> More simply, it allows you to buy and sell the ownership of digital art
I simply do not agree with this characterization. At a minimum, the vast majority of NFT transactions do not allow people to buy and sell ownership of digital art. They allow people to buy and sell ownership of the NFT itself. Unless you consider the token itself art, this is a very different proposition.
People come up with all sorts of complicated metaphors for what NFTs are, but at the end of the day, they are digital tokens. That's it. An NFT is not the digital art that it may be notionally connected to.
Linus Akesson (big in the C64 demoscene) created the only good example of an NFT I've come across [1]. In the token he puts the source code to his "A Mind Is Born Demo" which compiles to the very demo you watch when you view the token [2].
Nothing really. He addresses this in his post. But also the purpose isn't to sell the song (it's already creative commons). Purely just a commemorative token (and the only one he plans to make. It's not about ownership of the song though.
But the reason why this is such a great example for me is because the token actually contains something substantial. This song is now permanently a part of the blockchain, as opposed to just some link to an image host that might not exist in a decade.
You can think of NFT like a baseball trading card. You may get an ownership to the card, but you won't get ownership for that baseball player depicted on a card.
Now of course, if there's a contract that says "whoever owns this baseball card owns this baseball player" then you get an ownership, but that's unlikely. Same with NFT, unless there's recognition and contract in place that designates ownership of actual work, you won't own the work itself.
There are unlockable NFT's where you get access to what is inside. Think of a JPG with the words "My favorite Color" in a black font on a white background. That's it, and that's all any non-owner sees. Only the owner is able to unlock and see what it is. Everyone else knows my favorite color is inside that NFT, but they don't know what the color is.
It's an overly simple example of course, but now carry that out to trade secrets, future stock prices, gambling picks, private videos etc. The "art" on the outside isn't really relevant. It's just an indication of what it is you're owning. It might be just that art, or it might be something else depending on the contract. You're seeing the box, not what is in the box. You have to own it to get the contents of the box.
> There are unlockable NFT's where you get access to what is inside.
The use of NFTs for tracking subscriptions, memberships, or other credentials is an interesting idea in its own right, but let's not confuse the issue by claiming that these external services keyed to NFT ownership are somehow "inside" the NFT. They're a hybrid of centralized services with decentralized access control. Everything "inside" an NFT is a matter of public record on some blockchain; the nature of the system precludes storing any hidden information. Ownership of an NFT can serve as credentials for accessing information on some other server, but then you're forever dependent on whoever runs that server.
Of course if you're dependent on a particular centralized server for the content anyway then that server could just keep track of the ownership itself and avoid the overhead of a blockchain, but there could be cases where multiple services want to share the same access control in a decentralized, market-oriented way.
Well, technically one could save some information that could only be unlocked with a private key directly on blockchain, without centralized servers. Selling such piece of data would mean decrypting it with old owner's private key and re-encrypting it with new owner's public key.
I have no idea if any NFT is encoded this way though.
> Well, technically one could save some information that could only be unlocked with a private key directly on blockchain, without centralized servers.
Sure, but that just moves the problem around; instead of secret data you have a secret private key to manage. The cyphertext can be stored anywhere—on the blockchain, in IPFS—but the private key to decrypt it remains separate from the NFT: If you put it in the NFT then everyone would have it.
> Selling such piece of data would mean decrypting it with old owner's private key and re-encrypting it with new owner's public key.
Any protocol such as this would require out-of-band communication and carry counterparty risk. What happens if someone sells the NFT but refuses to hand over the data, or claims not to have it? The smart contract can't deal with this as that would require making the key public. I'm not seeing any way that an NFT improves the process over simply paying someone to give you a copy of the secret.
> NFTs can be resold on-chain, whereas unlockable content are items that live off-chain, and therefore cannot carry on to future owners on the blockchain.
That pretty much says all you need to know about "unlockable content". Simply put, if you buy the NFT through their platform they'll give you something extra. This bonus content isn't actually part of the NFT at all and is indistinguishable from any paid digital download, apart from being bundled with the purchase of an NFT.
The thing is that even with a NFT token, you are not even including the art itself in a token, rather a link or identifier to it. So there's nothing that prevents multiple tokens pointing to the same art.
This is just as multiple baseball cards pointing to the single baseball player.
Yep, I’m agreeing with that. I’m also augmenting the argument that NFTs are pointless by saying that in the case of digital goods there can be an infinite amount of identical copies as people want so even if you somehow manage to limit the number of NFTs pointing to an asset, it’s still not really unique.
Thing is, what’s “non-fungible” here is (arguably) the token itself, not the thing it points to.
Gambling yes, but so far the money laundering claim is baseless outside of hypothetical scenarios. The overwhelming majority of NFT sales are retail sales well below the $10k price point.
While I haven't seen any actual data, I suspect tax dodging is also a significant motivator in the NFT market (just like the market for physical art assets)
I think it might be for some people, sure, but usually the argument is that things like this are the main driver of NFT sales, which I think is way off the mark.
Unless some artists start to use the keys to let the customer the visualization of the art. Anyway this would be the end of art as we know it... obviously...
I don't know much about NFTs, but I understand it as a sort of "certificate" (?).
Like buying the rights of an old album; an album for which the original is lost. I might receive some piece of paper that says the songs are now mine. Of course, there are already thousands of copies of the songs, but (somehow) now the songs are mine, and I can certify it.
> but at the end of the day, they are digital tokens
I can simplify everything up to the point of saying that the 10 bucks bill you have in your pockets is just a piece of paper, but we all know it's more complicated than that.
And yet, NFTs grant no 'rights to use': licensing, copyright, terms of use, or any other legal terms of the sort. At its heart, it's because blockchains are not widely recognized as legally authoritative. They /cannot be/, since there is no guarantee that an image is uniquely identified by one NFT across all blockchains, and therefore a court would be required to pick and choose 'winners' when considering which blockchain rightly determines ownership.
Individual companies/orgs can confer rights to holders through their T&Cs, but that's revocable and hard to prove. For example: https://boredapeyachtclub.com/#/terms BAYC gives full commercial rights to holders.
Would be really interesting to actually see that challenged in a court.
As I said, I don't know much about NFTs and I was just commenting out of curiosity. I have no stakes in NFTs.
But if the problem is legal (and not technological) then it may be just a matter of time, given enough adoption. Much like Bitcoins (now running as an official currency of El Salvador).
Perhaps it's a matter of establishing we run on this or that blockchain to make NFTs completely traceable?
> So, in conclusion, NFTs are a cool idea. If there ever becomes a day where its possible to buy and sell digital art easily and legitimately, it will be of great benefit to artists and consumers alike. And while the blockchain does get us closer to that path, the technology is simply not there yet for it to be viable. It is for this reason that JBR does not recommend its artists to use NFTs as a point of revenue.
They seem to be some sort of consulting company that helps artists make a living by selling their art.
Humans just want to be feel cool and part of something exclusive. It's dumb to buy digital art receipts for 6-7 figures, its dumber to pay that much and then 5 figures on a yearly basis to play golf.
People with money want their own club though, so something like that will always be around.
Another analogy I use for friends who ask (I have a sizable NFT 'bag'(investment)):
I say why do people buy Rolex watches and Gucci purses? Status. So you can't show off a 'real' Rolex well in the digital world. NFT's are that. Provably scarce. Verifiable.
The luxury industry is massive and people crave to have status and/or 'belong' to something. NFTs are no different and they are not going anywhere. It is early.
I think you will find with most exclusive clubs there are a few types that join but the more common are the ones who have so much money that the cost is immaterial and those who wish access to those people. For the latter they are not paying 5 figures to play golf, they are paying 5 figures to make deals while they happen to be playing golf.
Exactly. It is the same dynamic with BAYC or similar NFTs. If I want to digitally rub elbows with some hot shot VC or CTO of a tech company, it's an easy way in. And for the ETH early adopter with cost-basis of ~$10 - it's play money.
Augusta hosts The Masters. It's the most prestigious golf club in the world. And you also get to actually play golf for your money. It's worlds away from owning a useless picture of a monkey.
They host the masters because they are most prestigious, not the other way around.
Any golf club can host the masters, all you need is some well-maintained grass. but Augusta will always be exclusive to the power brokers of society.
Augusta, like NFT is an exclusionary club only meant for rich people. Both are useless, and probably harmful to society at large, but fulfill a basic human need.
Sorry but no. Augusta was created specifically for the Masters. And I'm pretty sure the people who play golf on the course don't find it useless, weird power broker rant aside.
Once again, you can actually play golf there. It's not useless. NFTs are useless. Bad analogy.
It doesn’t matter if you have one of the many copies of the Bored Ape jpeg NFTs others have made, what matters is you have an NFT provided by contract 0xaba7161a7fb69c88e16ed9f455ce62b791ee4d03 . The jpeg is irrelevant even. If you have an NFT from this contract you are in the club.
If the jpeg is irrelevant, shouldn’t all NFTs from the same contract cost the same? If it’s just a club membership, why would people buy multiple NFTs from the same contract?
Onchain metadata, the ERC721Metadata standard allows key value pairs associated with the NFT, this is where well the hyperlink to the jpeg is stored. These further allow non-fungible properties to the individual token, and where the rarity is derived (eg: hat: red, which 5/10k tokens have).
I have a theory that you could build an entirely fake blockchain ecosystem and people would still use it. Just use all normal “web 2” technology to simulate the same dynamics and people would still play the game to try and win money.
In other words, the energy we see in crypto has nothing to do with the actual technical capabilities. It’s people enjoying playing an emergent game produced by the particular crypto low level mechanics.
It may continue to go on for a long time just the same as any game or gambling web site stays popular.
I propose NFTHC: based on "Proof of Weed" instead of "Proof of Waste". It's green renewable "Web 4:20" technology. Burn Weed, not Coal!
It uses the honor system instead of crypto, just like those "Are you 18 or older? (Yes) (No)" age verification popups.
To generate an NFTHC "Toke'n", the centralized server asks you: "Did you just burn some weed? (Yes) (No)".
If you answer "Yes", then Shazam! Bob's your Uncle: it instantly and efficiently generates your unique NFTHC "Toke'n" without burning any coal or gas.
Other than the fact that it's based on getting wasted instead of wasting energy, using truly green renewable resources whose production actually takes CO2 out of the atmosphere instead of burning coal that causes cancer and heart disease, designed for honorable stoners who just want to get high and relax instead of greedy money launderers and tax dodgers and scammers shilling shady get-rich-quick pyramid schemes who want to viciously cheat gullible victims out of their life savings while carelessly destroy the environment, NFTHCs are totally green, natural, organic, and aromatic, and they don't require wasting energy and burning stinky carcinogenic coal, so Proof of Weed based NFTHCs are otherwise totally indistinguishable from "traditional" Proof of Waste based NFTs.
I find the existence of "testnets" for blockchains fascinating. All the major chains have a parallel/shadow network used for testing and development, effectively identical to the real thing. Yet merely by social consensus (and semantic tags), one of them is acknowledged to be Monopoly play money, while the other is a store of value on par with many nation-states.
I feel like monetizing digital artists is a problem better addressed by subscription services like Patreon. The way I see it, an NFT basically locks a sale to one follower whereas a support/subscription services allows the creator to receive money from multiple followers for the same piece. When the creator perceives 'art-theft' as a problem, they can always resort to using a third party watermarking service. The NFT itself has no such anti-copying measures. Sure, someone "owns" it but there is no practical way to identify who made a copy and distributed it.
An artist can mint an infinite number of NFTs for any single piece of art. They'll all be 100% legitimate. Only one will be the "first", but that's not much of a distinction (or rather, it's the same distinction you get from owning the first of a numbered copy of a print).
You can think of NFTs as akin to Patreon. The thing is they are way better than Patreon. NFTs pay a perpetual royalty to the artist, and the few intermediaries involved mean much smaller fees. Opensea takes only 2.5%. Art theft is an issue no matter how/where an item will be sold, but the IMO when people steal digital art and sell it as NFTs, it just validates the market for the artist it was stolen from. If those artists decided to sell NFTs they would make a killing and squeeze out the thieves.
There is no way to know someone didn’t run remove_watermark.py on your jpeg either. At least with an NFT there is a tx graph of cryptographic signatures.
Fine Art is about story and provenance. NFTs do provide both.
NFTs do neither, at least not for the thing it is associated with.
In his article on Web3, Moxie Marlinspike wrote this:
> So as an experiment, I made an NFT that changes based on who is looking at it, since the web server that serves the image can choose to serve different images based on the IP or User Agent of the requester. For example, it looked one way on OpenSea, another way on Rarible, but when you buy it and view it from your crypto wallet, it will always display as a large [poop] emoji. What you bid on isn’t what you get. There’s nothing unusual about this NFT, it’s how the NFT specifications are built. Many of the highest priced NFTs could turn into [poop] emoji at any time; I just made it explicit.
This is why if you're going to spend any notable amount of money on an art NFT you should ensure that it precisely identifies (e.g. by an IPFS content ID) the specific artwork it's related to. An art NFT that just points to some random server which could change its response at any time isn't worth the cost of its bits.
User david_ar had this great comment about IPFS and permanence:
> You shouldn't read "permanent" as "eternal", but as "not temporary" --- in the same sense as "permanent address" or "permanent employment". HTTP is temporary in the sense that you're relying on a single server to actively continue serving a file for it to remain available. IPFS is permanent in the sense that, so long as the file exists somewhere in the network, it will remain available to everyone.
> Edit: If you want to ensure your content remains available, you still need to host it somewhere (your own server, convincing/paying someone else to, etc). IPFS isn't so much about storage as it is about distribution.
IPFS ensures the file won't change but says nothing about availability.
I never claimed that IPFS magically ensures permanent storage, but the connection between the IPFS content ID (hash) and the content is permanent: If you have a copy of an image or other data, and an NFT with an IPFS content ID, you can show that your file is the one associated with the NFT. That's true even if the entire IPFS network were to disappear since verifying that a file matches a content ID is something you can do locally without depending on IPFS.
As to permanence, IPFS makes it easy to pin any available data on your own node to ensure it stays around. Even if it disappears from the network for a time it can be re-added with the same content ID as long as someone retains a copy. Just make sure you save it somewhere, preferably before spending money on the NFT. If the file completely disappears your NFT won't be worth much.
Fine art is about being aesthetically pleasing. A JPG can do this on its own, without an NFT.
Maybe you mean the value of art is determined by, among other things, story and provenance? Sure, NFTs provide those two. What they don’t provide, which in my opinion is the most important part, is a unique piece of art. Some think a unique record in a blockchain that points to a non-unique copy of a JPG is equivalent, but it is not.
What is the difference between a painting by Leonardo, and an exact copy by a very skilled forger and Artist?
“Nothing”. Except, that we can prove Leonardo painted it as we have the history of ownership. The fact the jpeg isn’t unique isn’t the problem. It’s who minted the NFT. If you know it’s the artist, then only that “copy” is the real one. It’s all bullshit I know but there is an approximation of the above question.
i have since yesterday ( no kidding) heard about NFT because i like to live under a rock.
i get the whole hype thing but are people really this dumb hat they are willing to fork over cash for a token whose only aim is to be a bubble store of value and general pissing contest who owns the more elusive ones?
i have never bought art so i can't imagine how that trade used to happen say till 20 years ago or even 10 years ago before all this? is it the same? different?
My father owned a gallery for a few decades. His may be atypical as it was not in an expensive/exclusive shopping district and was some what avant-garde, but the way art sold at his level was copious amounts of alcohol. A very high percentage of art sold at the opening and was directly related to the quality of the party. I think people are not sure about art unless they can lock into it a positive memory. Art becomes not only a pleasing picture for your wall but a trigger of a good memory whenever looked upon.
I have purchased art. It usually comes in one of two forms - originals and prints/issues (numbered limited copies). There are massive differences between digital and physical art in terms of copyright - with a lot of overlap between digital art, NFT's, and prints. When it comes to "artificial scarcity", an NFT isn't too much different than a print/issue, very similar to photographs. It is possible for an artist to "reissue" prints, and it does happen infrequently with the expected devaluation. But I've never heard of a "drop" or "lootbox" for purchasing fine art. I'm sure it's happened, and imagine it will become more popular in galleries.
The major difference I see is the signature, which artists often use as a control mechanism to create lower-cost versions for sale (e.g. unsigned or pseudonym copies) of original pieces. It's technically impossible to get an inexpensive unsigned NFT and then have it signed later (this often costs one thousand+ dollars for paintings). Since an unsigned piece doesn't have "provenance", it has little-to-no resale value. But if you like the artist and want to support their work it's a great way to get started.
> i get the whole hype thing but are people really this dumb hat they are willing to fork over cash for a token whose only aim is to be a bubble store of value and general pissing contest who owns the more elusive ones?
For what it's worth, most physical art investment isn't much better than that.
The amount of art that is (essentially) forever locked up in "toll and tax free warehouses" (Zollfreilager, no idea about the actual English word) is immense - alone in the warehouses of Geneva, there are over 120.000 pieces of art worth many billions of dollars [1]. No one can visit or see them, they are only tokens and change owners at auctions for ever higher and higher prices.
Art loses its meaning that way, it's yet another enjoyment that has been hijacked and completely transformed by hyper-capitalism and money laundering, not to mention looting, theft [2] and Raubkunst (art pieces confiscated by the Nazi regime mostly from Jews, ending up sold on the open market or being kept by Nazi officials and museums).
These are all interesting questions and dilemmas. However I'm not sure they are as interesting as the act of cashing-in on the hype. Until these issues become more interesting for market participants, it is largely a moot point.
We can discuss it everyday for the next year, but the trend will continue regardless of how rational or irrational HN's scruples are.
The discussion can still be interesting either way.
I have no opinion on NFTs. They are not my bailiwick. I don't plan on getting involved, so I am not spending much bandwidth on the matter.
However, as a former artist, that has sold a few works, the concept of "original art" is important. That's how we can sell photographs, made with film, as the actual film is an "original." I know that when I sold my works, I did not explicitly sell the rights to reproduce. I was young and naive, but I think that the law was already sort of on my side. That meant that the buyers couldn't make money by selling prints of the paintings that I sold them.
Digital work kind of blows a hole under the waterline of "original art." Digicams are now prevalent. I think a few pro photographers use film cameras, but they are quite rare. Even Annie Liebovitz uses digicams. I know that camera companies have tried in-camera digital watermarking, but I also know that these have all been successfully hacked.
And then, we have 3D/pure digital art, which can be awesome, and can take as long as any master oil painting. One example that I use, is Worth Enough, by Radoxist[0]. He spent over a year on it (It's a 3D rendering). I think that Floating Bazar, by Emilis Baltrusaitis, took a lot less time[1] (I think it is a 2D work), but is still an impressive work. There's a lot more stuff out there. Those who sniff at digital media, are probably short-changing their worldview (of course, a huge market for 3D models, are "undressable" male and female mannikins).
I'm not sure that NFTs are the solution to establishing "originals." They just seem to be a way of proving that something was paid for. The artist and the customer need to word the contract carefully; just like they have had to do, for decades. I seem to remember reading about students of great masters, making copies and paintings in the style of their mentor, and selling it as the main artist's work, and we always know about unscrupulous art dealers, selling copies.
Note that Radoxist also sells "other views" of Worth Enough[2]-[5]
I feel that although this article is recommending against nfts, it still gives them too much credit. Referring to unspecified "myths" and "bad blood" and linking to an opensea article in the end.
Parsing out the gold rush from this whole industry is difficult, and the speculative nature of NFTs has understandably turned a lot of people away.
However, NFTs are more than digital art, and frankly have nothing to do with art. Art is just a very superficial and speculative application, and has become synonymous with NFT, fueled by craze and media attention. It's akin to someone saying an electronic device is another word for tamagotchi.
I know this tech gets a lot of hate on HN, and I resonate with a lot of it, but I'm also trying to see beyond this gold rush. What I find interesting and promising is the ability to give uniqueness to THINGS in the digital world (not art necessarily), and to do so in a decentralized manner so that anyone can build applications that integrate those things in a certified and safe way thanks to trustless authenticity and consensus.
What I find interesting and promising is the ability to give uniqueness to THINGS in the digital world (not art necessarily)..
That's not real though. Any scarcity in the digital world is people pretending that they have some sort of unique object. Just look at the number of people who post "bored ape" JPEGs in the comments on any story about NFT ownership - very obviously there is no uniqueness or scarcity or even ownership there.
Abundance is a fundamental property of digital data. It's trivially copyable at basically no cost. You can't remove that property and still share whatever the thing is with people.
I see this a lot, and I somewhat empathize with you for wanting there to be something interesting there. But what you're describing is just nonsensical. There is no such thing as a digital "THING". Any digital "THING" is only a thing via interpretation by a computer program that musts be TRUSTED to interpret it correctly. That fact makes the concept you're describing dead on arrival.
Cryptocurrencies and the very most-boring versions of "smart contracts" are the only things blockchains can do. Any time you're dealing with anything that's not:
1. Tokens themselves
2. Rules for transferring the tokens themselves
blockchain is purely worse than a non-blockchain alternative. Because you're necessarily involving 3rd-party trust, which is antithetical to the reason blockchain exists.
NFTs don't give uniqueness to things any more than URLs. Give a URL to a thing (whether it's a JPEG or something else) and that thing has a clear name and a clear domain, but the association to the thing is one-way and somebody else can still present the same content at another URL.
Whether the URL is verifiable with the domain's key is HTTPS and still doesn't do what you claim.
Whenever any cryptocurrency-related thing seems useful, you're seeing the potential of the underlying cryptography. Not the potential of the cryptocurrency thing.
Everything after that phrase does require the blockchain though- not individually, but as a sum it would be very difficult to bring that all together in a centralized manner.
Nope; you just need a P2P network. Exhibit A: BitTorrent. (Surprise surprise, the blockchain also requires an underlying P2P network.)
A blockchain is actually more centralised than the underlying distributed network; it introduces centralisation-related problems that wouldn't otherwise exist.
Yeah I agree. Though seems pedantic to imply blockchains aren't useful because they're "just" composed of cryptographic primitives. Shared state under potentially-adversarial conditions isn't an easy thing to achieve, and has usecases for which other P2P networks aren't sufficient.
I don't think they're useful to most people right now (or maybe ever), but there are some cool things in DeFi that are normally reserved for large institutions/not possible in traditional finance:
I simply do not agree with this characterization. At a minimum, the vast majority of NFT transactions do not allow people to buy and sell ownership of digital art. They allow people to buy and sell ownership of the NFT itself. Unless you consider the token itself art, this is a very different proposition.
People come up with all sorts of complicated metaphors for what NFTs are, but at the end of the day, they are digital tokens. That's it. An NFT is not the digital art that it may be notionally connected to.