y ago
    I am talking about the point you make. You stated that the current state of ownership is based on social consensus and I added that this consensus you are talking about actually means countries, law etc. But to your new point: Even if it might be enforceable (which would completely undermine the point of having an NFT on a blockchain in the first place as you would rely on the same current system you try to replace anyways), the very much nature of having ownership stored in an NFT would mean that this ownership in many scenarios could of course not be enforced by the legal system. If you get your private key stolen you have lost that ownership and there is no way to restore it. So to your question: no it would not be enforcable.
    - rattlesnakedave 5y ago
      This isn’t a new point. We form social consensus and agree that data on the blockchain means something. The meaning can then be enforced in courts. If you are saying that if my digital assets are stolen, and I can identify the thief, I have no legal recourse that’s just laughable. There are plenty of judges that disagree with you. Further, there are more benefits to using a blockchain than proof of ownership. You can tokenize your new non fungible assets, transfer them permissionlessly, use them as bearer credentials, etc. Not trying to be offensive here, but you and others in this thread are thinking way too small about the potential usecases of NFTs. They are more than just pictures of apes.
simonh 5y ago
I'd argue with your use of the term 'represent' there because there's nothing about the NFT that actually represents the asset. Here's the IPFS URL stored on-chain for an actual NFT, or actually an IPFS gateway link to the actual IPFS record so you can view it in a browser: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmdNvqCbd7qYvtyFJdd3zoJC84cvyCiSxYDfsiYYQZVCec https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmdNvqCbd7qYvtyFJdd3zoJC84cvyCiSxYDfsiY... This IPFS record gives the Makerspace gateway address for the artwork so you can view the image the NFT supposedly refers to: https://ipfsgateway.makersplace.com/ipfs/QmNopeEan1r728EGpAYZw8fFvCXfuXtnadC3JCeY5mo9LB https://ipfsgateway.makersplace.com/ipfs/QmNopeEan1r728EGpAY... These are all just references, they don't represent the image itself. If Makerspace goes away so does that copy of the image, and the NFT becomes a reference to nothing. The NFT doesn't even include a hash of the image, so Makerspace could replace the image with another one and nobody would be able to tell. What image did you see when you opened the URL? Are you sure it's the same one I saw? How would you know? All you own is some bits on a blockchain containing a URL to someone else's website that has no relationship or obligation to you. A lot of NFTs refer to Cloudfront URLs. Do you think Cloudfront gives a crap about your NFT?
AlexandrB 5y ago
> Any non fungible asset or piece of data can be represented as an NFT (not exclusively for trading / speculation). No it can't. In particular any physical non-fungible asset can't be represented by an NFT in a way that is useful. This is because there is no mechanism within NFTs or the blockchain to enforce that the owner of the NFT must also be the owner of the physical asset.

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.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      > It makes ownership cryptographically verifiable... It really doesn't. Ownership is a jurisdiction-dependent, item-dependent, legal concept. In the US, your bored ape JPEG will become public domain either 70 years after the creator dies, or after 95 years if they put together a LLC or something to sell them. You can wave the NFT around all you like at that point, but you no longer own the artwork, at least where the US is concerned.
      - rattlesnakedave 5y ago
        In the common case, as they exist today, with current popular NFT projects, possession is generally sufficient to prove ownership. There are instances of theft, other forms of illegitimate ownership, weird IP conflicts, etc. but these are not the common case as NFTs exist today. Getting hung up on edge cases is missing the forrest for the trees.
        gspr 5y ago
        > In the common case, as they exist today, with current popular NFT projects, possession is generally sufficient to prove ownership. You're skipping something important: ownership of what exactly?

top_sigrid 5y ago

Well with the small difference that this social consensus is backed by countries, laws, regulation and law enforcement, etc. This is the same kind of libertarian argument as that money is only a construct and virtual without any real value.

rattlesnakedave 5y ago
What are you talking about? Do you not think ownership of a digital asset is enforceable in our current legal system?
- top_sigrid 5y ago
  I am talking about the point you make. You stated that the current state of ownership is based on social consensus and I added that this consensus you are talking about actually means countries, law etc. But to your new point: Even if it might be enforceable (which would completely undermine the point of having an NFT on a blockchain in the first place as you would rely on the same current system you try to replace anyways), the very much nature of having ownership stored in an NFT would mean that this ownership in many scenarios could of course not be enforced by the legal system. If you get your private key stolen you have lost that ownership and there is no way to restore it. So to your question: no it would not be enforcable.
  - rattlesnakedave 5y ago
    This isn’t a new point. We form social consensus and agree that data on the blockchain means something. The meaning can then be enforced in courts. If you are saying that if my digital assets are stolen, and I can identify the thief, I have no legal recourse that’s just laughable. There are plenty of judges that disagree with you. Further, there are more benefits to using a blockchain than proof of ownership. You can tokenize your new non fungible assets, transfer them permissionlessly, use them as bearer credentials, etc. Not trying to be offensive here, but you and others in this thread are thinking way too small about the potential usecases of NFTs. They are more than just pictures of apes.

simonh 5y ago

I'd argue with your use of the term 'represent' there because there's nothing about the NFT that actually represents the asset. Here's the IPFS URL stored on-chain for an actual NFT, or actually an IPFS gateway link to the actual IPFS record so you can view it in a browser: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmdNvqCbd7qYvtyFJdd3zoJC84cvyCiSxYDfsiYYQZVCec https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmdNvqCbd7qYvtyFJdd3zoJC84cvyCiSxYDfsiY... This IPFS record gives the Makerspace gateway address for the artwork so you can view the image the NFT supposedly refers to: https://ipfsgateway.makersplace.com/ipfs/QmNopeEan1r728EGpAYZw8fFvCXfuXtnadC3JCeY5mo9LB https://ipfsgateway.makersplace.com/ipfs/QmNopeEan1r728EGpAY... These are all just references, they don't represent the image itself. If Makerspace goes away so does that copy of the image, and the NFT becomes a reference to nothing. The NFT doesn't even include a hash of the image, so Makerspace could replace the image with another one and nobody would be able to tell. What image did you see when you opened the URL? Are you sure it's the same one I saw? How would you know? All you own is some bits on a blockchain containing a URL to someone else's website that has no relationship or obligation to you. A lot of NFTs refer to Cloudfront URLs. Do you think Cloudfront gives a crap about your NFT?

AlexandrB 5y ago

> Any non fungible asset or piece of data can be represented as an NFT (not exclusively for trading / speculation). No it can't. In particular any physical non-fungible asset can't be represented by an NFT in a way that is useful. This is because there is no mechanism within NFTs or the blockchain to enforce that the owner of the NFT must also be the owner of the physical asset.