Imagine a digital asset used by a professional gamer in a tournament, you could then auction it for charity and the asset could be used in that game or possibly others. The fact that it's recognized by the game code as a NFT could make it scarce in that game.
GameStop Is Creating a NFT Platform
31–40 of 43 posts
Re: GameStop Is Creating a NFT Platform
#32I've never seen any compelling argument in favor of NFT. Everything points to it being pure hype with no redeeming value whatsoever, and this is no different. To wit, I don't recall reading even a single comment on HN entirely supportive of NFTs, and there's hardly ever any shortage of contrarians on most topics.
The basic idea is that distributed ledgers, tokenization, and smart contracts are enabling new paradigms for what it means to "own" digital property — in such a way that it is provably secure, transparent, and decentralized (i.e. built on distributed trust). The other important aspect is that these systems and their tokens are programmable: "NFT" is just a standard set of functions within a blockchain smart contract,…
The problem I have grokking is the actual practical issue of digital ownership, which is that it is nonsensical.
In this context ownership merely defines who has the right to be the seller in a transaction. As far as I understand this, blockchains don't handle the issue of duplication, where it doesn't matter who has the rights to begin a transaction - anyone can still access the bits.
For something like currency which is entirely defined by its ability to be used in transactions then the application of blockchain to define ownership is obvious. For something like media, where ownership is not just transactions but also access, it isn't obvious to me at all.
In other words, blockchains and smart contracts handle authenticity of a piece of data when used in transactions. That's valuable for data that is defined by its ability to be transactional. It's not necessarily valuable for data that needs to be more than that.
I would also contend that it's not secure by all definitions.
Re: GameStop Is Creating a NFT Platform
#33I've never seen any compelling argument in favor of NFT. Everything points to it being pure hype with no redeeming value whatsoever, and this is no different. To wit, I don't recall reading even a single comment on HN entirely supportive of NFTs, and there's hardly ever any shortage of contrarians on most topics.
NFT's applied to real world things or stuff like video clips does seem kinda silly. You are right, NFT seems geared towards things with no redeeming value whatsoever ... in the real world. Video games have had the concept of tokens for decades and those even have printed on them that they aren't redeemable. That is why NFT and video games are a perfect combination, possibly industry changing. Think of it in terms of…
I can see the business appeal of the prospect of being able to skim off the top of second hand sales while maintaining a thread of DRM enforcement along the way, but it's pretty cynical and at the expense of consumers.
Most other uses, like whether some particular series of bits have been blessed by a particular person and to the benefit of whom, seem to already have been solved by the nonrepudiation of digital signatures.
It appears to me that the distributed and public properties of the block chain are not being used for good here.
Re: GameStop Is Creating a NFT Platform
#34I've never seen any compelling argument in favor of NFT. Everything points to it being pure hype with no redeeming value whatsoever, and this is no different. To wit, I don't recall reading even a single comment on HN entirely supportive of NFTs, and there's hardly ever any shortage of contrarians on most topics.
NFT's applied to real world things or stuff like video clips does seem kinda silly. You are right, NFT seems geared towards things with no redeeming value whatsoever ... in the real world. Video games have had the concept of tokens for decades and those even have printed on them that they aren't redeemable. That is why NFT and video games are a perfect combination, possibly industry changing. Think of it in terms of…
If I own the arcade I can authenticate tokens in amortized constant time with a centralized ledger. It's also private so I don't leak details of my tokens to anyone, including my customers and competitors.
If I have a decentralized ledger I can authenticate tokens in (at least) linear time with the total number of tokens I have ever distributed. The ledger is also public so competing arcades know intimate details of my business. In some cases they might even know which games are most popular. My customers will also know the relative scarcity of tokens and how much they should be valued, potentially limiting my profits.
Why should I use a decentralized ledger for my arcade?
Re: GameStop Is Creating a NFT Platform
#35Imagine a digital asset used by a professional gamer in a tournament, you could then auction it for charity and the asset could be used in that game or possibly others. The fact that it's recognized by the game code as a NFT could make it scarce in that game.
Why does this require NFTs? Couldn't you just put one item into one person's inventory?
Re: GameStop Is Creating a NFT Platform
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
NFT's applied to real world things or stuff like video clips does seem kinda silly. You are right, NFT seems geared towards things with no redeeming value whatsoever ... in the real world. Video games have had the concept of tokens for decades and those even have printed on them that they aren't redeemable. That is why NFT and video games are a perfect combination, possibly industry changing. Think of it in terms of…
If I own the arcade I can authenticate tokens in amortized constant time with a centralized ledger. It's also private so I don't leak details of my tokens to anyone, including my customers and competitors. If I have a decentralized ledger I can authenticate tokens in (at least) linear time with the total number of tokens I have ever distributed. The ledger is also public so competing arcades know intimate details of…
If you are thinking of it as a game store like Steam, then broaden that thought to include in-game collectibles, currencies, character skins, etc. You'd want a public, transparent marketplace for players to buy/sell/trade based on whatever public value people assign to those items.
NFT's provide a mechanism (as I understand it) for royalties to creators. If this is implemented for games, then second-hand sales are entirely possible for a digital game. I don't think that's possible today.
I don't know that centralized/decentralized matters much to gamers, I would imagine most users would be signing into a web site with an account that manages all of that behind the scenes.
Re: GameStop Is Creating a NFT Platform
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I own the arcade I can authenticate tokens in amortized constant time with a centralized ledger. It's also private so I don't leak details of my tokens to anyone, including my customers and competitors. If I have a decentralized ledger I can authenticate tokens in (at least) linear time with the total number of tokens I have ever distributed. The ledger is also public so competing arcades know intimate details of…
If you are thinking of it as a game store like Steam, then broaden that thought to include in-game collectibles, currencies, character skins, etc. You'd want a public, transparent marketplace for players to buy/sell/trade based on whatever public value people assign to those items. NFT's provide a mechanism (as I understand it) for royalties to creators. If this is implemented for games, then second-hand sales are en…
> NFT's provide a mechanism (as I understand it) for royalties to creators. If this is implemented for games, then second-hand sales are entirely possible for a digital game. I don't think that's possible today.
There's nothing preventing this today, and nothing NFTs solve that would force those features to be supported. It can be done with a centralized ledger (a database hosted by the marketplace implementer, like Steam). I don't see the incentives for the marketplace platform to implement itself in terms of NFTs.
However, I could see game developers and gamers have uses for NFTs using a decentralized ledger to cut out the marketplace vendors from the transactions (or requiring transactions take place only on their systems).
Re: GameStop Is Creating a NFT Platform
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
The basic idea is that distributed ledgers, tokenization, and smart contracts are enabling new paradigms for what it means to "own" digital property — in such a way that it is provably secure, transparent, and decentralized (i.e. built on distributed trust). The other important aspect is that these systems and their tokens are programmable: "NFT" is just a standard set of functions within a blockchain smart contract,…
The problem I have grokking is the actual practical issue of digital ownership, which is that it is nonsensical. In this context ownership merely defines who has the right to be the seller in a transaction. As far as I understand this, blockchains don't handle the issue of duplication, where it doesn't matter who has the rights to begin a transaction - anyone can still access the bits. For something like currency whi…
In the context of blockchain tokens, “digital ownership” is equally as nonsensical as owning a fine art print with ink and a pencil signature on it. These artefacts, and the ideas of ownership around them, are social constructs.
The mental shift that most struggle with, is that the NFT ownership is not owning the digital image/file/media/bits (which can be copied on any machine, “Right click save as”). It’s probably closer to purchasing conceptual art (see Sol LeWitt), or similar to owning a certificate of authenticity handed to you by the artist. Or, perhaps somewhat analogous to “owning” digital property such as a domain name.
I agree this tech does not magically make everything more secure. But, for example, you can query the “current owner” of a million dollar CryptoPunk - as long as the blockchain survives, the database record will be secure & immutable, and cannot be changed except from the token holder’s own wallet address.
Reading the Solidity code & querying the contract myself helped me understand the value here is not in the digital media file; it’s in the ledger record (or state).
https://etherscan.io/address/0xb47e3cd837ddf8e4c57f05d70ab86...
Re: GameStop Is Creating a NFT Platform
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem I have grokking is the actual practical issue of digital ownership, which is that it is nonsensical. In this context ownership merely defines who has the right to be the seller in a transaction. As far as I understand this, blockchains don't handle the issue of duplication, where it doesn't matter who has the rights to begin a transaction - anyone can still access the bits. For something like currency whi…
In the context of blockchain tokens, “digital ownership” is equally as nonsensical as owning a fine art print with ink and a pencil signature on it. These artefacts, and the ideas of ownership around them, are social constructs. The mental shift that most struggle with, is that the NFT ownership is not owning the digital image/file/media/bits (which can be copied on any machine, “Right click save as”). It’s probably…
I think you miss the forest for the trees in my comment, which is attacking the semantics of "ownership" of a digital asset, which in blockchains corresponds to "the ability to give ownership to someone else" - or the only kind of ownership that a blockchain provides is the ability for one person to transfer the ownership.
For some assets like currency this is sufficient - currency is only valuable by virtue of the fact it can be transferred.
For art it is not sufficient, since ownership must also cover the ability to be transferred and the ability to view the artwork.
While all of it is a social construct, the semantics of those constructs are very different. My argument here is that blockchains and smart contracts are not sufficient to represent ownership beyond its transfer, which makes it useless as a mechanism to define ownership for assets that need to be more than transferred.
Re: GameStop Is Creating a NFT Platform
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the context of blockchain tokens, “digital ownership” is equally as nonsensical as owning a fine art print with ink and a pencil signature on it. These artefacts, and the ideas of ownership around them, are social constructs. The mental shift that most struggle with, is that the NFT ownership is not owning the digital image/file/media/bits (which can be copied on any machine, “Right click save as”). It’s probably…
I think you miss the forest for the trees in my comment, which is attacking the semantics of "ownership" of a digital asset, which in blockchains corresponds to "the ability to give ownership to someone else" - or the only kind of ownership that a blockchain provides is the ability for one person to transfer the ownership. For some assets like currency this is sufficient - currency is only valuable by virtue of the f…
Perhaps this is a narrow view of ownership that will be expanded by NFTs (or, perhaps not - let’s see in a couple years).
I don’t see it all that different than purchasing and therefore owning a conceptual Sol LeWitt artwork, ie: a few written instructions on a scrap of paper, that (eg: if it is lost) can be simply re-written to restore the work.
Your requirements (ability to transfer and view an artwork) are met by many on-chain projects, eg: see Autoglyphs.