In the context of art, it is basically a digital certificate of authenticity. More details:
https://mirror.xyz/mattdesl.eth/eUrK8MrRfKFJYVKTwi5F4mCIBJEB...
ELI5: What, really, is an NFT?
21–27 of 27 posts
Re: ELI5: What, really, is an NFT?
#22It is a verifible, public receipt that someone bought something. It cannot be faked and anyone can verify that it happened.
Could you give an example of how this works in the real world? Can I create a hash of a PNG of the Mona Lisa and sell that to the highest bidder, and who owns the Mona Lisa in that case? Can I change a single pixel in the PNG, create another hash and sell it again, over and over? Can I sell it once more as a JPEG or in a different resolution? Can I sell it on multiple blockchains? What happens to my ownership of Mona…
Better to use this tech as digital certificates of authenticity, or records of provenance of digital ownership, rather than a means of tracking physical inventory.
To use a comparison: if you buy a game skin from an app, a record of ‘digital ownership’ is modified in some central database. If you imagine a technological solution to this same problem that doesn’t rely on centralized payment processors and ownership databases, you might end up with something akin to NFTs.
Re: ELI5: What, really, is an NFT?
#23At the risk of downvotes… and you did say ELI5… An NFT is a scam. Designed to extract money from gullible and uninformed people’s pockets. It was designed to be like a digital pass that entitles you as the owner of a digital asset. It could be something as simple as “oh that’s cool let me right click and save image as” or “only someone with this NFT can access this website that leads to a discord server where all the…
While I mostly agree with you, you are describing the NFT art market not the technology itself. At its core, NFT is a technology to create digital scarcity and can be used for non-hype cases such as storing a contract or a wedding certificate. Right now that's not what it's used for, but perhaps in the future it can be a useful technology to store information in niche cases rather than being a modern day gold rush. As someone who has dabbled in NFTs, the current state of the NFT art market repulses me even more than cryptobros.
Re: ELI5: What, really, is an NFT?
#24Digital certificate of "ownership" of something. Could be link to image.
Now this is theoretically transferable, but it might not actually mean any sort of real ownership.
Basically a piece of paper telling that holder of piece of papers "owns" something. Then you can give/sell this piece of paper to someone else and it is "guaranteed" by digital signatures on blockchain...
Re: ELI5: What, really, is an NFT?
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you give an example of how this works in the real world? Can I create a hash of a PNG of the Mona Lisa and sell that to the highest bidder, and who owns the Mona Lisa in that case? Can I change a single pixel in the PNG, create another hash and sell it again, over and over? Can I sell it once more as a JPEG or in a different resolution? Can I sell it on multiple blockchains? What happens to my ownership of Mona…
Better to use this tech as digital certificates of authenticity, or records of provenance of digital ownership, rather than a means of tracking physical inventory. To use a comparison: if you buy a game skin from an app, a record of ‘digital ownership’ is modified in some central database. If you imagine a technological solution to this same problem that doesn’t rely on centralized payment processors and ownership da…
The same concerns seem to apply -- I can change the value of a single pixel in the skin, and sell it again as a new NFT.
Re: ELI5: What, really, is an NFT?
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Better to use this tech as digital certificates of authenticity, or records of provenance of digital ownership, rather than a means of tracking physical inventory. To use a comparison: if you buy a game skin from an app, a record of ‘digital ownership’ is modified in some central database. If you imagine a technological solution to this same problem that doesn’t rely on centralized payment processors and ownership da…
The same concerns seem to apply -- I can change the value of a single pixel in the skin, and sell it again as a new NFT.
In that case, it would be a new NFT, with its own contract address (and hash), and users seeking to collect the original token would not find any interest in a copy. You can test this theory yourself, by minting new CryptoPunks (or whatever) with slightly altered pixels—or even the exact same pixels—and see if anybody values them as highly as the original.
Re: ELI5: What, really, is an NFT?
#27At the risk of downvotes… and you did say ELI5… An NFT is a scam. Designed to extract money from gullible and uninformed people’s pockets. It was designed to be like a digital pass that entitles you as the owner of a digital asset. It could be something as simple as “oh that’s cool let me right click and save image as” or “only someone with this NFT can access this website that leads to a discord server where all the…
While I mostly agree with you, you are describing the NFT art market not the technology itself. At its core, NFT is a technology to create digital scarcity and can be used for non-hype cases such as storing a contract or a wedding certificate. Right now that's not what it's used for, but perhaps in the future it can be a useful technology to store information in niche cases rather than being a modern day gold rush. A…
^ This.
100% (yes the literal 100%) of media regarding NFTs is purely about NFT art and it annoys the shit out of me. The fact that there is free form data (with some generally accepted fields used for consistency), and that this data can be owned and provably traced back to the originator is remarkably powerful Re: the poster's above example of a wedding certificate is a great example.
The most frustrating thing about this tech was the goldrush that happened and the inevitable crash. I view myself as something of a "pragmatic visionary" (yes self-proclaimed) and to see this tech completely abused was both confusing and crushing. I'm on the verge of releasing a platform that, underneath it all, uses NFTs because they have great use-cases, but none of the marketing material mentions it due to the fact that the media have wrecked the public's opinion of NFTs.
If I had to come up with an analogy, I would say that NFT art was akin to the Model-T coming out and the only use was people driving around a track and having a picture taken of them driving around a track. Yes you can do that but you've completely missed the point.