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

NFT misconception: JPEG aren't stored on the Blockchain

erickhun.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 264 posts

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

#181

Post by a_f »

cloudking wrote: post #73
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…

Think about collectables in the real world, and imagine how they could possibly work in the digital world. For example, people collect trading cards for various sports, and there is 1 owner per card who can trade/sell the card to others. How would you facilitate this idea in the digital world? Well you can't use a regular database, because it's easy for it to be hacked/shutdown, and if it's run by a third-party then…

Steam manages to have digital trading cards without blockchains. And I'm pretty sure pokemon and magic the gathering do too, although I am less familiar with them. Whilst there is definitely a security risk with high value digital goods, I'm not sure that it is solved by the blockchain.

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

#182

Post by a_f »

meheleventyone wrote: post #105
sanmon3186 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May be a dumb question but how can we certify that the same asset doesn’t exist as two or more NFTs on different block chains. There are tons of them and each can have its own monalisa.

You can’t even stop copies on the same chain AFAIK. It’s decentralised after all.

I wonder if you could somehow flood the site with copies of the high value NFT images to drop the value?

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

#183

Post by robertlagrant »

can16358p wrote: post #50
robertlagrant wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's an encrypted thing pointing to a URL which has a JSON file in it that contains a URL of an image.

It's not even encrypted.

Yes. You're right. I mean it's a thing signed on the blockchain that points at a URL that has a JSON file that points to another URL.

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

#184

Post by feketegy »

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…

NFTs are not about the asset itself.

1. Ownership of the "original" - why do you pay so much for an original painting when you can buy cheap/free knockoffs?

2. Flexing - look at me I bought an expensive NFT, look at me I own this and this NFT (just like sports cards, pokemon cards, etc.)

3. Money laundering - cleaning dirty money through NFTs.

4. Legit investment / value store - if NFTs picks up more and more (see Reddit, Twitter implementing NFTs), it's a legitimate investment strategy, just like BTC or ETH

5. Hype and FOMO - why do people buy Supreme branded products? Why are lines at Apple stores when a new iPhone is released?

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

#185

Post by meheleventyone »

a_f wrote: post #182
meheleventyone wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t even stop copies on the same chain AFAIK. It’s decentralised after all.

I wonder if you could somehow flood the site with copies of the high value NFT images to drop the value?

The markets right now are centralized platforms so you'll probably just get banned instead.

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

#186

Post by newswasboring »

koonsolo wrote: post #171
yokoprime wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With an NFT you own a token with a link to a resource, but the perception is that you own an actual artwork. Think is, the artwork (e.g. a jpg) can be copied an infinite amount of times. So the baseball card analogy falls short, at least as far as the posession of an actual item.

The baseball card also doesn't give you ownership of the baseball player, or over the photograph or stats of that player. You can copy the photograph and stats as much as you want (the player not so much ;)), but the card still stays the card. So conceptually: the NFT doesn't refer to the baseball card, it is the baseball card. Baseball card refers to something real, but doesn't take ownership of that thing. NFT refe…

I think I might be close to getting it. But with a baseball card, I control the baseball card. Right? With the NFT, I have no control over the resource linked to from the NFT. If that server goes away, doesn't the thing that provided NFTs its value also go away? Its like if someone scratched off the photo from my baseball card, doesn't that baseball card become valueless at that point?

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

#187

Post by iamwil »

sanmon3186 wrote: post #87
iamwil wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's best to think of NFTs as deeds to the art (or certificate of authenticity), rather than the art itself. I wrote this a little while back, and it might help you. https://interjectedfuture.com/nfts-unbundle-ownership-from-e... If NFTs as deed to art isn't convincing for you, check out ENS. https://ens.domains/ It's a name registrar that's a smart contract. Each ENS domain name is an NFT.

May be a dumb question but how can we certify that the same asset doesn’t exist as two or more NFTs on different block chains. There are tons of them and each can have its own monalisa.

It's a good question. In practice, a project will publish the official contract address and the chain on their web page.

Hence, it becomes a schelling point for users. It assumes that the project owners are in control of their servers and DNS. For users, there is then just one official contract, regardless of how many others are published and on different chains.

As an aside, there is ENS, which people are starting to use to say they own a DNS domain https://docs.ens.domains/dns-registrar-guide. ENS itself is an NFT, so it's turtles all the way down.

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

#188

Post by iamwil »

b3n wrote: post #95
iamwil wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's best to think of NFTs as deeds to the art (or certificate of authenticity), rather than the art itself. I wrote this a little while back, and it might help you. https://interjectedfuture.com/nfts-unbundle-ownership-from-e... If NFTs as deed to art isn't convincing for you, check out ENS. https://ens.domains/ It's a name registrar that's a smart contract. Each ENS domain name is an NFT.

> Each ENS domain name is an NFT. Wasn't Namecoin solving the same problem years before Ethereum existed? What makes ENS/NFTs novel?

I only know a cursory amount about Namecoin. That it was built on Bitcoin, but somehow failed. ENS is actually working, and recently launched their DAO for governance.

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

#189

Post by koonsolo »

newswasboring wrote: post #186
koonsolo wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The baseball card also doesn't give you ownership of the baseball player, or over the photograph or stats of that player. You can copy the photograph and stats as much as you want (the player not so much ;)), but the card still stays the card. So conceptually: the NFT doesn't refer to the baseball card, it is the baseball card. Baseball card refers to something real, but doesn't take ownership of that thing. NFT refe…

I think I might be close to getting it. But with a baseball card, I control the baseball card. Right? With the NFT, I have no control over the resource linked to from the NFT. If that server goes away, doesn't the thing that provided NFTs its value also go away? Its like if someone scratched off the photo from my baseball card, doesn't that baseball card become valueless at that point?

NFT and baseball cards are both pointers: they point to something you don't control. You control the pointer, not the thing they point to.

So if we can agree that the card has value because "it's about Honus Wagner", and not really about the picture on the card, then NFT's and those cards are very similar.

But on the other hand, you could indeed claim that the card has value because of the picture itself.

But I still feel the picture on the card is really to act as a pointer, and not about providing value in itself. Because I would think that in that case, a real picture, or a bigger picture, or the original photographic film would be worth more.

So in the end, the baseball card also doesn't become valueless when the player dies.

That's just how I look at it.

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

#190

Post by iamwil »

exclipy wrote: post #103
iamwil wrote: post #54

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 o…

Did you read any of that code? I looked at mooncatparser and it just hardcodes all possible 2-bit art as a big string array constant at the top of the JS file. Definitely not "on the blockchain". The part that's stored on the blockchain is the index into the big string array.

Good job reading the code! It's as you should do when looking at a project.

Is there a way where the image can be replaced with another based on the scheme? I didn't see any, which achieves the same result as putting the image on-chain.

Post reply on HN