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Cryptography experts trash NFTs on first day of RSA Conference

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Re: Cryptography experts trash NFTs on first day of RSA Conference

#51

Post by dschnurr »

klodolph wrote: post #49
dschnurr wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people receiving royalties are the artists in these cases – instead of the record companies, instagrams, and etsys of the world. I fail to see how this won't be a net positive for wealth equality when we're shifting the advantage to those who have historically been taken advantage of.

> The people receiving royalties are the artists in these cases... This is just factually incorrect. I don't know why there's so much confusion here... it's the creator of the NFT that controls where the money goes, not the creator of the artwork. I don't know why people think that it's the artist that gets the money--that doesn't make any logical sense--how would a system like that even work?

The creator is almost always the artist. Provenance is what gives NFTs their value. The value of a Beeple NFT minted by a random user is $0.

Re: Cryptography experts trash NFTs on first day of RSA Conference

#52

Post by AlexandrB »

dschnurr wrote: post #38
supernova87a wrote: post #28

I don't mean to distract from the main conversation, but I want to talk about how insidiously evil it is that NFTs can be coded to send the original creator a percentage $ cut off of every subsequent transaction for all time. If that's not hard coding wealth inequality and a new class of asset owners, I don't know what is. This is disturbing, along with the whole thing itself anyway. Imagine if cryptocurrency started…

The people receiving royalties are the artists in these cases – instead of the record companies, instagrams, and etsys of the world. I fail to see how this won't be a net positive for wealth equality when we're shifting the advantage to those who have historically been taken advantage of.

This is not a property of NFTs, but rather of new, unproven technologies. If NFTs "make it big", there will be plenty of middlemen that spring up to "help" artists sell NFTs while owning the IP rights and collecting royalties.

Re: Cryptography experts trash NFTs on first day of RSA Conference

#53

Post by geofft »

ketamine__ wrote: post #31
supernova87a wrote: post #28

I don't mean to distract from the main conversation, but I want to talk about how insidiously evil it is that NFTs can be coded to send the original creator a percentage $ cut off of every subsequent transaction for all time. If that's not hard coding wealth inequality and a new class of asset owners, I don't know what is. This is disturbing, along with the whole thing itself anyway. Imagine if cryptocurrency started…

I thought this comment was a joke at first. What's wrong with creators getting royalties? Is there proof that artists are too wealthy (in general)?

Two things.

First, in the real world, creators stop getting royalties after the item expires and goes into the public domain, and there's a pretty strong view that the time for that is already too long and the beneficiaries of that long period tend to be companies instead of creators. I would say that there is in fact a widespread belief that the heirs of Walt Disney are too wealthy, despite the fact that Walt himself was a creator.

Second, there's no reason to believe this won't lead to the exact sort of mechanisms that plague existing royalties - e.g., a young singer makes a (smart) contract with a recording studio to have the studio count as the "creator" of the work as far as the contract cares, and the singer is just performing work for hire, in exchange for marketing, promotion, initial funding, and connections. A singer who has absolutely no resources but their talent is probably going to say yes to that, because it's better for them in the short term than going it alone, and the odds are against them (not every talented young singer can become famous). But the profits continue to flow to the recording studio for all time.

Re: Cryptography experts trash NFTs on first day of RSA Conference

#54

Post by bitcurious »

supernova87a wrote: post #28

I don't mean to distract from the main conversation, but I want to talk about how insidiously evil it is that NFTs can be coded to send the original creator a percentage $ cut off of every subsequent transaction for all time. If that's not hard coding wealth inequality and a new class of asset owners, I don't know what is. This is disturbing, along with the whole thing itself anyway. Imagine if cryptocurrency started…

>Imagine if cryptocurrency started doing that?

Isn't this essentially what proof of steak is? A tax on all transactions proportional to how much you already own, but disproportionately applied to smaller users.

That last bit is key. Speaking of Ethereum for a second - the largest asset owners will be institutions which can transact off-chain, which means that fees are being payed more often by folks that don't have that kind of scale.

Re: Cryptography experts trash NFTs on first day of RSA Conference

#55

Post by geofft »

dschnurr wrote: post #51
klodolph wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people receiving royalties are the artists in these cases... This is just factually incorrect. I don't know why there's so much confusion here... it's the creator of the NFT that controls where the money goes, not the creator of the artwork. I don't know why people think that it's the artist that gets the money--that doesn't make any logical sense--how would a system like that even work?

The creator is almost always the artist. Provenance is what gives NFTs their value. The value of a Beeple NFT minted by a random user is $0.

The value of a Beeple NFT minted by a random user is exactly what the market chooses to value it as.

If it's minted by an agency that helps creators do marketing, and the agency gets the creator to say "Yes, this is a legitimate NFT created on my behalf by this agency, which has been very helpful to me in understanding NFTs, I don't understand these fancy computer things," why would the value be zero?

(This exact scenario plays out all the time in the real world. People bought "Taylor Swift's" album Fearless, which was authorized by her and contained her actual voice and songwriting and paid profits to her and was in all senses legitimate, and paid well over zero dollars for it. And then over a decade later she tells her fans that she doesn't control it and she's recording her own version of the album actually owned by her.)

Re: Cryptography experts trash NFTs on first day of RSA Conference

#56

Post by newsclues »

thebean11 wrote: post #40
supernova87a wrote: post #28

I don't mean to distract from the main conversation, but I want to talk about how insidiously evil it is that NFTs can be coded to send the original creator a percentage $ cut off of every subsequent transaction for all time. If that's not hard coding wealth inequality and a new class of asset owners, I don't know what is. This is disturbing, along with the whole thing itself anyway. Imagine if cryptocurrency started…

This is about as easy to enforce on the blockchain as it is in meatspace... All you have to do is "wrap" the NFT in a smart contract, then move the smart contract around. The NFT itself is not moving (its owner is the smart contract) so it won't trigger the fee.

Can you embed a smart contract in an NFT so that if you wrap or otherwise sell outside of the initial chain, it’s null and void and the rights revert back to the creator to auction again?

Re: Cryptography experts trash NFTs on first day of RSA Conference

#57

Post by AlexandrB »

dschnurr wrote: post #51
klodolph wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people receiving royalties are the artists in these cases... This is just factually incorrect. I don't know why there's so much confusion here... it's the creator of the NFT that controls where the money goes, not the creator of the artwork. I don't know why people think that it's the artist that gets the money--that doesn't make any logical sense--how would a system like that even work?

The creator is almost always the artist. Provenance is what gives NFTs their value. The value of a Beeple NFT minted by a random user is $0.

What stops a record company from including a clause assigning any NFTs (and/or the revenue therefrom) created by the artist during the contract term to them?

Re: Cryptography experts trash NFTs on first day of RSA Conference

#59

Post by wearywanderer »

bitcurious wrote: post #54
supernova87a wrote: post #28

I don't mean to distract from the main conversation, but I want to talk about how insidiously evil it is that NFTs can be coded to send the original creator a percentage $ cut off of every subsequent transaction for all time. If that's not hard coding wealth inequality and a new class of asset owners, I don't know what is. This is disturbing, along with the whole thing itself anyway. Imagine if cryptocurrency started…

>Imagine if cryptocurrency started doing that? Isn't this essentially what proof of steak is? A tax on all transactions proportional to how much you already own, but disproportionately applied to smaller users. That last bit is key. Speaking of Ethereum for a second - the largest asset owners will be institutions which can transact off-chain, which means that fees are being payed more often by folks that don't have t…

I've always felt that the best way to prove steaks is with forks.

Re: Cryptography experts trash NFTs on first day of RSA Conference

#60

Post by smrq »

bitcurious wrote: post #54
supernova87a wrote: post #28

I don't mean to distract from the main conversation, but I want to talk about how insidiously evil it is that NFTs can be coded to send the original creator a percentage $ cut off of every subsequent transaction for all time. If that's not hard coding wealth inequality and a new class of asset owners, I don't know what is. This is disturbing, along with the whole thing itself anyway. Imagine if cryptocurrency started…

>Imagine if cryptocurrency started doing that? Isn't this essentially what proof of steak is? A tax on all transactions proportional to how much you already own, but disproportionately applied to smaller users. That last bit is key. Speaking of Ethereum for a second - the largest asset owners will be institutions which can transact off-chain, which means that fees are being payed more often by folks that don't have t…

First we had proof of work, and it consumed all the world's processing power. Then we had proof of space, and it consumed all the world's data storage. Then we had proof of steak, and it consumed all the world's food. Thus ended humanity.
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