Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

seths.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 786 posts

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#61

Post by lmm »

Osmose wrote: post #10
snissn wrote: post #5

It’s easy for a famous entrenched artist who mass produces their work thanks to legacy infrastructure to talk down on this but I’m seeing lots of independent creator artist friends making some money for their work

What property of NFTs has suddenly made them make money where previously they weren't? Like how did adding NFTs to the mix suddenly make their art start selling?

Previously there was no way to credibly sell an "original". You can produce a commission for someone, but the nature of a digital artwork is that anyone you show it to has the whole thing.

To a certain extent this was already the case with photos, and IMO that's part of the reason that prices for photographic artwork are much lower than other media. You'll sometimes see photographers selling a series of 500 numbered prints (or whatever) as a sort of a way around that, and NFTs are kind of a more digital version of that.

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#62

Post by seibelj »

jbluepolarbear wrote: post #49

It would be really awesome if there was a digital exchange that dealt in multi use media. I would love to be able to buy an album, image, movie, 3D model, etc directly from the creators and then own the rights to use for whatever their content license allows. And then I could then resell that content and the original content creator would get an originator fee from the transactions. Some new data formats may need to…

I think all of this will happen, it just takes time. Crypto is entering a more mainstream and useful phase right now, but it will take another 5 to 10 years for entrepreneurs to really make the future.

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#63

Post by alexmingoia »

TheDong wrote: post #42
alexmingoia wrote: post #13

NFTs aren’t much different than merchandise artists and musicians sell. Tshirts, buttons, plastic figurines, stickers, etc. The environmental critique rings hollow. Our economy revolves around this unnecessary consumerism. Why single out NFTs? Seems like sour grapes to me.

> The environmental critique rings hollow. Our economy revolves around this unnecessary consumerism It is only proof of work which needs to be more wasteful the more efficient things become. If it turns out t-shirts are polluting massively, and someone finds out that by replacing one chemical with another they pollute much less, then people will do that. If a more efficient machine comes out for making a t-shirt, t-s…

Whether it’s a waste of electricity is a matter of opinion. You may think it’s a waste of time and energy, others do not.

Electricity generation can come from non-polluting renewable resources (the sun, the water, the wind, etc.)

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#65

Post by megameter »

moultano wrote: post #14

Tip the artists you love. If you want you can send them money by paying for prints, or buying originals, but ultimately just send them money. There's no need for it to be transactional. If there are artists in the world that make things a little more beautiful for you, you can just pay them for that, without any need for it to be tied to something concrete.

It's also transactional if they put the work behind a centralized DRM system, yet somehow we are not pushing back against that, which to me suggests a lack of imagination.

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#66

Post by anonporridge »

TheDong wrote: post #34
anonporridge wrote: post #8

The possibilities of NFTs fascinate me, especially for portable, digital identities and assets that transcend any specific virtual realm and can't be arbitrarily erased by any central authority. But I also won't put a single sat in any of them right now.

> portable, digital identities and assets that transcend any specific virtual realm Why not just have a government or trusted company sign things rather than an NFT? If the UN says "we will digitally sign digital passports", that seems strictly better than an NFT for identity. Without a central authority to verify identity, how do you solve the problem of a thousand people creating NFTs saying they're john doe living…

Here I'm talking more about pseudonymous virtual identities that aren't necessarily publicly tied to meat world people. Digital passport for verification of physical world identity probably will be some government agency.

Boy would it suck if they 'accidentally' delete your digital identity and suddenly you can't participate in any social media. As more and more of our lives go virtual, this could legitimately become a prison like punishment and hopefully there's an arm of the justice system that manages that transparently.

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#67

Post by detaro »

seibelj wrote: post #60
detaro wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can the contract know the actual sales price? I.e. sure, it can see a transaction, but it can't see the second transaction with the rest of the sum, or the cash that changed hands at the same time.

The major NFT exchanges like OpenSea and Mintable enforce it in the marketplace. But otherwise it's mostly honor system right now.

So basically the same way it's done with traditional meatspace paintings: you make a (legal) contract stipulating it, or you rely on people to do it because they think it's right.

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#68

Post by EGreg »

I remember growing up and seeing a very active “Warez” scene online, with cracks being distributed of all sorts of licensed software. Companies have since tried to make the programs “phone home” in order to check the licensec or turn them into SAAS to get revenue, but that is anathema to decentralized assets.

I haven’t looked too deeply into NFTs but it seems clear to me that:

1) NFTs are not for read access, but rather write access to a certain thing. Think Earth2 or MillionDollarHomePage or buying a domain name or some other namespace.

2) Ethereum and blockchains are entirely overkill for NFTs, because they are designed for arbitrary balances. If you want NFTs you can just have non divisible files that are collectively managed on MaidSAFE or something like that.

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#69

Post by esturk »

ashkankiani wrote: post #6
etrabroline wrote: post #3

How much electricity is used refrigerating frozen desserts in the US? It's probably a lot. Probably more than a small country. Is ice cream an unnecessary and "dangerous" trap that we will all pay dearly for in the end? Probably.

I don't understand the point of this comment. It's almost schizophrenic in nature. Are you advocating for wasting energy by saying that wasting energy is fine because it's done in other places but not criticized?

I've noticed that low karma accounts like the one above yours tend to leave snarky comments to gain karmas. It's ambiguous enough to get some up votes from readers that like their humour and not get down voted out right for its vagueness.

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#70

Post by scsilver »

jamesgreenleaf wrote: post #37

NFTs make perfect sense for representing a claim on things that can be used, like event tickets or in-game virtual goods. But as certificates layered on top of collectibles... I'm not so sure. With something like CryptoKitties, you can do something with the tokens (play a virtual pet game). But with something like CryptoPunks you're essentially paying for digital beanie babies, which are worse than real ones since an…

You obviously wont be displaying your rare nft art collection in the west wing of your 2-bit, thirdlifeVR mansion.
Post reply on HN