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NFTs are essentially bearer tokens, very much like literal Bearer tokens in HTTP. To take one of your examples- gating auth to a community.. the community is u

by dakom 3y ago

NFTs are essentially bearer tokens, very much like literal Bearer tokens in HTTP. To take one of your examples- gating auth to a community.. the community is usually an off-chain centralized thing like Discord. Due to that, the auth logic sits behind closed doors. Verifying an NFT has no advantages over verifying a random string that only the intended user has. i.e. traditional bearer tokens of some sort. The only advantage of NFTs is in systems that are completely decentralized or in systems that care about verifying a wallet for some reason (_not_ the same thing as verifying a user who goes through the centralized auth of discord or xbox) So, for example, if the community itself were completely 100% on-chain. This doesn't exist because chains cannot scale the way simple socket servers do. There may be some chats or games that operate on-chain, but they are slow and feel like 30 year old tech. Afaik the most popular use case for chains is trading crypto assets. Here, NFTs can be useful for establishing auth (or other on chain utilities like the concentrated liquidity you mentioned), but then it gets to the parent's point - for someone who doesn't care about trading crypto, there isn't a compelling use case, since it all boils down to "beanie babies" - the difference is that it's not the nfts that are the beanie babies, it's the crypto ecosystem driven by circular supply/demand.

xk_id 3y ago
> Verifying an NFT has no advantages over verifying a random string that only the intended user has. i.e. traditional bearer tokens of some sort. I’m so tired of seeing people confidently post like this about crypto. There has been so much effort put into explaining, you really have no excuse anymore to parrot it. Very easy rebuttal: NFTs can be minted in exchange for currency and can be traded between owners later – both functionalities rely on infrastructure that already exists. More complex rebuttal: you can get peer-to-peer (and even peer-to-pool) loans using your NFT as collateral (again, using permissionless infrastructure that is already built for you). How is any of this applicable right now to a HTTP header?! Also, the only people I ever heard of mentioning “videogames fully on chain” are crypto opponents; they try to come up with the most bizarre scenarios, to “prove” that crypto is inadequate. It’s so irrational. > Afaik the most popular use case for chains is trading crypto assets. Yeah, it’s almost like blockchains are designed to be financial infrastructure. At least you got the basics right, I guess.
- agentgumshoe 3y ago
  Have you got examples of where those functions are actually used, and that they maintain the loan value consistently? nftifi.com: "secure a loan funded by a lender seeking to earn returns from their investment." Lol, It's part of the grift.
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  > NFTs can be minted in exchange for currency So can bearer tokens, client certificates, concert tickets, etc. Put up a webpage that takes payments (including crypto if you so desire) and hands out whatever authentication instrument you want upon successful payment. > can be traded between owners later A conventional, non-chain-based system can also include this functionality. Presenting your current bearer token and a contact for the desired new owner would invalidate your current token and email them a new one. Any system where this kind of transfer makes sense and is willing to allow this kind of trade already has it - you can freely trade video game cosmetic items on most games, you can resell tickets on Ticketmaster (albeit for a fee), etc. If the platform owner doesn't want you to trade then NFTs are of no help either because the blockchain has a publicly-visible history of all trades which the platform owner can use to refuse access to any NFTs that have been traded (so if you want to trade you need to trade the actual bearer token - or private key in a cryptocurrency world - and hope the seller is honest and didn't keep a copy - again crypto/NFTs doesn't help here either). The problem is that NFTs only make sense on-chain. As soon as you go off-chain you lose most/all of the advantages of NFTs, at which point you may as well rely on an authentication instrument also issued and managed off-chain.
  - xk_id 3y ago
    > Any system where this kind of transfer makes sense and is willing to allow this kind of trade already has it No it doesn’t have it. That was the whole point. The examples you gave had to each build their own in-house bespoke infrastructure for this functionality. With blockchains it already exists, it’s secure and any new app or user can start using it right away.
    - dakom 3y ago

by dakom 3y ago

xk_id 3y ago

> Verifying an NFT has no advantages over verifying a random string that only the intended user has. i.e. traditional bearer tokens of some sort. I’m so tired of seeing people confidently post like this about crypto. There has been so much effort put into explaining, you really have no excuse anymore to parrot it. Very easy rebuttal: NFTs can be minted in exchange for currency and can be traded between owners later – both functionalities rely on infrastructure that already exists. More complex rebuttal: you can get peer-to-peer (and even peer-to-pool) loans using your NFT as collateral (again, using permissionless infrastructure that is already built for you). How is any of this applicable right now to a HTTP header?! Also, the only people I ever heard of mentioning “videogames fully on chain” are crypto opponents; they try to come up with the most bizarre scenarios, to “prove” that crypto is inadequate. It’s so irrational. > Afaik the most popular use case for chains is trading crypto assets. Yeah, it’s almost like blockchains are designed to be financial infrastructure. At least you got the basics right, I guess.

agentgumshoe 3y ago
Have you got examples of where those functions are actually used, and that they maintain the loan value consistently? nftifi.com: "secure a loan funded by a lender seeking to earn returns from their investment." Lol, It's part of the grift.
Nextgrid 3y ago
> NFTs can be minted in exchange for currency So can bearer tokens, client certificates, concert tickets, etc. Put up a webpage that takes payments (including crypto if you so desire) and hands out whatever authentication instrument you want upon successful payment. > can be traded between owners later A conventional, non-chain-based system can also include this functionality. Presenting your current bearer token and a contact for the desired new owner would invalidate your current token and email them a new one. Any system where this kind of transfer makes sense and is willing to allow this kind of trade already has it - you can freely trade video game cosmetic items on most games, you can resell tickets on Ticketmaster (albeit for a fee), etc. If the platform owner doesn't want you to trade then NFTs are of no help either because the blockchain has a publicly-visible history of all trades which the platform owner can use to refuse access to any NFTs that have been traded (so if you want to trade you need to trade the actual bearer token - or private key in a cryptocurrency world - and hope the seller is honest and didn't keep a copy - again crypto/NFTs doesn't help here either). The problem is that NFTs only make sense on-chain. As soon as you go off-chain you lose most/all of the advantages of NFTs, at which point you may as well rely on an authentication instrument also issued and managed off-chain.
- xk_id 3y ago
  > Any system where this kind of transfer makes sense and is willing to allow this kind of trade already has it No it doesn’t have it. That was the whole point. The examples you gave had to each build their own in-house bespoke infrastructure for this functionality. With blockchains it already exists, it’s secure and any new app or user can start using it right away.
  - dakom 3y ago