What is an NFT?

Factual Questions
62

Downstairs I have a painting. It’s a pretty nice piece of paper with pencil, ink, and watercolour on it. There is only the one. Even if I try to make another, it will be different.

I scanned it. Now I have an image. I could print copies and make a limited number of signed and numbered copies. I’d have to be trusted to not be able to print any more though.

I was hoping that I could do the same with NFTs.

I was hoping that an NFT would be a receipt with at least the following information:

  • What item was referenced (Name, hash, and location of item)
  • Who sold it
  • Who bought it
  • When the sale took place
  • The selling price

…and that’s about the minimum I would expect to find logged in the public ledger.

I was thinking that, even if the artwork itself couldn’t be in the ledger, there would be a way to reference or provide a copy of the receipt and package it with the artwork file, for example in a download or on a USB key.

But the location of the file strikes me as exactly the wrong piece of information to hash.

I’m wondering whether the answer might be to make a two-way link between the receipt and the file? The receipt has a hash of the file, but likewise the file has a hash of the receipt? That way location is irrelevant; both items might have a unique creation time stamp in them for example, that would lead to a unique hash.

Doesn’t solve the bit-for-bit copying problem though. I guess it doesn’t matter if the receipt gets copied, but the artwork?

I am somehow reminded of the chests in Minecraft that link to the “End” part of the game world… once you have one in the End, you can make one in the regular world, and opening either one reveals the same contents. You can make as many of them as you want, and they all contain the same contents.

These chests become a handy way to move things around the game world: just put the item into a chest at one location, and you can remove it at another. The chests are all the same chest inside.

Maybe we need something of the same for NFTs? Make as many copies as you want, but what happens to one will happen to all. That might open owners up to blackmail though: “Give me <valuables>, or I’ll destroy my copy, and therefore your copy, of your painting!”

63

They could, but this would be similar to Stephen King selling you the copyright to his latest novel just because you bought a unique copy that he signed and labeled as one of one. He probably isn’t going to do that.

64

Or like those morons who bought a copy of Dune a few weeks and thought they then owned the copyright. The crypto crowd have a tough time with this, it seems.

65

Yeah. It seems like the question whose answer is difficult to understand (at least for me) is not “what is an NFT?” but rather “why do some people place such a high value on NFTs?”

66

That is an answer to my first para but not my second.

Also, while selling copyright outright would be weird for Stephen King, that is because he’s Stephen King.

Less famous artists sell copyright in a work outright all the time.

67

I mean, maybe it’s satire? Like, really they paid so much because they thought, speculatively, it might just command an even higher value some day, and they’re just cracking wise (perhaps even making a jab at the NFT craze) in light of their successful purchase?

68

God forbid I should stick up for a bunch of cryptobros, but this Dune thing isn’t what it sounds like. That book isn’t a copy of the novel; it’s a collection of storyboards and pre-production artwork that Alejandro Jodorowsky assembled to pitch his Dune film. The buyers want to make the book widely available, and are aware that they’ll have to acquire the rights to do that. That will be difficult, certainly, but not impossible. This Buzzfeed article explains the situation a bit better:

I’m not sure what they mean about producing an animated series; I’m guessing they’re imagining an animated realization of Jodorowsky’s storyboards. I’m highly skeptical that that will work out. But getting that book published—that’s plausible.

69

Eh, might be difficult.

From the article:

To execute his vision, Jodorowsky assembled a phalanx of celebrated artists, visual effects experts, illustrators, and designers.

If a good number of them worked on the storyboards in the book, without any provision for republishing rights, you’d have to track them all down and get them to agree to reproduce their work. Some of them may have died, and possibly no one knows who holds their rights anymore.

They probably should have talked to an IP lawyer (ETA: note, I am not an IP lawyer) before putting $3 million down on this book.

70

Sounds like it’s a physical script. The article doesn’t make any mention of what NFTs have to do with the script in question. What the article does mention is that having a copy of Jodorowsky’s storyboards doesn’t give them copyright. It does go into what their plan is, but I see no mention of NFTs, and don’t see how they figure into it.

71

If you read to the end of the article they apparently raised $12M in a crypto equivalent of a GoFundMe for voting rights in what to do next. Doesn’t sound so stupid.

72

It doesn’t have anything to do with NFTs. I think it was cited in this thread as an example of “people with too much money buying something and thinking they also bought the IP.” But that’s not what happened here.

73

I was gonna invest in an NFT…

But, somehow it became a NSW…

She was a LGBQT…

I flew home in a B767…

I got hungry…

Had a BLT.

Sorry if, “TMI”

-_-

74

It’s NFT-related because the buyer is a DAO, a “Decentralized Autonomous Organization”. They are collectives organized through smart contracts, which are NFTs. Imagine if someone made a kickstarter for buying this art book, with the plan of the kickstarter being:

  1. Buy book
  2. ???
  3. Profit

Sorry! Step two is actually “Figure out copyright so we can monetize creating a better DUNE!!11!1!!”

Only instead of it being a kickstarter it’s a bunch of NFT bros buying “LEt’S bUY duNE” tokens.

75

Nope. It has everything to do with NFTs. Here are their first two tweets from just before the auction.

“Let’s buy Dune”
https://twitter.com/TheSpiceDAO/status/1461377125676732421

"LIBERATING DUNE

[yada, yada, yada]

dune[dot]foundation"
(The dune[dot]foundation link goes to a website that is still (or once more) under construction.
https://twitter.com/TheSpiceDAO/status/1461743312990265351

According to the Wayback machine the page did used to have content and it was updated multiple times in November, December and January. When those tweets went out the page started out with their goal, summarized as:

They do deserve all the scorn they are getting.

76

I tried to look into what the Spice DAO is doing now, and though I’m not completely sure there isn’t a new and separate scam going on, since the original twitter is still there and active, it appears they’ve stuck the book in storage and are rebranding as “SciFi - finance” with a similar, but broader business plan:

  1. Invest
  2. ???SciFi???
  3. Profits
77

There’s an NFT scheme (maybe more than one) related to properties and real estate - that is, you can buy the NFT for a house - not necessarily the house you live in (in fact most likely not) - and you’re not buying it from the person who lives in the house, but from whoever manufactured the NFT.
I can’t help thinking that some of the people buying these are going to just assume it gives them some rights regarding the physical property that it relates to, and that they’ll turn up there to try to exercise those perceived rights.

78

PvP weighs in.

http://pvponline.com/comic/2022-02-2

79

And, indeed, already had, back in Post #11…

80

That’ll teach me to scan a thread at work, where various blockages occur.

81

Cracked on YouTube has been making content again and Roger Horton is back: