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I am FAR from an NFT apologist but I also dont think your answer represents an understanding of the reality of the technical constraints. The pointer in an NFT

by anm89 5y ago

I am FAR from an NFT apologist but I also dont think your answer represents an understanding of the reality of the technical constraints. The pointer in an NFT is truly permanent. the concerns for lack of permanence relate to if you put in an impermanent thing like an http URL in the pointer but there are also permanent things you could put in the url like a hash or more or less permanant things like a ipfs address. Judging a technology on an explicitly stupid use of that technology doesn't make sense.

gilleain 5y ago
> also permanent things you could put in the url like a hash A hash of what? The asset? Can you hash the look of a digital 'thing' as well as it's behaviour?
- scrumper 5y ago
  You hash the bits that are the "thing". If it's one of these digital dresses the article talks about, there's some format for encoding that dress so it can be loaded into whatever environment supports an avatar's ability to wear it. So hash that. I don't think look and behavior are separable, they're both just attributes of the thing which are respected by whatever environment renders it.
  - gilleain 5y ago
    > I don't think look and behavior are separable, they're both just attributes of the thing Yes, they are both attributes, that have to then be interpreted by the 'rendering engine'. For example, the 'look' is based on the image format and the 'behaviour' is based on how the rendering engine interprets the rest of the attributes > which are respected by whatever environment renders it. But that is the entire point - _why_ should an environment respect those attributes? To make it concrete, the original discussion was about something like a 'sword of dragonslaying' - great, that's what it does in the original game. Let us simplify this to having an attribute "dragonslaying". Now what? How does the second game that the asset is transferred to 'respect' that attribute? Again, as several others have pointed out, this is not a technical problem that NFTs or blockchains solve. It is a question of game engine standards, and common rule sets, and so on.
    - scrumper 5y ago
      Oh I follow you. Yeah no reason at all, at least until the economic incentives become strong enough (I doubt that'll ever happen but when knows.) What would a "dragonslaying" bit even mean in the context of, say, a puzzle game? Seems like the 'problem' (if you want to call it that, I don't) isn't even amenable to standardization. It's like saying you want to bring your signed cricket ball to the local park to use in a game of soccer and claiming the reason you can't is because of FIFA's failure to implement inter-sport ball portability standards.
fvold 5y ago
That's such a minor part, though. Yes, your NFT will always be linked to object 238947872, but absolutely nothing about NFTs makes object 238947872 "a game sword" or even "a valid object in Game A", much less "Equivalent objects in form an function in both Game A and Game B". Even if you somehow encode the visual representation and the stats into the NFT, using the most awesome method you could ever think of, that does not stop the power creep in a game. Your Sword of Awesomeness does 3600 damage per second to the undead. You paid 36 ETH for this insta-kill weapon, and no undead could even be in the same instance with you without instantly becoming re-dead. Then the game gets a new zone where undead enemies have 40000 hitpoints and generate 7200 hitpoints per second. Your expensive sword is now a very impractical toothpick. Even if you could make the stats permanent, you can't make it's usefulness permanent, nor can you guarantee it will be valid in any game for ever, much less several games at the same time. Am I wrong? I want to know. Please elaborate on how you solve the "Object 238947872 is now a bag of chicken feed" problem and the "Object 238947872 is now obsolete because of power creep" problem. Not even being sarcastic here. If I've misunderstood this whole thing, I want to know.
- cableshaft 5y ago
  There are on-chain NFTs that have both the image and metadata on-chain, and the smart contract could allow for user manipulation of that meta-data (like leveling up, etc). Doesn't make the rest of your point any less valid, but these two things can and do exist in various NFTs already. But for power creep specifically, not sure why the game developer can't see that metadata for a particular project and go "nah that's going to be too strong/weak, we'll divide/multiply all X stat for the objects from this NFT to make it even". There could even be a third party library that keeps track of this for multiple NFTs and does its best to keep things of relative equality that game developers could import like they do any other library. Not saying that's for sure going to happen, just that it's not necessarily as big of a technical challenge as people keep making it out to be with the help of third party tool ecosystem that is likely to develop alongside this assuming these things become more and more popular, just like in any other space.
  - boopboopbadoop 5y ago

by anm89 5y ago

gilleain 5y ago

> also permanent things you could put in the url like a hash A hash of what? The asset? Can you hash the look of a digital 'thing' as well as it's behaviour?

scrumper 5y ago
You hash the bits that are the "thing". If it's one of these digital dresses the article talks about, there's some format for encoding that dress so it can be loaded into whatever environment supports an avatar's ability to wear it. So hash that. I don't think look and behavior are separable, they're both just attributes of the thing which are respected by whatever environment renders it.
- gilleain 5y ago
  > I don't think look and behavior are separable, they're both just attributes of the thing Yes, they are both attributes, that have to then be interpreted by the 'rendering engine'. For example, the 'look' is based on the image format and the 'behaviour' is based on how the rendering engine interprets the rest of the attributes > which are respected by whatever environment renders it. But that is the entire point - _why_ should an environment respect those attributes? To make it concrete, the original discussion was about something like a 'sword of dragonslaying' - great, that's what it does in the original game. Let us simplify this to having an attribute "dragonslaying". Now what? How does the second game that the asset is transferred to 'respect' that attribute? Again, as several others have pointed out, this is not a technical problem that NFTs or blockchains solve. It is a question of game engine standards, and common rule sets, and so on.
  - scrumper 5y ago
    Oh I follow you. Yeah no reason at all, at least until the economic incentives become strong enough (I doubt that'll ever happen but when knows.) What would a "dragonslaying" bit even mean in the context of, say, a puzzle game? Seems like the 'problem' (if you want to call it that, I don't) isn't even amenable to standardization. It's like saying you want to bring your signed cricket ball to the local park to use in a game of soccer and claiming the reason you can't is because of FIFA's failure to implement inter-sport ball portability standards.

fvold 5y ago

That's such a minor part, though. Yes, your NFT will always be linked to object 238947872, but absolutely nothing about NFTs makes object 238947872 "a game sword" or even "a valid object in Game A", much less "Equivalent objects in form an function in both Game A and Game B". Even if you somehow encode the visual representation and the stats into the NFT, using the most awesome method you could ever think of, that does not stop the power creep in a game. Your Sword of Awesomeness does 3600 damage per second to the undead. You paid 36 ETH for this insta-kill weapon, and no undead could even be in the same instance with you without instantly becoming re-dead. Then the game gets a new zone where undead enemies have 40000 hitpoints and generate 7200 hitpoints per second. Your expensive sword is now a very impractical toothpick. Even if you could make the stats permanent, you can't make it's usefulness permanent, nor can you guarantee it will be valid in any game for ever, much less several games at the same time. Am I wrong? I want to know. Please elaborate on how you solve the "Object 238947872 is now a bag of chicken feed" problem and the "Object 238947872 is now obsolete because of power creep" problem. Not even being sarcastic here. If I've misunderstood this whole thing, I want to know.

cableshaft 5y ago
There are on-chain NFTs that have both the image and metadata on-chain, and the smart contract could allow for user manipulation of that meta-data (like leveling up, etc). Doesn't make the rest of your point any less valid, but these two things can and do exist in various NFTs already. But for power creep specifically, not sure why the game developer can't see that metadata for a particular project and go "nah that's going to be too strong/weak, we'll divide/multiply all X stat for the objects from this NFT to make it even". There could even be a third party library that keeps track of this for multiple NFTs and does its best to keep things of relative equality that game developers could import like they do any other library. Not saying that's for sure going to happen, just that it's not necessarily as big of a technical challenge as people keep making it out to be with the help of third party tool ecosystem that is likely to develop alongside this assuming these things become more and more popular, just like in any other space.
- boopboopbadoop 5y ago