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NFT misconception: JPEG aren't stored on the Blockchain

erickhun.com

11–20 of 264 posts

Re: NFT misconception: JPEG aren't stored on the Blockchain

#12
post #4

I'd expect at least a hash of the image to be stored on the blockhain..

Yeah. That's the shocking thing: I can understand offloading the raster data storage to various external services, but a hash is practically free to store and provides a kind of verifiability that a mere URL doesn't. Seems like an egregious oversight.

Re: NFT misconception: JPEG aren't stored on the Blockchain

#13
post #4

I'd expect at least a hash of the image to be stored on the blockhain..

NFT is low tech scam. I'm surprised so much money were attracted. Must be very good marketing campaign.

The best scams are usually low tech or even no tech.

Re: NFT misconception: JPEG aren't stored on the Blockchain

#14
post #4

I'd expect at least a hash of the image to be stored on the blockhain..

NFT is low tech scam. I'm surprised so much money were attracted. Must be very good marketing campaign.

Lots of wash trading to bid up prices and create the impression of enthusiasm. Drags in the suckers. Like Logan Paul and his 99.9% loss on a $600,000 investment. He is the biggest fool. [1] But hey, he was in it for the tech/art right? He's still got the weird yellow robot bee thing.

[1] https://twitter.com/coffeebreak_YT/status/145670132936840397...

Re: NFT misconception: JPEG aren't stored on the Blockchain

#15
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, is this not how it works? Seemed like a safe assumption...

Even if it is, you can't really reconstitute the image from the SHA. I mean, unless we just created a new proof of waste algorithm.

You can't rebuild the image from the hash, but you can query various content-addressed stores for the image, potentially letting proof-of-space cryptocurrency systems do double duty as both verifiable resource commitments and repositories of blockchain external data.

Re: NFT misconception: JPEG aren't stored on the Blockchain

#16
post #4

I'd expect at least a hash of the image to be stored on the blockhain..

Yeah. That's the shocking thing: I can understand offloading the raster data storage to various external services, but a hash is practically free to store and provides a kind of verifiability that a mere URL doesn't. Seems like an egregious oversight.

IPFS URL actually contains hash or something like that.

Re: NFT misconception: JPEG aren't stored on the Blockchain

#17
I hate to admit it but I’m still struggling to understand why people would pay so much for NFTs. I feel like I fully understand what they are and why most people want me to believe it has value but I still don’t agree. I’m waiting for my mind to change but it hasn’t happened yet. It’s frustrating because so many people I respect are leaving their high paying jobs to work in web3 startups around NFTs and I feel dumb for not getting it.

Re: NFT misconception: JPEG aren't stored on the Blockchain

#18
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, is this not how it works? Seemed like a safe assumption...

No. The value in the thing is in the key that minted it. Think of it like a signed baseball: easy to replicate, but the original is worthwhile.

Sure. But a hash is so easy to compute and store that there's really no excuse for not including one.

Re: NFT misconception: JPEG aren't stored on the Blockchain

#19
post #10

I'm very surprised that those (the JSON and the picture) are not stored in a decentralised way e.g. IPFS or Swarm. So if I buy an expensive NFT, and the domain goes down, the NFT is now worthless? We should be on the lookout for any of these domains expiring, then we will buy them and upload Rick Astley GIFs

Most NFT projects are in fact stored on IPFS. You can put an IPFS URL in the tokenURI field.

Re: NFT misconception: JPEG aren't stored on the Blockchain

#20
So how exactly is the "gas money" calculated? I was led to believe it was expensive because putting all that data into the blockchain costed a significant amount.

Asking because, wanting to verify whether NFTs were really a scam or scheme instead of just following heated Twitter arguments, I looked into uploading my own NFT. Gas money for a single image was $250--estimated earnings for an NFT are in the low dollars for most people, so it certainly wasn't worth it for me. I told a friend how insane the price was and went back to attempt the process once more a few minutes later to get a screenshot showing him I wasn't lying--gas money for the same image was suddenly over $800.

I can't think of any reasonable way to justify such costs if it's just encoding a few bytes of text and not an actual image, so now I'm doubly suspicious of how these costs are actually calculated. It reminds me of countless other schemes where you put in a bunch of initial cash to "start your own business", then spend the rest of your days desperately trying to find buyers.

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