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> 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

by 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
    They don't need their own in-house bespoke infrastructure, the hard part is user identity, and there are many services that will host this for you and also integrate seamlessly with third party providers (Firebase, for example, which will let you identify via Google, Meta, GitHub, Twitter, etc. right out of the box) The difference between Firebase and Ethereum+metamask isn't a significant development cost for anything beyond a toy weekend project. The difference is only about trust. The argument you want to make is that we shouldn't trust Firebase, they could steal our auth tokens and act on our behalf without our permission, so we need trustless decentralized solutions. That would be a valid argument, but a hard sell to an audience that doesn't buy the premise. I'm not going to debate it. However, it has nothing to do with the technical layer of auth which is just "prove that you know the secret" in all cases. Either you don't understand how this works, or you're deliberately avoiding the point. Where do you think Metamask stores your private key? It would be trivial for Firebase to release a browser extension that used LocalStorage to store the secret, like Metamask, instead of regular web storage.
    - xk_id 3y ago
      How the hell does firebase enable users to interact p2p to exchange a digital asset from one vendor with an asset from another, or use them as collateral for loans?
      - dakom 3y ago
        In the exact same way that blockchain does - you present a token that can be validated by your peers. However, in blockchain it's the combo of your private key to sign your wallet, along with the consensus engine where decentralized voting decides to accept the generation and association of new tokens. In centralized servers, it's the combo of your credentials to login, along with the servers that update the database. Once you own a token, you can create signatures for it that other peers can validate. For example https://firebase.google.com/docs/auth/admin/create-custom-tokens#create_custom_tokens_using_the_firebase_admin_sdk https://firebase.google.com/docs/auth/admin/create-custom-to... I've already addressed your points about collateral and loans. That's purely business logic, and has nothing at all to do with NFTs (which are _only_ user<>token_id mappings)
dakom 3y ago
NFTs are only spec for smart contracts that dictate mappings between "owners" and "token ids". That's it. End of story. There isn't even a universal requirement that maps from token id to metadata like OpenSea's format. > NFTs can be minted in exchange for currency and can be traded between owners later The part of dApps that recognizes NFT ownership for releasing funds is just business logic that can be replaced with anything we can imagine - including but not limited to checking the storage for an Address->RandomString lookup (in fact, if you squint, that _is_ what's happening in transactions due to the step that verifies wallet signatures via cryptographic hashes) There is nothing at all in the spec that allows for them to have any special meaning in terms of vouchers for currency > More complex rebuttal: you can get peer-to-peer (and even peer-to-pool) loans using your NFT as collateral I don't think you understand how NFTs work. This isn't even a more complex rebuttal, NFT contracts don't care if the owner is another contract or a human with a wallet. They only care about the owner to token id mapping. If anything, p2p loans is a _simpler_ example because you're moving the logic out of contracts and into, perhaps, humans who decide to act on nft transfers. It's a weird example imho, but regardless, it's only an extension of the above points. > How is any of this applicable right now to a HTTP header?! In HTTP, you acquire a random string (via some web app), and then you later provide it to prove authorization In Blockchain, you acquire a random public/private keypair (via wallet generation), and you later sign data with this random key in order to prove authorization In NFTs, you use the Blockchain infrastructure to sign transactions that associate you as the owner with arbitrary token ids. Do you not see that it's fundamentally the same thing? > 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. Ok. I mean, I've hands-on deployed CW721 contracts on cosmos with a Unity frontend for on-chain gaming demos. Your ad-hominem attacks are pretty weird from where I'm sitting and, frankly, reek of "dunning-kruger effect". But I don't want to get into a pissing contest, let's stick to facts: 1. Most chains require you to sign transactions all the time. It's a crappy UX. Near avoids this to some extent, and it's a clientside thing that can be skipped, but generally at the expense of security most users aren't comfortable with. 2. Transaction time is slow af compared to what you get with regular socket servers. I'm talking a difference of speed in terms of decades of progress. Not years. Decades. 3. Nodes go out of sync, you have race conditions, there are real problems to solve that robust game server tech deals with and blockchain doesn't concern itself with. Working around these are doable but painful and not out of the box. 4. Most games depend on randomization and/or hidden state that clients cannot be made aware of to prevent cheating. There are some chains like Secret Network that propose solutions to this, but overall, blockchain is transparent in ways that are showstoppers for on-chain games. > Yeah, it’s almost like blockchains are designed to be financial infrastructure. At least you got the basics right, I guess. Yup.

by xk_id 3y ago

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
  They don't need their own in-house bespoke infrastructure, the hard part is user identity, and there are many services that will host this for you and also integrate seamlessly with third party providers (Firebase, for example, which will let you identify via Google, Meta, GitHub, Twitter, etc. right out of the box) The difference between Firebase and Ethereum+metamask isn't a significant development cost for anything beyond a toy weekend project. The difference is only about trust. The argument you want to make is that we shouldn't trust Firebase, they could steal our auth tokens and act on our behalf without our permission, so we need trustless decentralized solutions. That would be a valid argument, but a hard sell to an audience that doesn't buy the premise. I'm not going to debate it. However, it has nothing to do with the technical layer of auth which is just "prove that you know the secret" in all cases. Either you don't understand how this works, or you're deliberately avoiding the point. Where do you think Metamask stores your private key? It would be trivial for Firebase to release a browser extension that used LocalStorage to store the secret, like Metamask, instead of regular web storage.
  - xk_id 3y ago
    How the hell does firebase enable users to interact p2p to exchange a digital asset from one vendor with an asset from another, or use them as collateral for loans?
    - dakom 3y ago
      In the exact same way that blockchain does - you present a token that can be validated by your peers. However, in blockchain it's the combo of your private key to sign your wallet, along with the consensus engine where decentralized voting decides to accept the generation and association of new tokens. In centralized servers, it's the combo of your credentials to login, along with the servers that update the database. Once you own a token, you can create signatures for it that other peers can validate. For example https://firebase.google.com/docs/auth/admin/create-custom-tokens#create_custom_tokens_using_the_firebase_admin_sdk https://firebase.google.com/docs/auth/admin/create-custom-to... I've already addressed your points about collateral and loans. That's purely business logic, and has nothing at all to do with NFTs (which are _only_ user<>token_id mappings)

dakom 3y ago

NFTs are only spec for smart contracts that dictate mappings between "owners" and "token ids". That's it. End of story. There isn't even a universal requirement that maps from token id to metadata like OpenSea's format. > NFTs can be minted in exchange for currency and can be traded between owners later The part of dApps that recognizes NFT ownership for releasing funds is just business logic that can be replaced with anything we can imagine - including but not limited to checking the storage for an Address->RandomString lookup (in fact, if you squint, that _is_ what's happening in transactions due to the step that verifies wallet signatures via cryptographic hashes) There is nothing at all in the spec that allows for them to have any special meaning in terms of vouchers for currency > More complex rebuttal: you can get peer-to-peer (and even peer-to-pool) loans using your NFT as collateral I don't think you understand how NFTs work. This isn't even a more complex rebuttal, NFT contracts don't care if the owner is another contract or a human with a wallet. They only care about the owner to token id mapping. If anything, p2p loans is a _simpler_ example because you're moving the logic out of contracts and into, perhaps, humans who decide to act on nft transfers. It's a weird example imho, but regardless, it's only an extension of the above points. > How is any of this applicable right now to a HTTP header?! In HTTP, you acquire a random string (via some web app), and then you later provide it to prove authorization In Blockchain, you acquire a random public/private keypair (via wallet generation), and you later sign data with this random key in order to prove authorization In NFTs, you use the Blockchain infrastructure to sign transactions that associate you as the owner with arbitrary token ids. Do you not see that it's fundamentally the same thing? > 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. Ok. I mean, I've hands-on deployed CW721 contracts on cosmos with a Unity frontend for on-chain gaming demos. Your ad-hominem attacks are pretty weird from where I'm sitting and, frankly, reek of "dunning-kruger effect". But I don't want to get into a pissing contest, let's stick to facts: 1. Most chains require you to sign transactions all the time. It's a crappy UX. Near avoids this to some extent, and it's a clientside thing that can be skipped, but generally at the expense of security most users aren't comfortable with. 2. Transaction time is slow af compared to what you get with regular socket servers. I'm talking a difference of speed in terms of decades of progress. Not years. Decades. 3. Nodes go out of sync, you have race conditions, there are real problems to solve that robust game server tech deals with and blockchain doesn't concern itself with. Working around these are doable but painful and not out of the box. 4. Most games depend on randomization and/or hidden state that clients cannot be made aware of to prevent cheating. There are some chains like Secret Network that propose solutions to this, but overall, blockchain is transparent in ways that are showstoppers for on-chain games. > Yeah, it’s almost like blockchains are designed to be financial infrastructure. At least you got the basics right, I guess. Yup.