> Well: that's Ethereum; like, that's precisely what Ethereum is doing. Then why does OpenSea etc. exist? It seems to me that Ethereum just solves the trivial

> Well: that's Ethereum; like, that's precisely what Ethereum is doing. Then why does OpenSea etc. exist? It seems to me that Ethereum just solves the trivial problem of providing an API to do the trade itself. You could easily have a trusted company providing the exact same service cheaper and more efficiently with a centralized database. If having a unified trading backend provided was something game companies actually wanted, it would have existed already. You don't need blockchain for that. You may have problems with the company providing the platform going belly-up and the backend disappearing, or that they messed with the trades and broke trust. Then you could say Ethereum would be a good replacement providing additional value (in exchange for cost/speed/efficiency though). But the thing Ethereum would be replacing and improve upon never existed in the first place, which tells me nobody really wanted it. Building a service on top of Ethereum that facilitates the trades, lets you view items, lets you store the data behind the items in a robust way.. that's what would provide most of the value. But that's hard. And it seems we're pretty far from having a really robust/universal solution built on top of Ethereum, for anything more than URL to JPEGs. And even when we do, I'd argue that we never needed Ethereum as the backend to begin with. Most likely the items on the Ethereum blockchain will still be completely meaningless and without significant value without a huge frontend built by some large corporation. And then that corporation might as well have used a centralised ledger to track those items. I.e. something we could do 10 years ago, and would have been done 10 years ago if there was interest for it. Enthusiasts could build open-source replacements, yes, but by the time they get there the items will probably have lost most of their value, the fad will have passed. Creating collectible/tradable cards and items is hard. It takes physical work. You need convince shops to get it out in the market etc. That's what provides a lot of the rarity of those things. When Ethereum makes it easy to create new collectibles, you'll flood the market continuously. Fads will come and go much faster. It'll be harder for the items to have staying value. Ethereum might ruin the very thing it's trying to facilitate. Or I could be completely wrong. We'll see in a decade or so I guess.