Yes, and this has, in fact, happened. This link explains the risk, and the workarounds, in a pretty comprehensible way.
Wow. I’d had the vague impression that NFT’s were insane but I had no idea how insane. I’d assumed they evidenced something more concrete than a mere link. That is just nuts.
:: nods ::
No kidding! I thought that maybe, just maybe, they embedded the entire artwork in the blockchain. Yes, that would bloat things up unbelievably, but maybe there could be some kind of two-part system where the artwork would be in an area that doesn’t change much…?
If the NFT record doesn’t even contain a note about the transaction or a description of the artwork, just a bare link, that’s nuts.
Behind the fancy tech they are tulips, they are just like any other appreciating asset with little or no material worth that continue growing in value until they don’t.
Same with pretty much any bubble or pyramid scheme in history, it is all built on sand.
There is a moment at which Dorothy looks behind the curtain, thinks “is that it?” and the magic disappears, the music stops.
Same with Theranos, Juicero etc. There’s no value there beyond the hype and yes, as long as the hype keeps flowing the “value” keeps growing. NFT’s are the ultimate vapourware.
The one-to-one relationship between the NFT and whatever it’s pointing at makes this an easy misconception to fall into. That’s the “non-fungible” part, which distinguishes these tokens from the ones used by so-called cryptocurrencies, where any given unit is identifiably unique but also precisely exchangeable with any other like unit.
That, supposedly, is what gives an NFT its special value. If I have a Bitcoin, it’s the same as any other Bitcoin. But an NFT, now… this NFT isn’t just any NFT, this NFT is the same NFT connected to the ape picture Jimmy Fallon held up on TV, and for which the audience dutifully applauded.
https://stealthoptional.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/PSX_20220126_164305.jpg
And I’m not just saying it’s the same, I can prove it, because blockchain.
(As I mentioned above, there are certainly hypothetical applications for this technology that have concrete functional value in the real world. Assuming a neutrally administered technical infrastructure and reliably persistent repositories exist to support the concept, a transferable, non-falsifiable digital certificate of ownership would serve as a legitimate proxy in an exchange of goods, whether physical or virtual. A gold rush on cartoon primates, however, would not seem to qualify.)
This is a 22 minute video on YouTube from a guy who reviews RPGs. It is also the best ‘explanation’ of NFTs that I know of.
Personally, I call them NFCs as in “No Fucking Chance”.
I can’t think of any, but you did admit all those stories stories about your father serving as a civilian under MacArthur “could have happened.” That led me to conclude you don’t let the truth get in the way of a good anecdote.
Looks like what they’ve actually discovered is the Next Fake Thing (the acronym even works!).
Maybe I’m missing something. But I don’t think what you are saying is relevant to my point. I understand what “non-fungible” means. What I’m astonished about is the tenuousness of the link between an NFT and it’s subject.
Their bet is that one particular NFT network will be the authoritative source of truth. If we all agree to use one specific blockchain, and that whatever’s on the end of the URL is the authoritative copy, then the NFT has value.
It’s sort of like bitcoin. Bitcoin only has value because of how many people are willing to exchange it for fiat currency. For practical purposes, there’s no reason Bitcoin can’t be knocked off its pedestal by Etherum or Dogecoin or any of the thousand other cryptocurrency blockchains. But it tends to be sticky because it was the first one, and the most well-known one, and that’s where most people have accumulated holdings.
So the holders of NFT hope that their NFT network becomes the authoritative source for who “owns” whatever is at the other end of a given URL, and that the URL registry itself also becomes durable and authoritative. If those conditions are met, then the scheme works.
So yes, it is a tenuous link, but it becomes less and less tenuous the more broadly it’s adopted.
I don’t think he’s commenting on the tenuousness of the overall scheme, or more narrowly of the informational framework that defines the NFTs and what they point to. I think what he’s commenting on is the fragility of the assumption that the linked assets themselves will persist. A durable URL registry is not meaningful if a given asset cannot be warranted to reside in perpetuity at its specified address.
And, yes, this is indeed one of the more astonishing aspects of the whole thing.
It’s possible that the storage location may fail for one reason or another, through no conscious fault of any of the parties involved (let’s hope your digital asset wasn’t hosted on Geocities!). At the other end of the scale, it could be a fraudulent transaction, and the seller deliberately removes or switches your digital asset after the sale (or never created any “real” assets in the first place) — hence the sector-specific term rug pull.
Either way, you wind up having purchased, possibly for a whole lot of money, a shortcut file that 404’s when you try to open it.
And before anyone jumps in, yes, there are ostensibly above-board NFT advocates who recognize this as a critical weak link, and who are trying to build redundancy and persistence into the architecture. It’s not like everyone’s dancing on a spider-silk-thin tightrope without being aware of the risk. None of this changes the fundamentally speculative nature of the enterprise, of course.
Neil deGrasse Tyson came up with a 52-minute video yesterday. I’ve not seen it yet but it’s NdT – bound to be a good explanation.
I’d watch that video, but I fear I would still not understand it. And if I can’t understand it, I certainly won’t spend any money on it.
If you already have the real ticket in your hands, what kind of “gift” is the NFT of it? BTW, how much money does it cost to produce an NFT?
[Moderating]
So you’re attacking, not any particular post, because you can’t think of any, but @DrDeth himself, for reasons that have no connection whatsoever to this thread. That goes well beyond what’s allowed. This is an official Warning.
I can’t answer the question of how much it costs to create (though I’m generally concerned about the environmental strain from anything blockchain-related), but I’d view the demand for the Super Bowl NFTs similar to that of collectors looking to collect ticket stubs. I’d imagine the supply would be even lower, as your average game attendee isn’t going to know how to access, and certainly not how to sell, their NFT.
Mark Cuban does NFTs for Mavs games, and people seem to like it. (I don’t know why, but they do.) But I think when that’s normally done, all attendees who request one request from a pool of NFTs, some more rare than others, making some of them much more desireable.
It all gets a giant shrug from me. I first thought the idea of these things was really interesting when proposed as a sports collectible thing, where you could “get” events from last night’s game. Are you a big Gerritt Cole fan, and he pitched a no-hitter? Then buy the NFT, and you have a rare collectible of that moment. That I can somewhat wrap my head around.
But pictures of apes? Nope - I’m out.
NFTs are essentially trivial to produce. You can do it on a home PC pretty easily.
Maintaining an NFT operation will have some ongoing overhead, but nothing that would require a supercomputer or anything like that. The marketing probably accounts for more of the budget.
Using a URL as the encoded string really makes no sense at all. The whole point of a blockchain is that it’s decentralized: There’s no one entity who can take down or otherwise tamper with the system. But a URL does have one entity that maintains that server, and can change that URL to point to anything at all or nothing. The maintainer of the server, then, has complete control over the NFT system. At that point, why bother with the blockchain? Why not just give the owner of the NFT a username and password for an account of some sort on that system? It’d be just like any other online digital good, like equipment or gold in online games.