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NFT misconception: JPEG aren't stored on the Blockchain

erickhun.com

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

#51

Post by omgbear »

cloogshicer wrote: post #45
todd3834 wrote: post #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 f…

The analogy that helped me understand it (even though I would still not buy one myself and think the hype is way over the top): Think of a booth at Comic Con, where an artist hands out signed copies of their comic books. The comic book itself is nothing special, but the signature is. But there is a problem: if you ever want to sell the signed comic book, how do you prove it's a real signature? NFTs solve that problem…

How does it solve the problem? You still have to trust the physical object I hand over is the real signed copy.

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

#52

Post by mastazi »

meheleventyone wrote: post #41
mastazi wrote: 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

IPFS doesn’t guarantee safety either, it’s still possible for the link to rot and no longer be accessible.

Oh of course, but at least it is decentralised

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

#53

Post by DougBTX »

mastazi wrote: 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

> So if I buy an expensive NFT, and the domain goes down, the NFT is now worthless?

Well, that’s a question and a half. If its intrinsic value dropped to zero, would that be a change in value?

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

#54

Post by iamwil »

This isn't the whole story. Some NFTs are written to the blockchain.

Avastars https://avastars.io/ is an NFT collection that's represented by an SVG. The SVGs are all written on-chain, back when it was cheaper to do so. https://nft.substack.com/p/the-art-of-avastars

The original NFT, Cryptopunks is also written on-chain now. (It wasn't originally). https://www.larvalabs.com/blog/2021-8-18-18-0/on-chain-crypt...

One of the oldest NFTs, MoonCatRescue https://mooncatrescue.com/ writes an encoded version of the image onchain, and uses a published function to regenerate the image. The MD5 hash of the algorithm is written onchain so you know you're using the right one. https://github.com/ponderware/mooncatparser/blob/master/moon...

For other NFT projects that can't use these techniques, they use decentralized storage like IPFS and ARWeave.

You can check what technique is used with this tool for any NFT project on ETH chain: https://checkmynft.com/

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

#56

Post by mastazi »

himlion wrote: post #19
mastazi wrote: 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.

Oh yeah, I saw NFTs with IPFS URLs before, the reason why I'm surprised is that I thought all of them were using some form of decentralised storage.

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

#57

Post by TheDong »

hoten wrote: post #5
m0sa wrote: post #4

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

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

It does not contain a hash, and the image may vary over time or based on the requesting server.

See Moxie's tweet thread showing this experimentally: https://twitter.com/moxie/status/1448066579611234305

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

#58

Post by cloogshicer »

omgbear wrote: post #51
cloogshicer wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy that helped me understand it (even though I would still not buy one myself and think the hype is way over the top): Think of a booth at Comic Con, where an artist hands out signed copies of their comic books. The comic book itself is nothing special, but the signature is. But there is a problem: if you ever want to sell the signed comic book, how do you prove it's a real signature? NFTs solve that problem…

How does it solve the problem? You still have to trust the physical object I hand over is the real signed copy.

Sorry, I meant it solves the problem in digital space.

But even in offline space, the artist or seller could transfer an NFT to your account. You could then verify its authenticity (or even before the transfer).

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

#59

Post by mrtksn »

todd3834 wrote: post #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 f…

Like any other coins, it's simply a note useful to figure out who owns what within the framework of the community.

NFT's connection to art is just a way to put a face on new coins. Instead of creating a sum of a coin brand and trade those(HN coin with total of 100K coins), you create a new coin brand each time(The most upvoted post, the post that made something famous etc.) and trade those with each other.

It looks like a solution to the problem of early adopters having all the wealth. BTC up %10 or even %100 doesn't mean much, the crypto wealth was created by investments having %1,000,000 returns. Memecoins, NFT etc. serve the purpose of being able to bet like it's the early days of the BTC.

The misconception of "selling JPG's for millions" appears to be as a result of thinking with the pre-blockchain mental models. I know a few people trading and chasing NFT's and none of them are into the art part, they are into the trade part and they are trying to buy NFTs that they expect to sell for a better price later. Their criteria for buying NFTs revolve around things like size of the community interested in it, promoters having the blue badge on Twitter, the age group etc.

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

#60

Post by vbezhenar »

can16358p wrote: post #48
vbezhenar wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The idea of NFT is not scam, but the current scene is more like it. Not exactly like scam but more like a super-hyped balloon.

I'd expect better technical foundation to sell something so expensive. Like guaranteed formats, guarantees for storing hashes, unique guarantees, some kind of image perceptual hash, some kind of P2P distributed storage for data itself. So even non-technical buyer can be sure that goods he bought are protected. Right now you need to ensure that NFT data is stored on IPFS, you need to ensure that IPFS data including that JSON file will not disappear, you need to check blockchain to prevent multiple sells (and you can't prevent someone to sell dupes in the future).

Right now NFT seems like few bytes pretending to be some kind of URL and that's about it.

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