Your example is one of a physical good. Of course you don't need an NFT to display a card physically. But what if you want to display it digitally? Your best option at this case is to take a photo, upload it to the web, then the consuming websites can hire people to scrutinize a bunch of grainy vaccination card photos from their users. Meh.
On the blockchain, you'd have an NFT representation of your card, and its origin (i.e. which authority gave it to you) could be easily programmatically tracked.
Obviously, vaccination cards aren't the best example, because COVID-19 is a real-world virus, not a computer virus, so it's doubtful that digital applications will care much about your vaccination card. But you get the idea, hopefully.
> Or, you could give HN your reddit username and HN could query the Reddit API if you’re a moderator…
This is the N × M problem.
> …and by doing the API requests could find out if that privilege is still current and if those subreddit’s stats match HNs criteria for “trust”. Time and trust seem rather relevant to me. Would you want reddit “moderators” like u/violentacrez in perpetuity have privileges on HN and other forums?
We solve this in the real world by putting expiration dates on licenses and badges. Is that perfect? No. But the benefit of portable certifications dwarfs the costs of the occasional expired or revoked cert.
In addition, NFTs are just code. You could easily include a URL with each NFT, which would point to some endpoint that responds with "revoked" or "expired" or "active". Best of both worlds.
> In a way individual homepages/profiles and a standardised API solve the N×M problem of APIs and could solve as a digital strongbox for your use cases of common information and other acquired signed trinkets.
Sure, that could work. But that standardized API does not exist, or if it does, it's clearly not being adopted, so it's a moot point. Where is the Indie Web in terms of adoption?
IMO HNers often focus too much on the merits of a particular technology, and not enough on the adoption. Often it's the case that worse technologies win, because they enjoy network effects that allow them to grow quickly and then maintain their lead. Again, look at HTML, CSS, and JavaScript -- hardly the best tools to build the web on, but that's what we've got, regardless of the fact that other tools "could" solve the problem better.
You're also neglecting the fact that blockchains are decentralized, but the web is not. The web is based on renting. Renting hosting from some other company, renting space in some company's database, etc. It's fine for today of course, we all do this and it works well.
But the blockchain and NFTs are about improving digital property, and one major improvement is moving from rental to ownership, as I pointed out in my original comment. No company can delete your "backpack" of NFTs, or shut you down because you're a sex worker and they think that's immoral, or tell you who you can and can't sell your items to. Sure, the authorities can try to track you down and punish you after the fact, but that's how things work in the real world, and getting the digital world to that point is the goal here.
For various reasons, this is catching on with NFTs in a big way that it didn't and won't with the Indie Web and other efforts. Adoption matters.
> Sure, that could work. But that standardized API does not exist, or if it does, it's clearly not being adopted, so it's a moot point. Where is the Indie Web in terms of adoption?
The same argument could simply made forward: the idealistic hopes of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 of an distributed, interoperable web did not materialise because walled gardens arose which then embraced and extended™ and then sabotaged the open web. Somehow I think Zuckerberg will not build his metaverse on a digital wallet which enables his users to possible leave his walled garden.
Au contraire, Meta already announced that they'll be supporting NFTs, and so has Twitter.
Meta wants to build a metaverse, a goal which has no chance of success if they try to wall it off and prevent portability of data and information. If they see the metaverse and decentralized portable goods as an inevitability in the evolution of the web, then their best bet is to play along and find new ways to capture value instead of hoping the old ways will work.
I'd compare it to the NYTimes reinventing itself 10 years ago. I'm sure they would've preferred the old world of print media dominance, but the writing was on the wall, and they made bold steps to go fully digital, hire a tech team, and lead the way on paid media subscriptions instead of continuing to rely on print ads and physical distribution.
Also, in most earlier versions of the web, I'd say embrace and extend failed. Incumbents were either disrupted or they adapted. The biggest internet giants today are examples of new disruptors who supplanted incumbents, or the incumbents who adapted. Assuming web3 is a Thing, the same should happen. Some incumbents will die, some incumbents will adapt, and some new players will supplant incumbents. Looks like Meta and Microsoft are attempting to adapt very quickly.
QR codes aren't digital, they're physical. The purpose of a QR code is for physical entities (scanners, cell phone cameras) to be able to read digital information. Compare to an NFT, whose purpose is for digital entities (apps/websites/games) to read digital information.
The goal here is to make your online data portable, so you can take it with you as if you're wearing a backpack. What that looks like in practice is, when you show up to an app/website/game, to tell them the address of your backpack + proof you own it. A QR code could not accomplish this.
How's that any different? I can print out a QR code with the NFT info as well and make it "physical". The vaccination certificate is a digital code along with your details to "proof that you own it". The DB is even distributed among EU member states so the code points to the "backpack" (database) of the state where you got your shot
I guess I don't understand your point. Are you trying to say that QR codes are a replacement for NFTs? Because I can list dozens of things that NFTs can do that QR either can't do, or would be much clunkier to do.
"Your example is one of a physical good. Of course you don't need an NFT to display a card physically. But what if you want to display it digitally? Your best option at this case is to take a photo, upload it to the web, then the consuming websites can hire people to scrutinize a bunch of grainy vaccination card photos from their users. Meh.
On the blockchain, you'd have an NFT representation of your card, and its origin (i.e. which authority gave it to you) could be easily programmatically tracked."
I'm saying we already have all of that and more without having to complicate it with an NFT that doesn't add anything.
The QR code does not get you everything an NFT gets you and more. It gets you significantly less.
NFTs are stored on blockchains, which are distributed databases, which anyone can read from. Those serve as public APIs, basically. That means anyone can incorporate NFTs into their apps in whatever creative and innovative ways they want to. And since these blockchains are digital, NFTs can easily be accessed, browsed, filtered, and searched. Again, not so with QR codes.
For example, let's say there's a sporting event and the league grants complementary NFTs to fans who buy a ticket. And let's say this particular event goes down in history as being a legendary game. Everyone will now have blockchain-based proof that they were a ticket holder, in NFT form. In fact, anybody can look and see who all the ticket holders were and take action based on that. For example, the league could throw a celebratory 10th anniversary party only original ticket holders are able to attend, or send a memento to everyone who attended, or those tickets could become collectors' items that holders display or sell.
This isn't going to happen with real-world tickets or QR codes, unless every organization that issues them feels like building their own database of people it distributes QR codes to, and making it a publicly-accessible via API. Even then, that would still be worse, because developers would have to find the proprietary API for every distributor of QE codes and then learn how to connect to it. One API > n APIs.
And even then, those databases would lack functionality, because the holders of the tickets wouldn't have control over the data. If the original maintainers disappear and the database is deleted, everyone loses their data. And they can't exactly sell or transfer their data, since they don't own the database row it lives in, unlike with the blockchain.
Your example is one of a physical good. Of course you don't need an NFT to display a card physically. But what if you want to display it digitally? Your best option at this case is to take a photo, upload it to the web, then the consuming websites can hire people to scrutinize a bunch of grainy vaccination card photos from their users. Meh.
On the blockchain, you'd have an NFT representation of your card, and its origin (i.e. which authority gave it to you) could be easily programmatically tracked.
Obviously, vaccination cards aren't the best example, because COVID-19 is a real-world virus, not a computer virus, so it's doubtful that digital applications will care much about your vaccination card. But you get the idea, hopefully.
> Or, you could give HN your reddit username and HN could query the Reddit API if you’re a moderator…
This is the N × M problem.
> …and by doing the API requests could find out if that privilege is still current and if those subreddit’s stats match HNs criteria for “trust”. Time and trust seem rather relevant to me. Would you want reddit “moderators” like u/violentacrez in perpetuity have privileges on HN and other forums?
We solve this in the real world by putting expiration dates on licenses and badges. Is that perfect? No. But the benefit of portable certifications dwarfs the costs of the occasional expired or revoked cert.
In addition, NFTs are just code. You could easily include a URL with each NFT, which would point to some endpoint that responds with "revoked" or "expired" or "active". Best of both worlds.
> In a way individual homepages/profiles and a standardised API solve the N×M problem of APIs and could solve as a digital strongbox for your use cases of common information and other acquired signed trinkets.
Sure, that could work. But that standardized API does not exist, or if it does, it's clearly not being adopted, so it's a moot point. Where is the Indie Web in terms of adoption?
IMO HNers often focus too much on the merits of a particular technology, and not enough on the adoption. Often it's the case that worse technologies win, because they enjoy network effects that allow them to grow quickly and then maintain their lead. Again, look at HTML, CSS, and JavaScript -- hardly the best tools to build the web on, but that's what we've got, regardless of the fact that other tools "could" solve the problem better.
You're also neglecting the fact that blockchains are decentralized, but the web is not. The web is based on renting. Renting hosting from some other company, renting space in some company's database, etc. It's fine for today of course, we all do this and it works well.
But the blockchain and NFTs are about improving digital property, and one major improvement is moving from rental to ownership, as I pointed out in my original comment. No company can delete your "backpack" of NFTs, or shut you down because you're a sex worker and they think that's immoral, or tell you who you can and can't sell your items to. Sure, the authorities can try to track you down and punish you after the fact, but that's how things work in the real world, and getting the digital world to that point is the goal here.
For various reasons, this is catching on with NFTs in a big way that it didn't and won't with the Indie Web and other efforts. Adoption matters.