The older I get, and the more experience I have with the world. I know that rain water caused the split but I am also popping popcorn in my shelter as I wait for Tamamo-no-Mae's first move.
Friend of mine wanted to know what a NFT is and I wrote down a URL and gave it to him on a piece of paper. That's an NFT. You can sell that paper, use it if you want but what ever is at the other end of the URL isn't yours and you can't guarantee it will be there or be consistent between the times you go. But by god you have a piece of paper.
This isn't what an NFT is. To be complete, at least, there should also be a distributed and secure worldwide ledger to which anybody can access that says that you gave this exact piece of paper to your friend on that date.
that. Plus you can add a secret to the paper that allows unlocking the content at the URL, which normal users would not have. That secret can only be decrypted by the owner of the paper.
> Plus you can add a secret to the paper that allows unlocking the content at the URL, which normal users would not have. That secret can only be decrypted by the owner of the paper.
You cannot do this with an NFT unless the server that the NFT is hosted on supports it (and has awareness of the blockchain). Then it becomes centralized to that server. You couldn't do it with IPFS.
you're right. Thanks for pointing that out. The encryption of the secret has to happen of chain, so that the secret is still secure. So typically that would be done by the provider of the NFT and thus is not decentralised. Essentially, this would eliminate the need to put the secret on the chain at all. Only the proof of ownership would be on chain.
You're doing everyone, including us who are against NFTs in general, a huge disservice by explaining it that way, as that's not what NFTs are...
Edit: I should have added my own explanation as it's not as obvious to everyone else what an NFT is. If we continue the analogy with paper, then a NFT is a piece of paper with a unique identifier that cannot be copied. If you have that piece of paper you know that A) No one can have the same piece of paper without having that actual paper and B) no one can fool someone else they have that same paper (based on the ID). NFTs have nothing to do with URLs (although some NFTs do have URLs inside of them), the main point is to have something with a unique ID that is unique within that specific blockchain.
> If we continue the analogy with paper, then a NFT is a piece of paper with a unique identifier that cannot be copied. If you have that piece of paper you know that A) No one can have the same piece of paper without having that actual paper and B) no one can fool someone else they have that same paper (based on the ID).
This is where the entire argument falls apart trivially. The problem is that NFTs are just random pieces of paper containing a pointer. They're not guaranteed to be the only pointer, the content on them can be copied, they're not actually scarce resources, and everyone can (and does) fool everyone else about whether or not they have the same paper and/or the same pointer.
Additionally with NFTs, the pointer is often to some random centralized resource holder/single server in the 'centralized fiat' world of trust, and quite frequently that turns out to be a $5 VPS running apache that someone stops paying the bill for.
> No one can have the same piece of paper without having that actual paper
You seem to have missed what the analogy is: The piece of paper is the blockchain record, the thing that can be exchanged with other people, not the art or whatever at the end of it (hence why a URL on the paper was mentioned).
It's a great explanation for non-technical people.
Misleading explanations are never great. Sure, abstract it a bit to make it easier to understand, yes that makes it great for non-technical people. But misleading them to "prove" your point? Never great.
Anyone with a basic understanding of NFTs will immediately see that you don't understand what you're talking about if you use that explanation, as NFTs have nothing to do with URLs, art or whatever. It's simply a currency with the total supply being 1. Nothing less, nothing more.
Confusing that with the whole "NFT Art" space is just doing everyone a disservice, as there are people who actually understand NFTs, and are against them, but based on their actual capabilities, not some fake thing you've made it.
> It's simply a currency with the total supply being 1. Nothing less, nothing more.
Yes, exactly like that unique scrap of paper, of which there is only 1 in existence. The fact that OP wrote an URL on it is not important, it could have been a sticker, or a coffee mug stain, or even nothing at all. The scrap of paper is guaranteed to be unique since you can never rip out the same piece of paper again, the fringes would be all different
To be more precise, NFT is a blockchain record confirming that you own that piece of paper :)
There was a scam scheme on eBay that if you did not read the item description correctly you would be surprised to discover that you paid $2000 for a picture of the laptop, instead of the laptop itself. NFTs are similar, except the element of surprise is missing. People still buy them, because the word "blockchain" causes their brains to shut down.
How does the original owner confirm they own the thing before it gets logged in the blockchain though? I think that's the hard part. The conversion of ownership record from real life to blockchain.
That is not relevant. NFTs do not include ownership of anything else than the record in the ledger. You don't have any intrinsic copyright or other kind of ownership to the token, or to any linked monkey jpegs, by just having the NFT.
Main falsehood from je_bailey's comment is that NFTs have nothing to do with URLs, and secondly the entire thing is based around uniqueness within blockchains, so important to highlight when you try to explain what NFTs are.
This is untrue in practice. In theory an NFT could have no url associated with it. In reality that’s how NFTs were envisioned and how they are actually implemented.
> the entire thing is based around uniqueness within blockchains, so important to highlight when you try to explain what NFTs are.
That’s right. You have to mention the blockchain so that people turn off their critical thinking. Because if you describe an NFT without techy-sounding buzzwords, people will rightly say “that sounds stupid”.
Because the blockchain is distributed? So It’s more like you are giving your piece of paper to many people around the world who keep it safe for you but can’t change its contents.
The person who owns the URL on the paper can change the contents of that URL. Legally, the paper may be a gift, but I'm now the proud owner of a piece of paper.
I can similarly own a map to the Mona Lisa. Everyone in the world may even agree and attest to that fact! I don't own the Mona Lisa as a result. The Louvre can move it, take it off display, burn down, or do any number of other things.
Hell, Jack "sold" his first Tweet for nearly $3M as an NFT. You don't own it. You can't delete it, you can't do anything with it. Jack could delete it! Twitter could delete it! Twitter could make that URL host a page that says "NFTs are dumb". You own the NFT itself.
> According to “Valuables,” the tweet itself will “continue to live on Twitter,” but the winning bidder would own the NFT, “signed and verified by the creator,” like a virtual autograph.
The "map to the Mona Lisa" is a perfect analogy. And the best part is that we can even create a new blockchain, call it something like "Besthereum" with another map to the exact same work in the real world. You don't even really own the map but a specific representation of the map, unique to the blockchain it's contained in.
On-chain knowledge is the transaction https://etherscan.io/tx/0x798c7060f2e5e0cf2a4d143874be88f404...
and their official address 0xbc4ca0eda7647a8ab7c2061c2e118a18a936f13d which is sufficient for me to tell whether it was minted by them or not. The other one clearly is affiliated with some other address in its transaction.
You know Bored Ape Yacht Club and Phunky Ape Yacht Club exist. How do you know which one owns the copyright to the images? Which one's the original artist, and which one's the fraud?
I am not sure what you are arguing for but obviously there are off-chain parts, too. The point is that once Ape Yacht Club or whoever has publicized their address I can always confirm in the future whether an Ape NFT originated from them and how it was traded after that.
Loosely similarly, if I want to communicate with someone securely they first have to communicate to me their public key but once I have it I can always verify that a message comes from them and send them messages back.
Ownership of (most) NFTs has absolutely nothing to do with ownership of the copyright, making this a red herring. It doesn't matter whether the minter of the NFT owns the JPEG. All that matters is whether someone is willing to pay to acquire the minter's digital autograph (i.e. the NFT). Of course if you are expecting a license or transfer of copyright to accompany the NFT then you'd better do your due diligence regarding whether the seller holds the necessary rights, but that applies equally well to old-fashioned signatures on paper contracts.
> A pair of non-fungible token projects are testing the boundary between plagiarism and parody. Digital marketplace OpenSea has banned the PHAYC and Phunky Ape Yacht Club (or PAYC) collections, both of which are based on the same gimmick: selling NFTs with mirrored but otherwise identical versions of high-priced Bored Ape Yacht Club avatars. Now the dueling projects are selling their apes while dodging bans from other marketplaces, becoming the latest example of how the NFT world handles copied art.
The only thing that determines the real Bored Ape Yacht Club is an off-chain belief that it's the legitimate one.
Hell, they can't even agree on which one is the real fake.
> Somewhat ironically, PAYC and PHAYC have since fought on Twitter over which one is the authentic Bored Ape Yacht Club ripoff, with PAYC’s founder referring to PHAYC as a “cash grab fraud project.” PHAYC charged people to mint its apes, and CoinDesk reports that it took in around 500 ETH (or around $1.8 million) in sales. By contrast, it says PAYC earned around 60 ETH (or roughly $225,000) from its paid sales.
That's an interesting example, but I consider it semantic only. Your example raises the question of authenticity rather than ownership. It it clear as day which wallet the NFT is connected to. The original NFT and the imitating NFT has different places in the blockchain memory. Regarding authenticity, timestamps are visible since the whole blockchain can be audited and see who got there first on all sorts of metrics
Copyright is a matter of “who created it”, not “who slapped it on a blockchain first”. If I send you my new artwork and you put it up on OpenSea before I do, you still aren’t the owner, regardless of the timestamp.
Are you hinting at the fact that we're missing a giant ledger in which the paper is documented as being Really Really The Really Most Real And Authentic Paper? Since that ledger isn't rooted in anything else than a bunch of people's feelings about it, I think it's fine to leave it out of the analogy.
So yeah, NFTs are like the parent comment explains. Plus that ledger that has no actual meaning.
Edit: I'm not underestimating that giant ledger's technical solution for verifying the piece of paper. All I'm saying is that it doesn't fucking matter.
Apparently it matters enough for you to voice your concerns against it? And no, NFTs are not required to have any URLs in them, that's a separate concern, and parents whole argument is NFT === piece of paper with a URL, so how is that accurate?
But again, "it doesn't fucking matter" so no need to reply me, in fact, if you don't care you probably shouldn't, because replying would signal you do actually care.
1. The paper has an authenticated watermark which cannot he forged by any known technology
2. The paper can teleport a shadow copy of itself anywhere in the world: it can be inspected by practically anyone in the world, without the shadow copy being traded as the real thing
Legally speaking, notarization doesn't count for much or provide any ironclad guarantees. For real estate titles what counts is the centralized county registry.
It's a great way to highlight that you don't actually understand NFTs. If you're actually against NFTs (like many of us), then please don't use that explanation, it'll make it look like you don't actually understand NFTs.
Most NFTs are like a title to a house. Like a title to a house, you can:
1. Prove you own it;
2. Sell it to someone.
Unlike the title to a house:
1. The party certifying your ownership is not the government, but the consensus rules of a blockchain;
2. The thing you own is not physical, but digital in nature;
3. Your ownership does not prevent anyone from copying the file itself for their own uses.
Regarding your point that the object you own might not be consistent: because of the cost relative of storing data on a blockchain, the actual digital thing you own isn't usually stored on the blockchain, but a hash of that file (e.g. [1]). Unless hashing is broken, this is cryptographic proof that the object does remain consistent.
Ah but the government will enforce my claim on the house if I’m holding (rightfully) the title. And if someone steals the title, it doesn’t mean they own my house.
You can prove that you own it (the NFT, not something else), which could be used for authentication systems. You could rent/lend it out, could also be used for subscriptions or whatever. Or you could sell it.
Basically, imagine a certificate you have on your computer, except it's publicly known, then imagine use cases based on that.
Yeah, there's another top level thread that helped me understand that a bit better: not all NFTs are art NFTs.
Which is to say that I think the problem is less that NFTs are inherently worthless and more that the crypto community desperately needs to reclaim the brand from the speculators, if there's even anyone else left.
For all the cool applications that there might be for blockchain, the only ones that seem to gain traction are the ones that involve highly speculative investment machines. NFTs have been no different, and it's this tendency that makes many people very uncomfortable with anything involving crypto.
You have to realize that this is not a defense in NFTs as they are being discussed.
The discussion is art NFTs being worthless (or not). Coming in and saying “yeah, but not all NFTs are about art” it’s not helpful. If you think that art NFTs are stupid but the underlying tech has promise, then say that. Don’t defend “NFTs” because that looks like you’re defending the value of the current ones actually being discussed.
Engaging in a semantic argument just muddies the whole issue and looks like you’re defending something you are not.
What can you do with a bank account, a book you wrote, a patent you own, an image you shot? Immaterial objects and intellectual property is not new. And NFTs are not that innovative or special in that regard.
All of those examples are backed by the state, who has the authority and power to investigate, litigate, fine, and arrest those who violate their rules. NFTs don't provide that. There's just the promise that, eventually, people will respect other people's NFT ownership... for some reason.
The laws of the country you live in have answers to those questions. Usually, you are the only person legally allowed to use your bank account. Nobody else is legally allowed to publish your book under their name, etc. There are no laws protecting "ownership" of NFTs
Whether title to a house, or entry ticket to a concert, those give you a practical, real world ability to do something. You can live in the house (or allow someone else to and charge them rent), and the government will defend this right for you. You can do neither things if you don't own the house. (well maybe you can live in it if you pay rent to someone who does) You can attend the concert if you have a ticket.
If you own an NFT, you get no practical real world benefits.
You're taking a lot of flak here, but I think you're basically correct. (Even if cross-game NFTs never become a thing.)
The debate reminds me of when Napster looked, to many, like it would end the sales of pre-recorded music, since music can be copied identically for free. Obviously such predictions turned out to be wrong.
I think they would have turned out to be right if there was no such thing as copyright law. But there is. People were prosecuted, and over time the prosecutions made a difference. They helped it make sense to invest money in creating well-designed, easy-to-use streaming services. And in the end, for most people, it was more convenient and risk-free to get music from such services than to pirate it. It was worth the cost.
Over time, if people spend real money on NFTs, the legal system will evolve to better protect people's purchases. For now, if two people claim to be the creator of a given artwork which is the subject of an NFT, and create two NFTs, only one of them will have the actual copyright. That should provide a basis for legal action.
As I said, I'm not sure cross-game NFTs will ever get past the hype stage. But I have been to a museum where truly beautiful NFT art was on display. I haven't bought any art in many years but I can certainly imagine that my next art purchase could be that kind of NFT. By purchasing it, I am helping the creator in "1000 True Fans"[1] manner, and I am, in the creator's view, which is the only one with any legitimacy when it comes to digital art, the "owner". (Even if I am the second or third purchaser of an NFT, the fact that the original purchaser knew he could sell it to someone like me is part of why he purchased it, so I have helped create the environment where that original purchase could happen.)
While it's true that people can make copies that are identical, people can also make copies of the Mona Lisa that can't be distinguished by anyone but specialists. To the normal person, they would appear to be identical. It isn't what they look like that matters. It's the legitimacy: which is the legitimate Leonardo Da Vinci? It's the one he personally made (and/or was made in his studio by other people under his direction). It has nothing to do with how it looks to the average person.
To one degree or another, these issues of legitimacy and helping the artist will have an affect and give value to NFTs of real art.
I'd also be willing to bet that there will be a long-term market for "collectibles" for the same reason there is for baseball cards. If someone were to make an identical copy of an original Mickey Mantle baseball card, it would have no value. Only the original does, and only because the purchasers believes it is the original, and therefore legitimate, card. The mechanism for NFT legitimacy is different, but there is no reason to assume that that mechanism will not create persistent value over time. It is unclear now how much value it will create. But it would be wrong to just dismiss it at this early stage.
Took me a while to wrap my head around the `baseball card analogy` but I've come to the conclusion that if they can be used to perceptively represent NFT's then pragmatically, the `serial number of the card` (or the object's metadata) is what you own as recorded on the blockchain and not the object itself.
I really encourage you to read EIP-721 and EIP-1155, then think a bit more creatively about the use-cases of non fungible, transferrable data, the possession of which is easily cryptographically verifiable.
You said "non fungible, transferrable data, the possession of which is easily cryptographically verifiable", but NFT advocates talk about ownership a lot.
I can possess all the bored ape JPEGs. So can anyone else in the world who can right-click or screenshot or download a .zip of them.
Yeah, but the ones who have their ownership verified on the blockchain are the owners. I’m not sure what the misunderstanding is. I can save any kind of art from the internet, but I obviously don’t own it unless I purchase the rights to it. NFTs are just a distributed way of managing that purchase and transfer.
> Yeah, but the ones who have their ownership verified on the blockchain are the owners.
Not legally, they aren't. I can take someone else's photo, put it up on OpenSea as a NFT, and it'll go through. I didn't own it. You don't own it. The original photographer still holds every bit of legal ownership, regardless of our possession of JPEG copies of it.
Is it not? If you buy an ugly ape, does the creator actually transfer copyright? If not, you literally don’t own anything more than a piece of metadata. You don’t own the url (because the person who owns the domain does). You don’t own the jpeg (because that’s a nonsense notion). You don’t own the copyright. You literally just own a bit of metadata that references a url.
It's happened though, people have made NFTs of the art of various unaffiliated artists. It might not be the most common case, but it certainly happens.
I haven't actually read the legal documents of NFT creation sites in detail, but given the general trend of digital content contracts, it is very likely that (even were the NFT itself not a copyright violation in the first place, as sibling comment describes) you are not the legal owner of the copyright in that NFT anyways. What you would instead own is no more rights to that NFT than, say, HN has to the copyrighted content I am writing in this textbox, which is something along the lines of:
> a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty free, fully paid up, transferable, sublicensable, perpetual, irrevocable license to copy, display, upload, perform, distribute, store, modify and otherwise use your User Content for any Y Combinator-related purpose in any form, medium or technology now known or later developed
I actually did read a few (those that actually had them), and asked follow up questions in Discord. The view from the teams generally was no transfer of rights to the NFT holder, you have the control of transferring the NFT via smart contract and that is all. The NFT has a relationship with typically a piece of content (image, mp3) but what that relationship isn't actually defined.
What a particular platform does when it sees that relationship is up to them.
If no platform does anything with that data then your NFT does exactly nothing.
> the possession of which is easily cryptographically verifiable
Too bad for NFTs that "possession" is a legal problem, not a technological-one. If a court and government doesn't recognise that cryptographic verification, you're out of luck.
So the problem with AMD and Framework is that the Framework uses Thunderbolt4 as the basis for it's expansion ports. Something that AMD doesn't natively come with.Not to say that it couldn't happen but I'm guessing 12th gen intel before AMD
To add - AMD will have to support it on their mobile processors, so it will be a while. As far as I understand, AMD's current desktop CPUs do not support it, and the support will probably have to start on the desktop.
Are you sure? The adapters are all covered by USB-C and its DP alt mode. Even the storage expansion cards are attached via USB and not PCIe. No Thunderbolt required.
Looks like they will have USB4 though, maybe just no Thunderbolt 4 certification yet? As far as I understand, frame.work is capable of TB3, but just not certified (yet?)
For me the appeal is that when a feature that I don't currently have becomes available it's straight forward for me to upgrade.
When the next iteration of motherboards come out, I won't be buying a new laptop, ideally I will go here https://frame.work/marketplace and just order the one that I want and follow the video guides to install it.
The potential to customize this is huge, larger than any other laptop that I'm familiar with. The ability to self maintain, to fix every piece of the hardware if necessary just makes this thing a win for me.
I don't think it's a paradigm shift. There's always been a desire to have some sort of magical tool or platform that would eliminate the high cost of a developer. The problem that these companies encounter is that these tools are quick to improve the baseline but they come at a cost of making their baseline the same as other peoples baseline. If they want something unique, or compelling, that's above and beyond then they would need custom work and that means some form of development
I think the thing to keep in mind is that this is very specific to the concept of growing meat using a cellular culture. This in no way invalidates other methods of replicating meat.
So I'm more familiar with how Cardano and Polkadot do their POS rather than Ethereums. In Cardano since the entry level requirement to operate a stake pool is much smaller than it is to do something like Bitcoin mining, it creates a larger number of stake pools. There's also a soft limit on the size of the stake pool that encourages people to spread out their commitment so no one pool gets to large.So at least in the existing POS systems it seems to be working quite well. I'm going to be interested to see how it shakes out in Ethereum because they have to commit their funds. Which is in a way a burden.The more you put into the system for staking the less that you can use.
How do they prevent impersonation? There's no way a cryptosystem can prove that two different people actually have two different keys. If I want to pwn Cardano/Polkadot, don't I just need to run a bunch of different staking keys?
Looking at Cardano. There are currently 2,497 staking pools which are staking 72% percent of all Ada that is out there. Which is about 23 billion coins staked. So if you owned 12 billion cardano and set up 188 pools to hold all of it, yes you would control the majority of the network.
Just pay your taxes. Really it isn't that hard. If you've maintained the asset for several years you get a tax break, there are sites out there that are designed to assist with the tracking of crypto currencies. Yes you may be able to bypass all the algorithms and systems that the US has in place to track this stuff but why? Just pay your damn taxes.
Actually it is pretty hard if you, y'know, buy stuff with a cryptocurrency, because every purchase is a taxable event! Also hard if you bought your crypto on a less well known and/or now-defunct exchange like Poloniex because the reports they generate are relatively hard to understand. My CPA couldn't understand the notation as there was no mention of USD and I had to break it down for them.
In comparison, paying taxes on stock gains is pretty easy because the brokerage generates a 1099 with all the calcs done for you.
There is both short term and long term capital gain taxes in the US. For some reason I was thinking you had to hold it for more than one year but apparently it's one. If you hold the asset for longer than a year the tax rate on it is either 0%, 15%, or 20% depending on your tax bracket
Yes, When large amounts of money are deposited into an account there is an automatic notice sent to the government. A One time event shouldn't be an issue however if you have multiple events of large deposits then it's going to trigger algorithms and the government is going to start asking where you got the money from and they'll perform an audit. If you attempt to bypass the system they have systems in place to detect that and will perform an audit. Just pay your taxes
