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NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

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Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#551

Pretty bad take on NFTs. There are numerous configurations, networks, and commercial structures that can be created for NFT offerings that can mitigate "problems" described in the OP and accommodate for different tradeoffs. A simple retort would point to the many alternative NFT networks that don't use POW-based consensus algorithms or the NFT offerings that enable value add offerings very differently than purchasing…

> There are numerous configurations, networks, and commercial structures that can be created for NFT offerings that can mitigate "problems" described in the OP and accommodate for different tradeoffs. Ah, yes. The goid old "might", the adage as old as the whole blockchain itself. Translation: "will painstakingly re-invent all the attributes of what real world needs, and already has, and doesn't need blockchain in the…

ah yes, another bitcoin obituary, there's hundreds of them on the internet posted quite regularly, ever since bitcoin's inception.

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are we introducing scarcity to digital goods? That's not a good thing and shouldn't be praised! We rail against companies selling cosmetic additions to games. It doesn't add value. We already have "ownership". The legal framework of copyrights, purchase or goods, and licenses. NFTs are barcodes. People are selling cryptographic barcodes.

There's tens of millions of people that disagree with you regarding cosmetics in games. Gamers largely have disposable income and are happy that they can support their favorite game developers and look "cool" (show off their status) while doing it.

It's more or less a small amount of whales that can actually buy meaningful amounts of cosmetics though. Cosmetics and digital content are EXPENSIVE; for a person to get many we're talking thousands of dollars. $30 US mounts are easy to make, and incredible profit.

Even granting people who buy limited amounts to show support, its very easy to price them out of the market fast.

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#553
post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What rights do you get with ‘owning’ the first tweet? Who could you buy those rights from? Do you get any responsibilities along with that? Like if UNESCO declare the first tweet a culturally significant artifact, could you be held liable for allowing it to fall into disrepair? And what does the existence of an NFT allow you to do with respect to that bundle fo rights you bought that couldn’t already be done by havin…

The buyer gets to own not the tweet but a "digital certificate of the tweet" which is the actual NFT thing. So what they buy is a certificate although I'm not sure what it certifies.

It certifies two things:

1. That you paid a certain amount for the certificate.

2. That there will never be another certificate for the same thing, from the same brand of certificates (e.g. "Valuables BY CENT").

Pretty much exactly like owning a baseball card, then.

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#554
post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The buyer gets to own not the tweet but a "digital certificate of the tweet" which is the actual NFT thing. So what they buy is a certificate although I'm not sure what it certifies.

It certifies two things: 1. That you paid a certain amount for the certificate. 2. That there will never be another certificate for the same thing, from the same brand of certificates (e.g. "Valuables BY CENT"). Pretty much exactly like owning a baseball card, then.

> it certifies ... that there will never be another certificate for the same thing, from the same brand of certificates (e.g. "Valuables BY CENT").

How many "brand of certificates" are there now, and what is the barrier to entry?

I suspect 1) several and 2) low.

Also, how is "there will never be another certificate for the same thing, from the same brand of certificates" technically enforced?

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#555
"Buyers of NFTs may be blind to the fact that there's no limit on the supply". Sure anyone can make an NFT, but not all of them will be viewed as realistic stores of value. Like baseball cards, you will not print an unlimited copy of rare cards cause they would lose their value, and no creator would sabotage their brand like that. Besides, it costs money to mint a token, so there is a limit related to the artist's economic situation.

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#556
post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you blow up the transaction limit you physically centralize the verification process. This is why you'd see miners gamble with sitting on a solved block and secretly beginning the next search, with a few seconds of head start, before announcing to the network, or skipping the inclusion of any transactions: because fractions of a second make a big difference. Bigger blocks propagate more slowly, and magnify the a…

>>When you blow up the transaction limit you physically centralize the verification process. You could 500X the transaction throughput and running a full node would only require a 25 Mbps internet connection. >>Bigger blocks propagate more slowly, and magnify the advantage of employing those kinds of undesirable behaviors. Miners do not propagate blocks all at once. They use propagation protocols like compact blocks…

You are overlooking the disadvantage of not verifying the prior hash, which you can't do until you can verify hashMerkleRoot, which you can't do until you have collected the entire block. If you skip verification, you open yourself up to bad actors feeding you a bogus header - and you only figure that out after being drip fed a bunch of transactions that don't match the merkle root. Erasure coding doesn't fix that. In any case, proponents of the 'cram everything in the public ledger' method have already advocated 128MB and even completely uncapped block sizes... so the outcome is predictable.

Take a hint from every successful network that has ever networked since ever: hierarchy, extensibility, etc. Demanding that it all be crammed into a homogenous block is so obviously doomed to fail that you should be suspicious of the proponents' motives.

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#558
Should be interesting as soon as Tikectmaster or something offers NFTs to boost sales but with the explicit written agreement that NFTs are non-transferable and any transfer history voids the ticket.

Re: NFTs Are a Dangerous Trap

#559
One major distinction between cards and other physical collectibles is that they come bundled with the implicit protection of the legal system on others making more physical copies (i.e., counterfeiting). So if one owns a rare card, others can see pictures of it, but they cannot make their own physical copy (backed by the legal system and threat of being arrested). This is unlike the NRT / digital side where making identical copies (sans blockchain) is perfectly legal.
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