This response is technical and appears a little naive to me. The reason why NFTs are currently hot is because there's a gold rush and people fear missing out. I don't think anyone who buys an NFT wants that NFT; they just hope to flip it for more money than they spent, or maybe diversify their portfolio (use it as a store of value). I could be wrong of course, but I seriously doubt it.
Which means, the technical solutions to the questions raised in the original article this responds to, will probably not have time to be implemented before the rush is over.
Also, one of the main points of the first article, if not the main one (and certainly the first one) is that centralization is a feature, not a bug. People want a central authority and not bother themselves with running their own server/infrastructure.
So the only way for OpenSea to "die" is if it's replaced by a different, but similar, central authority.
Which means, the technical solutions to the questions raised in the original article this responds to, will probably not have time to be implemented before the rush is over.
Especially since those solutions would reduce the influence and revenue of the biggest players. It's like trying to replace Facebook with Diaspora. It's technically possible, and going nowhere.
The article lists success stories for NFTs: "Axie Infinity and how it’s bringing entire nations out of poverty"[1] Axie Infinity is a play-to-earn game. It's like Pokemon, with breeding and training and fighting, for real money. Players need about US$1500 to play, and earn Smooth Love Potion Tokens. This really caught on in the Philippines, and people were quitting their day job to play.
The article was from June 2021, when Axie was on the way up and Smooth Love Token was peaking around $0.35. Axie is now a Ponzi on the way down. This morning, Smooth Love Potion Token is down to $0.01897 and dropping.[2] Since all revenue came from new players, this was inevitable.
The NFT market is Axie Infinity, OpenSea, CryptoPunks, and the little guys. As with most things online, the top 3 have most of the market share.[3] Axie is crashing. OpenSea is stalling. Profitable NFT resales aren't happening much, and there's a glut of new issuers.
By the time the problems Moxie points out are fixed, this is going to be over. Especially since for US players there's a 28% capital gains tax rate on collectables resold within 12 months.
> (...) is that centralization is a feature, not a bug.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't centralization in blockchain-related applications a critical problem which defeats the whole purpose of said tech?
I mean, if a Blockchain is controlled by a single entity, doesn't that entity have all it needs to rewrite it however they wish?
And also, is there any difference between storing a record in a centrally-managed Blockchain or a record in plain old relational database managed by a third party?
The point seems to be: the blockchain is distributed but if everybody access to it through only a handful of nodes (because they don't want to host their own ones) then it could be centralized and nobody would notice the difference.
If there is only one node acting as gateway to the blockchain then it could use PostgreSQL and there would be no differences in trust.
The difference between a single node backed by PostgreSQL and OpenSea offering an API to interact with the blockchain is that in theory you could interact with the blockchain yourself. It's something like Wikipedia. I could run my own local cached copy by using the periodic wiki dumps. But its easier to go through the live Wikipedia.
Are there SQL servers intended for direct public usage? EDIT: I do understand the ubiquity of SQL servers :) I'm asking about ones that expose a good chunk of SQL to end users, since theoretically one could build on that
What’s the point of this ask? A blockchain’s dataset isn’t arbitrarily editable by its users — there’s a very specific set of actions you can do, which are well defined, that modify the chain in a very structured manner… just as any API sitting in front of a database would do.
Obviously you can modify your local copy of the chain as you wish, even corrupting the data, but if your chain isn’t accepted by the public, your changes don’t mean shit. So you’re really only able to (meaningfully) execute those public-allowed operations
NFTs aren’t permissioned by end users. The person that deployed the smart contract still controls all permissions (although they can’t change it later — that is the only difference).
The reason that you can trade a NFT is because the smart contract has an API written by the creator to allow it.
This is all discussed in the original article ("My first impressions of Web3"). The post here is a response to the article. My comment says that the response may have missed the point made in the article.
I read both posts, and I still have this question.
Is it possible to provide a clear and simple explanation? Is there any answer at all which is not the expected "you're right, centralized crypto is pointless at best and a scam at worse"?
Otherwise this sort of reply feels like a blatant attempt to dismiss a concern through hand-waving for which there is no good answer without addressing any of it's points.
Is a blockchain strictly necessary for decentralization at all? If the issue with decentralization is control and governance rather than technology, why not have a cooperative model that still functions on a centralized database?
I'm guessing your question is rhetorical, but in case it isn't:
Repeat after me: "blockchain is only required if you want to solve a problem that deals with permissionless, trustless and distributed consensus".
- permissionless: no previous vetting/authentication/authorization of any participant. If you can a priori authenticate users, you can have a decentralized system with Paxos, and you can run a "decentralized" governance system based on simple "web of trust".
- trustless: no participant is assumed to be reliable/honest
- distributed: the network can suffer disconnections and partitions, but the overall system can still work.
If you can choose who will be allowed to define "consensus", you can use other BFT consensus solutions, so no blockchain is needed.
If you have a "cooperative" model, this assumes that you can trust the participants, so no blockchain is needed.
If your system can withstand network disconnections/partitions, no blockchain is needed.
They're equivalent. If at least 1 participant is unreliable/dishonest and I don't know which one, the only logical reaction is to treat them all the same until I can determine the culpable one.
Perhaps, but it feels a bit like the Monty Hall paradox/game. If you know which ones are more truthful, then the odds aren't as bad as "everyone must be guilty until proven innocent."
"Innocent until proven guilty," the modus operandi of the US judicial system, at least in theory, is the design of a system that assumes trust and removes offenders.
The cooperative model requires people to coordinate on choosing the same human authority figure.
Blockchain only requires people to coordinate on choosing the same programmatic criteria for block validity (and then choosing the longest valid chain).
Which practically ends up the same - see the Etherium fork/rollback.
One potential use maybe would be a blockchain that is openly run by a company (80+% of nodes or something) but if you also run a note it could continue after the company ceases to be.
There are other ways to do that but it might almost be a reasonable use case.
My understanding is, some centralization doesn’t defeat the purpose of the blockchain. e.g. if a centralized server stores and modifies the blockchain but it’s public, then clients can verify the blockchain, and fork it if they don’t agree with the server.
But too much centralization, which seems to be the case now, basically does defeat the purpose. Because if everyone is using the same client and server or if people are interacting with these services insecurely exposing their wallets and data, then these companies could switch their backend to not use a blockchain or just steal coins. Most people probably wouldn’t even notice, and even if they did there’s nothing they could do.
No, Moxie correctly pointed out that the trust model and physical infrastructure are distinct architectural elements, and, it is good/ok to have decentralized for the former but centralized for the latter. The reason why was the long preamble about evolution of platforms vs protocols, and user preference for 3rd party managed convenience.
-- ps
So the question is whether it is possible to have effective solutions in that design space. Email in fact fits these design parameters: end users can use PGP and PKI to have private and authenticated communication, but as Moxie knows far better than me, it hasn't happened because now we have shifted the burden of running 'something' back to the end user again, who is now responsible for participating in a 'decentralized trust' system.
It appears the problem is reducible to (and thus is fundamentally about) identity and associated attributes of an identity.
So what we really need is a decentralized identity infrastructure with 'last mile' interfaces to your physical political jurisdiction for those who want "legal" attribution for fully decentralized interactions (possibly built on centralized infrastructure). All other "Web3" systems can be built on top of these.
I agree that we need decentralized identity infrastructure similar to sovrin.org, but what we’re going to get is “Login with Facebook” and “Login with Apple ID”.
If by "centralized crypto" we mean "everyone using OpenSea" (or similar custodian services) then the point is that OpenSea doesn't have full control over the data.
I can build a competitor to OpenSea that has access to everyone's NFT ownership data because it's in a public blockchain. If Twitter decides to shut down their service, it's gone.
This isn’t correct. Moxie hosts the image, OpenSea hosts the endpoint the wallet queries for ownership listing. The whole system is glorified CRUD, OpenSea always has full control.
This is not what the original article says. Here's the first conclusion:
> We should accept the premise that people will not run their own servers by designing systems that can distribute trust without having to distribute infrastructure.
In other words, centralized trust is a bug, but that's a different thing than centralized servers.
The problem with existing NFTs is that they not only don't have decentralized servers, they also don't have decentralized trust. They're just not what they claim to be at all.
I would also point out that "centralized" isn't a binary thing. Having literally everyone run their servers is not really what anybody wants, but neither is having one company run a single server for everyone in the world, which isn't really what happens. Even with a "centralized service" like Facebook, they have multiple servers distributed all over the world.
And if the servers didn't have to be trusted, they also wouldn't all have to be run by a single company. Having a billion servers for a billion users is not what anybody wants, but we already have a thousand servers for a billion users. And if the servers are not to be trusted anyway, why do we need them all to be run by the same entity?
The fact that BitTorrent has worked for decades without centralizing, and likely never will centralize, stands in quiet opposition to the entire "centralization is inevitable" line of thinking. The trackers, the obvious centralizing force, have always remained content-focused, rather than making the transition to platform control. Trackers are roughly federated, as you note; there are a lot of nodes, but relatively few trackers. And I believe most blockchain style systems would shake out similarly.
The authentic dev communities building blockchain tech are throwing their weight behind the idea that they will in time transition towards technical solutions, having already set a course for the social solution. So from their end, this criticism is always technical in nature. The initial source of trust is going to be in mathematical realities guaranteeing certain outcomes: if not cryptography, then tokenomics. Of course there are a huge number of "P.T. Barnums" who have jumped ahead to create solutions today, and these solutions tend to platformize. That's the discontinuity making it a circus.
> The fact that BitTorrent has worked for decades without centralizing, and likely never will centralize, stands in quiet opposition to the entire "centralization is inevitable" line of thinking.
Except for all the centralized points you'd be correct. BitTorrent requires bootstrap nodes. While these can be specified in a torrent file but many clients have some hard coded values for bootstrap nodes. If bootstrap nodes are unavailable and a torrent doesn't contain new values a BitTorrent client can't do much.
Then there's finding content which doesn't just magically happen. Torrent search engines exist because BT doesn't have a built in search system like other P2P networks.
Finally there's the central locations where clients are developed and distributed. BT clients don't just manifest on people's computers. They don't magically update themselves.
Cryptobros talk of decentralization as if shit just exists in a luminiferous ether. You just wish hard enough and things manifest on your system from it. Centralization doesn't automatically mean Facebook controls everything. Stuff comes together at locii and those are by nature central in a network. They can be disrupted, blocked, or just disappear and then the network falls apart.
>The problem with existing NFTs is that they not only don't have decentralized servers, they also don't have decentralized trust. They're just not what they claim to be at all.
This. And take away the techno-libertarian glamour, it becomes just another technology that might have useful applications, or might be a huge waste of time, resources, and increases complexity and decreases transparency.
Yeah, but real life doesn't really work efficiently with backup plans, that's the problem.
For efficiency what we do is we centralize and wherever possible we add safeguards and controls to the central authority, as auditors call them, mitigations.
You may be correct with OpenSea and Ethereum. The art/NFT scene on Tezos seems different, with maybe 80% of people focused on the art itself and collecting for the sake of holding for personal enjoyment. The prices are much lower, in general, and gas fees largely nonexistent. This makes it easier for people without significant resources to participate. Check out objkt.com, hicetnunc.art, fxhash, etc - the vibe is almost completely different than the Ethereum marketplaces.
Edit: you've unfortunately been posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments a lot. Could you please not? It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
> I don't think anyone who buys an NFT wants that NFT; they just hope to flip it for more money than they spent.
Is this not just how financial assets in general works? Anyone buying Amazon's share are not buying it because they want that share. They buy it because they hope some time down the line (weeks, months, years) they can flip it for more money than they spent.
Yes. But the intrinsic value of a piece of art is tied to someone wanting to own that art for the enjoyment of it. The intrinsic value of a stock is tied to the earning power of the company you own a small piece of. NFTs have no earning power.
NFTs cannot pay dividends and do not have boards of governance.
A share without votes and without dividends would be worth $0.
(Also, many NFT shills and/or shovel salesmen fervently insist that they're selfless patrons of the arts, rather than simply trying to make ponzi cash)
The huge gap between aspirations and technology continues to be the core problem for the crypto space. I keep seeing the excuse “it’s still early days”, but it’s been 14 years since the inception of proof of work blockchains. 14 years is the gap between the founding of Netscape and millions of people using iPhones.
You're right that there's a gold rush / land grab happening, but I disagree that there are people who buy NFTs that don't actually want the NFT and see it purely as a speculative asset. I think that the internet world is struggling to define what "digital ownership" means and looks like in the future and there are a bunch of people that are attracted to the idea of NFTs as the answer to that. I think there are lots of motivations for being involved with NFTs, but of course speculation is the most common.
NFTs don't give you ownership of anything. They're simply a public record saying someone was dumb enough to trade something valuable for something worthless.
Someone posted a link yesterday to an NFT they "own". I saved it to my computer, changed the file name, and uploaded it to a server. They had and have zero agency to stop me from doing so. Their NFT "purchase" didn't transfer any copyrights to them recognized by any entity with means to enforce copyrights. I can do whatever I want with those bytes I downloaded and the owner can't do a damned thing to me.
So what "ownership" do they have? They don't control redistribution. They don't physically possess a thing. They can't assert some sort of exclusionary control over who gets to see a thing.
Some record in a slow expensive database just says a wallet to which they have the private key transferred Geoffrey dollars to another wallet for the contents pointed to by an IPFS identifier. That's one of the more complicated ways I've seen to throw money away but it's not ownership.
The ownership is of the NFT itself, not the asset that's linked to in the metadata.
I agree with some of the issues you point out, but in this case ownership is a construct built on social consensus, and these people are trying to define what "digital ownership" might mean, which you are conflating with physical ownership.
"They don't control redistribution". - They very much control it for the NFT itself.
Yes, you can right-click and save an image all you want, but that doesn't mean you own the NFT. In fact, you can right-click and save the most valuable NFT in the world, and re-mint it as an NFT... but that NFT would be worthless, because it would be missing the social consensus and provenance that gave the original NFT value.
Copyright and ownership are divorced from each other already, so this argument feels like a straw man when folks point to it as a failure of NFTs. For example, you can buy an oil painting from an artist, but that doesn't come with a copyright either. Same for almost all physical goods.
NFTs though, can have a license attached.
A lot of what you are saying is true today, but it might not be tomorrow if enough people agree otherwise. In that respect, this is very much an experiment in speculation, but all it takes is for a community of people to agree to honor the data on a particular blockchain and that can support a thriving economy like NFTs have for the last couple of years.
> "They don't control redistribution". - They very much control it for the NFT itself.
Who gives a shit? The NFT has no actual utility.
> Yes, you can right-click and save an image all you want, but that doesn't mean you own the NFT.
Again, the NFT itself has zero actual utility. The thing it points to is what people want to look at, listen to, read, or experience.
> you can buy an oil painting from an artist, but that doesn't come with a copyright either. Same for almost all physical goods.
If I have physical possession of an actual non-fungible physical good I have exclusive control over it. I can lock it away in a vault and never show it to anyone. I can hang it in my house and only let my friends see it. They can't right click on my painting and walk away with an atom-for-atom copy of it.
> In that respect, this is very much an experiment in speculation, but all it takes is for a community of people to agree to honor the data on a particular blockchain and that can support a thriving economy like NFTs have for the last couple of years.
If we only get enough people to participate in a shared delusion, these Geoffrey dollars will be worth a fortune!
The thing goes deeper: this gives you a big opportunity to launder money. It's the same with art, but at least in the art world there are some regulations.
The wild thing is going to be the moment the IRS comes around and starts asking people about their sales and it turns out many of the huge sales are wash trades inflating the value of tokens.
> I don't think anyone who buys an NFT wants that NFT
> I could be wrong of course, but I seriously doubt it.
You're wrong. I hold many NFTs that I want just for the sake of the art. Sorry to disprove your theory. One of my favorites is the Bonsai collection by ZenFT: https://www.zenft.xyz/
Some people use NFTs as simple mementos (free to claim, and collect): https://poap.gallery/
People use NFTs for token-based access to websites or online services.
People use them for real world events.
People spend countless hours hanging out on Discord in various communities and servers and they build together.
> People want a central authority and not bother themselves with running their own server/infrastructure.
People don't want a central authority. Most people don't really understand the implications of the technology they use. Awareness is higher than it's ever been, however, in the age of censorship and deplatforming. It's not sustainable or desirable for all of humanity's communication and value exchange to be routed through a handful of trillion dollar tech monopolies.
It's not desirable that so much of the web be dominated by these entities. It's not good for democracy, it's not good for humanity.
> So the only way for OpenSea to "die" is if it's replaced by a different, but similar, central authority.
Only those who lack imagination or skill would assert such a thing.
> You're wrong. I hold many NFTs that I want just for the sake of the art.
This is an old debate and not really the subject at hand, but I'll still bite (against my better judgement).
You don't need to own an NFT to enjoy the art. That's the fundamental difference between art in the real world and digital art (NFT or not). When you own a piece of art you get to look at the original; this is a unique experience in the case of a painting, and sometimes a rare experience in the case of limited editions of photos.
But the digital art is the same whether you "own it" or not. From an esthetic experience (not a financial one, obviously), it's pointless to "own" digital art.
The only thing that would influence the esthetic experience of digital art is the medium. Buy a better screen. Better speakers. Etc.
> People spend countless hours hanging out on Discord
You don't need an original art work to enjoy the art either. You can print out photorealistic copies. You can buy a fake Rembrandt. You can buy a fake Gucci purse. It's perfectly okay to do that...however...
What you lose is a direct connection to the original artist. Art is as much about the story of that artwork as it is the art itself.
If an artist mints an NFT and that NFT has has provenance that's generally accepted by the community at large, then it has all the properties of an original physical artwork. Except that you can be more sure of its origin, because the blockchain history is immutable and you can trace the transactions back to the original creator.
Music NFTs have been created, although they are certainly still nascent, it's possible to create an MP3-based NFT that has the same or better quality as a CD album. One could imagine NFT albums being minted just like CD and record albums of yore. One could imagine people collecting the NFTs just for the sake of actually owning the rights to backup and play that music without having to stream through Spotify or YouTube. One could imagine the user retaining the right to resell that album just like they had the right to resell a used CD back in the day.
I already gave many examples above about how NFTs can be used beyond the basic use-case of attaching a JPEG (access to services, access to software, use in cross-game or cross-app experiences, etc).
Some people are collecting them as Proofs of Attendance (POAPS), which are free NFTs used as badges. They're quite popular and fun to collect. I do so for the pure enjoyment of them. Sometimes the badges above are used for things like giveaways. If I want to reward loyal community members, I can issue a POAP for attending a particular video chat, and then give out random rewards to anyone holding one of my community's POAPs. That's cool, and fun. I've been in communities where we create our own POAPs as funny shared inside jokes.
What you are saying is not that you like the art for it’s artistic value, because it has been established that you can look at it whether you own it or not. What you enjoy is the “ego” part of saying you “own” the NFT in question, just like people that buy expensive paintings when they say they are not buying it for the money, but instead that they are an art lover. You are doing it because it strokes your ego. Let’s at least get past the part of the argument where we pretend that looking at the art is question the main driver. I am not even saying that the ego part is inherently wrong, just different than how you describe it. It is non-monetary at least, but I can see how describing it this way is not as altruistic sounding as “loving the art” is.
I agree with the general point (I think) you're making but I think there is some nuance here. It's not just ego, at least not for everybody.
There is extra enjoyment to be had knowing that you came into ownership of something according to a set of agreed upon rules. That is to say "legitimate" ownership. Legitimate NFT's can make one feel part of a community so there is value in that.
Perhaps most importantly, "legitimate" ownership generally implies that the artist(s) were compensated by you (somewhat) directly. That, in itself can enhance the enjoyment. There are more factors at play than merely ego.
I'll give a personal, real-world example. I own ~$1000 item that I bought as part of fundraiser for someone struggling with medical bills. I was also friends with the creator and wanted to support their work. So, even though I paid much more than I would have paid had I just bought it directly, I get a great deal of extra satisfaction out of owning this item. I supported two different people whom I admire by purchasing it. That makes me happy.
I'm not a huge fan of NFT's (as they exist currently) but I don't think it's correct that enjoying ownership of NFT art, or art in general, is solely ego-based.
To my ear, this all sounds like you're saying participation in NFT is performance art, which I hadn't really considered before, but I can kinda make sense of the appeal in that light. It just seems in bad taste to me that a person would claim ownership of someone else's work. But to each their own.
An NFT is a complex abstraction, that can mean many things in many contexts. It's quite powerful as a tool, as a technology. Art is honestly just a fraction of what an NFT can represent. But you won't develop any kind of intuition for that without engaging with it.
As for claiming ownership, yes, if I paid some amount for the ownership of a particular piece of art (commercial rights or otherwise), that is called an exchange or a trade or a transaction. It's quite common in capitalist societies. Not sure why that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. But to each their own.
If the music is on the blockchain, and the uploader didn't own the rights to distribute the music, isn't every blockchain host commiting copywriter infringement by distributing the music to anyone that reads the blockchain?
Don't you still have the ability to listen to the cd post sale because you can always load up an older version of the blockchain where you did own it?
> If the music is on the blockchain, and the uploader didn't own the rights to distribute the music, isn't every blockchain host commiting copywriter infringement by distributing the music to anyone that reads the blockchain?
Typically what you will find in these scenarios is that front ends hosted in jurisdictions that recognize intellectual property rights will de-list those NFTs upon request. And file providers on Filecoin or Arweave (in said jurisdictions) will unpin them from their hosting services.
However, there's no guarantee that given an IPFS hash that a user couldn't find some pinning service to locate the file (just as a determined user could easily find a torrent for a particular MP3). These are agnostic protocols just like HTTP or SMTP.
> Don't you still have the ability to listen to the cd post sale because you can always load up an older version of the blockchain where you did own it?
The MP3 itself would not be stored on the Ethereum blockchain, as it would be prohibitively expensive to store a multi-megabyte file on there. It would be stored on a separate storage layer, such as Filecoin or Arweave (or even a centralized server). A hash of that file is what would be stored on the Ethereum chain (an IPFS hash).
Sorry, it absolutely has provenance. It's better provenance than any traditional art asset has by far.
> Ah yes, that's why art isn't counterfeited en masse because community something something. Oh wait...
Ok, go make a counterfeit CryptoPunk. Go make a counterfeit BAYC. Then try and sell it. Should take you 5 seconds to right click and generate a new NFT with the same image...
It absolutely doesn't. OpenSea (and others) has hundreds if not hundreds of thousands of stolen art pieces traded daily.
> Go make a counterfeit BAYC. Then try and sell it.
There's literally a fight now between two counterfeit bored apes ripoffs over which one is legit.
There's zero provenance in NFTs. They have zero relevant information on an art piece. Yes, if you are lucky to be somewhat famous you can tell people what is and isn't yours. Otherwise: no. You could yourslef figure out why.
Hints, if you can't:
- NFTs have zero relevant information on an art. They don't even contain the art itself, they point to a URL that hopefully hosts the art itself
- NFTs have zero information on the original owner of the art and whether that person has any rights to own and sell the art
Basically, you are saying NFT creators can create any type of digital artwork in any type of media that they want, and NFT collectors can collect them for any number of reasons. Maybe some of that is stored on chain, maybe some is not.
So then, what is a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) actually good for? The answer seems to be proofs of provenance, ownership, and authenticity.
Provenance is defined as the place where something originally came or began, or a record tracing the ownership history of certain items that helps to confirm their authenticity and value. How many things in the world need a proof of provenance? Paper towels? No. Corn? No. Cars? Yes, maybe. Art? Yes, as established, but not everyone likes art like they do their cars, at least in the West. So, market sizes matter. A good idea is only as good as the market, and NFTs aren't an idea that is actually sold, it's an idea on an idea of selling something. Like marketing, NFTs are more like a meme than a product or service. (I realize some people consider marketing to include market analysis, which is something else entirely.)
But, who runs the car provenance proofs? Do we put all the data about the car on the chain? That would be too much data for current chains. I suspect, like the speed of computers, an increase in throughput will just result in more junk on the chain. How much junk can a chain take? Not much, I'd hazard. How do you sell your car NFT to grandpa when the car chain is full of junk? You probably don't.
But, there isn't really much in which I need to prove ownership. My house and my truck have titles. It's pointless to make NFTs for them, given the state runs the database and the state is pretty good at this by now, especially given they take money from me for property tax and plates. I don't care to prove ownership of anything else. What I have in my possession is enough proof. The police would take a photo of my 3d printer as proof of ownership if it were stolen and then located in my neighbor's house.
The whole idea about using NFTs to share(holder) out my house or truck is also pointless. To make me pay someone that held an NFT on a share of my house is going to be a challenge. There's probably a contract somewhere that would do more good in forcing my hand to pay up, like the mortgage company would do if I had a mortgage and defaulted. But, is it useful? I guarantee attorneys will get involved if that happens.
Authenticity? Who cares? In this age of mass consumption, the focus of NFTs on art defines a very small market. In fact, I'd say the desire by some to "collect", of a certain generation maybe, is pretty pointless. It reminds me of my friend buying a bunch of Hot Wheels in his 20s because he thought not opening them and playing with them would make them worth more in the future. He had a huge collection in his attic. I don't trade things like this, but many do, and I appreciate that they may think NFTs help with their "hobby".
At the end of the day NFTs are made for the imagination - which is why the conversation always turns to gaming. They cater to it like nothing else. They make people think that "value" is a real thing and that it can somehow be "preserved" by using a series of calculations. I get that some people love the idea of NFTs so much, they can't help but spread that love to others. The only problem I see with that is that there really is no killer use case here. Instead, we get things like NFTs of blocks of tungsten that can only be touched once a year or saving that "special moment" in game that will be forgotten by the mind in a year.
If someone says they enjoy thing A and don’t enjoy thing B, we should take that at face value rather than arguing about the logic of that position. Some people don’t enjoy owning original art either, and who am I to say they’re objectively wrong to not enjoy it?
The idea of NFTs as access keys makes me wretch. How can we make DRM worse? I know, let's make it speculative and even worse for the environment. (Re: proof of stake, I'll believe it when it happens without Ethereum forking again)
It's not DRM. It's token-based authentication. Are you against token-based authentication? Are you against Software-as-a-Service? Are you against membership-based organizations as a concept? Are you against board voting by stockholders? If you're not against these analogous concepts, why would you be against NFT-based versions of this?
One difference with NFTs is you retain the right to resale and transfer at all times. Which is totally different than DRM.
The remaining component is the Merge, which merges the Proof-of-Work chain with the Proof-of-Stake chain: https://ethmerge.com/ . That is coming this summer. The Ethereum community is almost 100% behind the merge, so it's highly unlikely that ETH forks over it, and even if one occurred, the forked chain would not succeed.
Hasn't that date been continuously pushed back? Like the parent you replied to, I'll believe when I see it. And regardless, the mining infrastructure spun up because of the gold rush on Ethereum isn't going away at thia point. Those miners will just move to different chains.
And while proof of stake does partially minimize some of the environmental concerns, it introduces other problems that aren't great (like all of the power being systematically consolidated into the hands of early adopters and the wealthy).
> Hasn't that date been continuously pushed back? Like the parent you replied to, I'll believe when I see it. And regardless, the mining infrastructure spun up because of the gold rush on Ethereum isn't going away at thia point. Those miners will just move to different chains.
It's been pushed a few times. Like any complex technical upgrade with hundreds of billions of dollars worth of assets on the line, it has to be taken very carefully and has to be tested very thoroughly against numerous vectors.
But there are live testnets of the Merge already, if you feel like testing it out: https://kintsugi.themerge.dev/ Please submit any bugs you find.
> And while proof of stake does partially minimize some of the environmental concerns, it introduces other problems that aren't great (like all of the power being systematically consolidated into the hands of early adopters and the wealthy)
Not here to get into PoW vs PoS debate. But its worth noting that Ethereum has hundreds of billions of dollars worth of non-native assets sitting on-chain. Many of these are protocols that didn't even exist 2 years ago. Anyone can create a whole new token on Ethereum that backs a new application and be their own early adopter.
Isn't the authentication your private key? The nft would be authorization, which sounds a lot like digital rights management to me. The power is still with the record company to decide whether a sold copy is still valid
Your private key would be used to sign a message that proves your public key. But your public key is all that's needed to validate which NFTs you own or whether you hold an NFT from a particular collection.
> The nft would be authorization, which sounds a lot like digital rights management to me
The NFT can be used as a token to access a particular service. But by no means is it anything like DRM.
An NFT is recorded in a smart contract. The record of an NFT's purchase and transfer history is immutable and on-chain. It's not revokable by a record company if they sold it under some particular terms to begin with.
At this point, however, it's far more likely that a music NFT has been produced and sold by the artist themselves, rather than a record label (3LAU https://nft.3lau.com/#/auction), Euler Beats (https://eulerbeats.com/genesis/21575894274), RAC (https://rac.fm/nft) as some examples. That's part of the beauty of this system, though, in my mind. An artist can have a direct relationship with their fans and keep nearly 100% of the revenue. They may even focus on obtaining 1000 high dollar mega-fans rather than hoping for a billion plays on Spotify, for example. And that's going to be perfectly ok as a business model in Web3.
NFTs can actually be the opposite of DRM. They are ownership without exclusivity.
It is literally impossible to prevent piracy, but we still want people that create art/music/games to get paid - NFTs are the solution to this problem. The artist gets paid, fans get indie bragging rights, and everyone gets to enjoy the content.
> NFTs are actually the opposite of DRM. They are ownership without exclusivity.
Their is no ownership without exclusivity.
(And NFTs are exclusive; they just happen to currently mostly be used as pointers to non-exclusive items with no other meaning, but there is nothing inherent in the technology restricting them to that use.)
Why not? Plenty of people own parks and gardens that are open to the public. Art in galleries is all owned by someone but many are free for public viewing. Everyone getting to enjoy the thing while the creator still gets paid sounds like an awesome future to me.
> Plenty of people own parks and gardens that are open to the public
You can choose not exercise the right to exclusivity (or to do so selectively), but if you don't have it, you don't own anything.
> Everyone getting to enjoy the thing while the creator still gets paid sounds like an awesome future to me.
Sure, patronage of public art can be great, but it's not ownership (except maybe “ownership” of an exclusive right to receive some defined form of credit for the patronage.)
Why would I bother with an NFT when I can already effortlessly copy bits? Digital property is not physical property and I'm not sure why people are still so intent on shoehorning the characteristics of the latter into the former.
Discord is centralized. Yes, and? We are not in the end state of Web3 yet. Web3 is nascent and new. And we have to use some of the existing infrastructure to bootstrap it. Just as the internet was bootstrapped by the Department of Defense (via ARPAnet). Ideally we transition to a decentralized chat service at some point (some communities do use Matrix or Status), but in the meantime, we can't let perfect be the enemy of good.
Now go back to what the previous article was saying about decentralized (/federated) systems being slower, and consider how Discord got more popular than Matrix despite coming out a bit later (so it's not a question of "transitioning" - why not picking Matrix (or XMPP/Jabber) right off the bat ?), and despite Matrix being clearly more aligned with the decentralization values supposedly espoused by the "web3" people ?
And let me guess, do these people also "build together" using the centralized and proprietary Github built on top (and now bought by Microsoft, who knows what they'll do of it now...) of the decentralized git ?
Standard blockchain apologist. Always jam tomorrow, never jam today.
It's always "early" for some definition of the word "it". Any decade now we'll have PoS, or an actual use case for smart contracts, or NFTs etc.
But no, every year just seems to bring a new "invention" that is "still early" while implying that this, unlike every single other use of distributed blockchain, somehow is the first of all of them to not be pointless (outside of a way to find the bigger fool).
Blockchains are just scam generators.
Well, they are of great utility to ransomware, so i guess they have found one use case in over a decade.
Edit: and of course this rebuttal found like one possible mistake in statistics and calls it a "lie". That should tell you all you need to know about the author's intellectual honesty.
This is a grift as old as time, promise salvation tomorrow to all those that worship today. Tomorrow is only ever a day away, and really isn't the worship and community great anyways?
The doomsday cult and spiritual guru model of community-building fits right into the Silicon Valley culture of techno-optimism alongside the "if you believe it, you can achieve it" New Age mantras and "fake it till you make it, it's not fraud if you believe it" naivete.
The only thing more upsetting that watching it happen is knowing how it will likely unravel, with everyone pointing fingers and rushing to find a conspiracy theory to explain why "the powers that be" targeted them for destruction because they were so threatened and were afraid of the power they were losing to the Bored Ape movement, or whatever it is.
You could say similar things about nuclear fusion. It’s easy to say this when you don’t actually follow the technology and the people actually building it.
I mean the easy reply is no: Fusion is not a solution in search of a problem. It has a precise defined desired output, and the engineering is being worked on to achieve that output.
(E.g.) NFT don't. Smart contracts don't. Even cryptocurrencies don't. If you precisely define what you want from a cryptocurrency, then you'll either end up with something that's better solved centralized (to a larger or lesser degree, but at least control), or you'll end up with something that nobody actually wants.
And if you launch today with something nobody actually wants, then you get rich. So who cares if eventually it solves a problem? And there's no incentive to make that happen.
The main difference is that blockchains are being launched before any thought has been put into what problems they solve. Because the money is made on the speculation. Solving the problem is incidental.
Sure, you could be super cynical and say that fusion, or indeed every single company in the world, is only there to make money, primarily. But they do that by solving (or trying to solve) actual problems.
Again on cryptocurrencies: Why do you think I'll have a hard time walking into a bank with duffle bags full of cash? Really think about that question. Really think about the hundreds of years of thought that has gone into it.
Do you think the main problem these generations of people were trying to solve was "intransigent bankers"? Do you think the bank doesn't "like" you as a customer if you walk in with duffle bags full of cash without explanation, and that's why it has rules and takes time, and you have to explain yourself?
Now cryptocurrencies just treat that as "that's stupid, let's remove all that".
Let's say a thief stole your TV. They catch the thief, and a court orders them to repay you. They have the money. They say no. Obviously you want a court order to be able to take their money.
A friend of mine was sexually attacked by a guy. The guy was convicted and ordered to pay a fine. He refused. The court ordered his safe deposit box opened, and they took the money.
And that's a good thing.
> when you don’t actually follow the technology
The technology doesn't matter, if problems are misidentified.
Once you realize that "you" doesn't equal everyone else, you'll stop acting like that.
Plenty of people want and use what crypto already offers. Moneygram was a horrible experience for me, for example, I'm really glad my language school accepting crypto payments.
> Plenty of people want and use what crypto already offers.
You're saying a statistically significant number of people want all three branches of government to be completely stripped of any power? No criminal or civil courts?
I'm unfortunately late to this horrible subthread, but:
Would you please stop posting flamewar comments to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
I'm unfortunately late to this horrible subthread, but:
Flamewar comments like this, and others you posted, are not ok on HN and will get your account banned. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
The absolute vast majority of people in the world live in countries with functioning governments.
Whether or not they are "proper democracies" is really beside the point because no one can define a "proper democracy" (US and Sweden are different as night and day and yet both are democracies, for example).
And crypto makes non-functioning governments significantly worse. Good luck proving the NFT on your house proves you're an owner in a dysfunctional government.
If you’re living in a dysfunctional government then at least crypto protects you from random seizures/freezing of your assets.
> The absolute vast majority of people in the world live in countries with functioning governments.
The underlying statement you are making bere is that we shouldn’t be building technology that helps people undermine their governments’ ability to control their citizens’ assets.
That’s the crux of the argument here. If you live in a government where things generally work for you, this technology is threatening. If you don’t, it’s a possible path to some semblance of autonomy.
> If you’re living in a dysfunctional government then at least crypto protects you from random seizures/freezing of your assets.
How so? We've already seen large scale shutdowns of crypto projects by centralized authorities like OpenSea. I highly doubt dysfunctional and authoritarian governments are going to swallow allowing their citizens to use these platforms without also ensuring that they have a measure of control over it. And if an authoritarian government wants to steal your assets, they'll just install malware on your device and take your keys, then you've lost everything. Or they'll just disappear you until you agree to hand things over.
1. There are very few such governments on earth, all things considered
2. You still need to somehow convert those "assets" into, you know, actual food, and clothing, and... In a truly dysfunctional government rubber-hose cryptanalysis is a thing that exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis
> The underlying statement you are making bere is that we shouldn’t be building technology that helps people undermine their governments’ ability to control their citizens’ assets.
No. The underlying statement is: you're building something that doesn't work the way it's advertised.
> That’s the crux of the argument here.
Well, if you invent arguments, pretend your opponent said those argumetns, and then bravely fight those arguments, then surely, that's the crux.
So. Back to my original statement: "Crypto makes non-functioning governments significantly worse. Good luck proving the NFT on your house proves you're an owner in a dysfunctional government." It's an objective fact that doesn't rely on your imagining of what a dysfunctional government is.
>There are very few such governments on earth, all things considered
I'm not going to wade into any of the crypto arguments here but your repeated downplaying of dysfunctional/authoritarian/corrupt/failing governments seems entirely disconnected with the reality that tens, perhaps hundreds[0], of millions of people live every day.
Just because true democracy is a hard thing to define (per your previous comment), doesn't make oppressive governments any less oppressive.
There are lots of valid complaints about Crypto and NFT's, but the argument that poor government is not that bad of a global problem "all things considered" is an absolutely terrible one.
> but your repeated downplaying of dysfunctional/authoritarian/corrupt/failing governments seems entirely disconnected
Again: stop inventing the arguments that are not there. The only people who are downplaying dysfunctonal governments are the crypto shills and crypto peddlers.
If you actually took care and read what I wrote instead of imagining what I wrote, you'd see that never did I downplay dysfunctional governments.
> doesn't make oppressive governments any less oppressive.
Literally nowhere I said this.
> but the argument that poor government is not that bad of a global problem "all things considered" is an absolutely terrible one.
If only there was a single person here who made this argument. Also, an oppressive government does not a dysfunctional government make.
So, in the course of just a few sentences you made these claims:
- that I downplayed dysfunctional/authoritarian/corrupt/failing governments. I didn't
- that I somehow argued that oppressive gvernments are not that oppressive. I didn't
- that somehow authoritarian/oppressive is equal to dysfunctional. It isn't, necessarily.
What I did write was:
- the vast majority of people in this world do not live in dysfunctional governments
- crypto makes the problems with dysfunctional governments worse: your "assets that goverment can't steal" have to be somehow converted into food/clothing/shelter etc. which makes you a target for Rubber-hose cryptanalysis etc. Any other "assets" are worthless because your "non fungible proof of ownership on blockchain" on your house, car, and other physical items are woth exactly zero even in a functional government, much less in a dysfunctional one.
So. "All things considered", what's your opposition to what I wrote and not to what you imagine I wrote?
>So. "All things considered", what's your opposition to what I wrote and not to what you imagine I wrote?
OK. Lets' start here. Do you have citation for any of these gems?
> the vast majority of people in this world do not live in dysfunctional governments
> There are very few such governments on earth, all things considered
Anyone who would write such subjective, unprovable "facts" with the certainty you did is not interested in honest debate.
Please read the links I provided regarding economic freedoms in the world. China alone is ~ 20% of the worlds population and has currency controls prohibiting its citizens from spending their own money how they wish. That's a single country.
As I said, I'm not here to debate the merits of crypto. I'm here because you are coming across as minimizing the economic struggles of millions of people. If that's not what you intended then fine - feel free to clarify. But that's how you are coming across (in additional to being generally aggressive and angry).
Having said that, I would challenge you to provide support for this assertion:
> crypto makes the problems with dysfunctional governments worse
Unless I'm mistaken, you seem to think that people can't/don't cash out abroad. Or that they can't wait until the economic/political system is safer to cash out domestically. Am I understanding that correctly?
As an aside: because you started your reply with "Again...", I suspect you didn't notice that this is our first interaction, and I'm not the other commenter you are engaged with. I suspect some of your anger/confusion is because you are confusing us?
> Please read the links I provided regarding economic freedoms in the world. China alone is ~ 20% of the worlds population and has currency controls prohibiting its citizens
I will only answer this because it's both hillarious and sad that crypto peddelrs have literally zero understanding of how the world works.
- Does China have currency controls? Yes
- Is China an authoritarian regime for some unspecified definition of authoritarian? Yes
- Does this mean it's dysfunctional and its citizens need help from crypto? Ahahahaha, no.
And here's why. An average person in a functioning state couldn't care less about not being able to spend some other country's currency somewhere else.
- Does China have a functioning government? Yes
- Does China have functioning banks? Yes
- Does China have means by which its citizens can procure and use goods and services? A resounding yes. As an example, on Singles Day AliPay alone handles over a bllion orders a day.
- Does China have means by which its citizens can participate in global economy including, but not limited to trading with other countries? A resounding yes. Between the EU, the US and Japan China does almost 2 trillion of dollars of international trade. Hobbyists and entusiasts all around the world routinely order made-to-order things from small companies and individuals in China. etc. etc. etc.
> I'm here because you are coming across as minimizing the economic struggles of millions of people.
Once again, stop pretending I'm doing and saying something I'm not. The only ones who minimise and frankly have no idea about struggles of millions of people are crypto peddlers in this thread.
I mean, you are literally saying that people in China are struggling because they cannot do currency speculation. How out of touch with real world can you be?
> Unless I'm mistaken, you seem to think that people can't/don't cash out abroad.
Yes, you are mistaken. I never, at any point in the conversation ever even talked about taking cash abroad. And since you decided to present China as an example... Have you never seen a Chinese tourist? They have no problems taking cash abroad it seems.
> I suspect you didn't notice that this is our first interaction
I honestly can't distinguish between people with identical behaviours.
> I suspect some of your anger/confusion is because you are confusing us?
I suspect my anger is because you are identical:
- you invent arguments your opponent never produced
- you have literally no understanding of the world around you. For example, an authoritarian regime is not necessarily dysfunctional, and people in authoritarian regimes don't necessarily suffer. Yet, you keep pretending it's the same things, and people necessarily suffer
- You keep pretending that the only thing people en messe care about is currencies, and are suffering if they can't buy/spend other currencies than their countries'.
And on and on and on.
This is my last post in this pointless thread. Do come back when you have learned:
- how to answer what your opponent said, not what you imagine your opponent said, and
- how the world works. Go visit China, for example.
What you posted here was egregiously against the site rules and easily a bannable offence on HN.
Please stop posting flamewar comments, like you did here and elsewhere. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
Please especially stay out of tit-for-tat flamewars like this. They're not interesting to anyone else and the way they turn nasty and aggressive is particularly against the site guidelines.
> people in authoritarian regimes don't necessarily suffer.
What!? By definition, they suffer. It's right in the definition of the word:
favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom
I mean come on. You're saying I don't understand how the world works, but say dishonest things like this? Really? Wow.
>I will only answer this because it's both hillarious and sad that crypto peddelrs have literally zero understanding of how the world works. [...] An average person in a functioning state couldn't care less about not being able to spend some other country's currency somewhere else.
It's plain that you who don't understand how the world works. Why do you think those currency controls exist? For funsies? I mean really... you're failing at very basic logic. There are actual, very real, flesh and blood people in this very thread claiming they are using crypto to evade currency controls. But you downplay their struggles.
Not very classy. But, anything to win an argument right? Speaking of class, you know it's also possible to disagree on something without juvenile, grade-school level taunting. You should try it.
>You keep pretending that the only thing people en messe care about is currencies
I said it's the only thing? Really? I said that? No, I merely said it was a thing. I very important one. But... it's me who's putting words in your mouth. Right.
Don't bother replying. I won't be reading it. I'm cool to debate many things but basic concepts around human rights (including economic ones) are not one of them.
There's lots to hate about crypto. I agree with that 100%. I won't strongly argue about any of them except this particular topic (evading currency controls in authoritarian countries).
You know, you can still be right about crypto in general while conceding a very small point: That draconian currency controls are a form of economic oppression that millions of people suffer under. There are examples in this very thread you are outright ignoring.
Flamewar comments like this, and others you've posted recently, are not ok and will get you banned here. We've had to warn you about this several times before, and unfortunately you've continued to do it quite regularly. Would you please review the site rules and fix this? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
In particular, please stop the pattern where you get entangled with some other user you're arguing with, and then get increasingly aggressive toward them. That's absolutely not ok, regardless of how wrong they or or you feel they are, and regardless of whether they're also breaking the site guidelines.
Also, please don't use HN primarily for ideological battle. I'm seeing mostly that in your recent comments. We want curious conversation, not battle, on this site. Not only are those not the same, they're incompatible—for the same reason that having a tank battle and playing frisbee in the park are not compatible, or that boxing and dancing aren't. When an account is primarily using HN for battle, that's one line at which we ban the account [1, 2]. I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please fix this also, I'd appreciate it.
It would be good if you'd review the guidelines and take their intended spirit to heart. We want thoughtful, respectful, intellectually interesting conversation that gratifies intellectual curiosity. We don't want comments (and commenters) that are just out to defeat enemies—which I'm afraid is how your participation in more than one thread has been coming across. If you want more explanation, perhaps https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23959679 would help.
1. Nuclear fusion has a much more solid theoretical base.
2. Bud, if we go tell every cryptocurrency enthusiast that they'll be allowed to invest in it now and get a return on investment in 80+ years[1], crypto will be dead within 24 hours.
[1] The first experimental fusion reactor was tested in 1958 and at the rate they're going, 2038 seems like a reasonable date for the first commercial fusion reactor.
Then you've not heard what blockchain apologists say on the issue: That they are stimulating demand, and speeding up the development of renewals.
Which is like keeping your tap water running into the sewers at full blast 24/7 and saying you're stimulating the desalination industry.
Also sounds like Zorn in Fifth Element, when he's talking about the benefits of destruction. When your argument sounds like one made by a fictional over the top Hitler-inspired absolute evil character, then maybe you should reassess your life choices.
> Which is like keeping your tap water running into the sewers at full blast 24/7 and saying you're stimulating the desalination industry.
It's a bit more sophisticated than that, no? I thought the argument was that renewable energy sources could use crypto mining to monetize power which would otherwise go to waste during periods of low demand.
During periods of low demand we can shut down coal plans (instead they spin up new ones to mine). And even solar is not without guilt as equipment goes end of life.
Even if we were to live in a world powered entirely by even production base load such as nuclear we'll still have hydro that can be saved, and even pump storage hydro if there's still left over.
There's no getting around it: this argument is still spinning destruction to be construction. And it's clearly a spin that's being done for very direct financial gain.
But remember too that when you say "low demand", what you mean is that it sets a price floor on energy. The equilibrium for miners is to continue mining always when the price is lower than their ROI. This means that fluctuations in a cryptocurrency can mean that demand is unmet, if such demand is not able or willing to pay the same as this rentseeking mining is.
Concretely: If we were at equilibrium, and we suddenly invent an energy source that would drop energy price by 10x, real prices would still not go down, because economic incentives such that mining would eat up ALL of that potential lowering of price, and we'd be back to the price we started at. All price of energy would be bounded at the lower end by cryptocurrency mining incentives.
We'd have rolling blackouts when the currency goes up. Or when gas fees/attestation fees go up, depending on the details.
We'd have doubling-to-quadrupling of energy prices like we've had this winter, except triggered by even more causes.
So no, I'd say it's the same as what I've said, or worse.
Also, I want to note my favorite part of current blockchain apologists. Instead of presenting counter-arguments, they list projects working on that problem or working on an alternate solution to that problem. You say X is a problem, and it would be if XChain didn't exist, duh. XChain is removing the entire need for X. Are there lists of blockchain projects that the apologists memorize, or is being "into crypto" all about being familiar with a never ending list of projects? How many of these projects last a year? Ugh.
Why are critics so focused on timing though? Does it really matter whether the Eth2 merge happens in 6 months or 12 months, as long as steady progress is being made?
Granted, early timelines from Vitalik and others were way off base initially. The planning fallacy is a thing, and we shouldn't expect a 21 year old to accurately predict the timing of a very complex network migration. Hanlon's razor suggests that bad estimates are usually just bad estimates, not some kind of scam.
Because in the meantime the Ethereum network has less computing power than a Raspberry Pi while consuming several orders of magnitude more electricity. So it's shitty, expensive, and horribly polluting.
Yes, that's why we're working to make it better with proof of stake, sharding, validity proofs and so forth. It won't happen overnight but we're getting there. Why not help improve things instead of critiquing the current state?
Well, the author at least makes an intellectual attempt, unlike you.
Both the original article and the response are reasonable, which is rare in this discussion. There's actual substance, rather than lazy binary conclusions.
It's cute that you call your own response "factual"
"Any decade now we will have PoS"
Almost every blockchain already is. Ether will move to PoS within the coming 2 years. They must, as competition is fierce and may become irrelevant if they don't. Bitcoin will never move to PoS. So, "any decade"...what does it factually refer to?
Your remark on use cases is equally primitive. There's a few hundred million people using crypto. You can say that the existing use cases aren't for you, but that's not factual. Facts are that user growth is exponential.
Singling out ransomware is equally lazy. A recent study showed that the portion of criminal activity in the crypto space is lower compared to cash. Yet you'd never comment on cash being a criminal invention, would you? Yet you're the "intellectually honest" one.
> "Any decade now we will have PoS" Almost every blockchain already is.
You know that's not relevant. Nobody cares about the number of blockchains having one or another attribute. I could create and launch a billion new ones, and it doesn't matter.
> Ether will move to PoS within the coming 2 years.
I truly hope so. I'll believe it when I see it.
> There's a few hundred million people using crypto.
Estimate I found is one, not a few. But that could be wrong.
But yeah. I know of several people who tried, some successfully, to get paid in bitcoin. They didn't want to pay taxes.
Everyone wants everyone else to pay their fair share. You can't point to someone saying "Well I don't want to pay my fair share" as a contradiction, because that's a completely different statement.
Everyone wants only sober people on the street, but come on, it's me and I only had three beers and it's like a 10min drive.
> Singling out ransomware is equally lazy.
Lazy because it's not hard. "Pointing out murder is wrong, is lazy". Uh… so what?
> A recent study showed that the portion of criminal activity in the crypto space is lower compared to cash.
Speculation is by far the biggest, yes. Studies have shown that much or most of that speculation is market manipulation, too.
> Yet you'd never comment on cash being a criminal invention, would you?
I didn't say that about blockchain either. I said it's a scam generator. Cryptocurrencies are more like the scam of being paid in company credits in the company store, if you want to make comparisons to cash. It's not a great comparison, of course, because your whole question assumes that "cryptocurrencies are just like cash" which they are very much not.
Partly because what I already said. But partly... well I don't think you're interested in hearing anything anything, so what's the point?
If you've gotten this far, and are this invested, then you'd need to get over the cognitive dissonance of that, and a HN comment won't help.
> Ether will move to PoS within the coming 2 years.
Did you mean to agree with the poster? Because you just perfectly proved how even ether has kicked the can down the road to avoid upsetting the apple cart.
I was responding to the hyperbole of calling it "the next decade". It's an extreme exaggeration, just like it's an extreme exaggeration to say that crypto's only use case is ransomware.
> I was responding to the hyperbole of calling it "the next decade". It's an extreme exaggeration,
I really hope you're right. History says otherwise. And I don't think it'll happen (not really), because the people who need to move are the same people who are financially invested in mining.
It's not hyperbole. It's been delayed for enough years that "any decade now" is actually fair.
> just like it's an extreme exaggeration to say that crypto's only use case is ransomware.
Well, other crime against your fellow man, too. And speculation.
> if you were intellectually honest you would agree that the decentralized web/crypto both have positives and negatives.
If this were 2010 then I would agree that it's interesting technology with some possible use cases not yet clarified.
But this is 2022, and it's now time to turn this around to focus on actual solution first, get-rich-quick as a possible incidental side effect. Because we've had over a decade now of get-rich-quick first, "maybe solve a real problem, not sure how because I've not talked to domain experts to find out what the real problems actually are" as incidental.
Like, talk to any contract lawyer and ask them if "smart contract" is a solution to any of their hard problems. It's not. It just makes everything much worse.
Or currencies. You can't just (at best) say you'll bolt on AML/KYC to your perfectly anonymous currency "later". And without AML/KYC it's not actually a solution that anybody wants (except very rare anarcho-libertarians and ransomware people).
So does this whole space have positives? It's not impossible. Every single so-called solution in this space has made its intended space worse, and also created huge externalities (environment, e-waste (old mining rigs), resource shortages (GPU, SSD), etc...).
But it's not impossible that any decade now something will actually be a solution. But because the "solutions" are also get-rich-quick schemes, the "inventors" don't want to wait for the solution to actually be... a solution. Launch now, get rich, problem (of not being rich) solved.
Take PoS for example. Greta Thunberg is wrong to attack boomers. Looking at the age bracket of cryptocurrency supporters it seems that millennials are also pushing that whole "environment" thing to future generations. "Oh, it'll be fine with PoS eventually. But today we can burn the environment a bit because I gots to get paid".
So no, it doesn't "have" positives. It's one of the infinitely many pools of ideas where positives could come from, but haven't yet.
The author seems to miss that one of Moxie's central criticisms is that, all else being equal, distributed solutions tend to lag centralized ones.
The reason for OpenSea et al. providing centralized services isn't accidental--it's not that it's "early days"--but that whenever there's an opportunity to innovate, those innovations will first appear for centralized services.
If we hope for distributed solutions to be on par with centralized, we are in effect hoping for an inefficient market, or one without innovation (giving distributed services time to catch up).
This criticism, in a way, has little to do with "Web3" at all. Instead, it's justification for the alternative solution Moxie has been working toward: one where crypto(graphy, not currency) allows the cost and feature advantages of centralization while preserving (or in fact exceeding) the user privacy of distributed solutions.
(I have some criticisms of Moxie's vision, but the author seems not to engage with the argument's real substance.)
This was the part I latched onto in Moxie's piece too: "A protocol moves much more slowly than a platform. After 30+ years, email is still unencrypted; meanwhile WhatsApp went from unencrypted to full e2ee in a year. People are still trying to standardize sharing a video reliably over IRC; meanwhile, Slack lets you create custom reaction emoji based on your face."
In the Firefox OS days here at Mozilla, I was a huge believer and advocate for our desire to push web protocols & standards into mobile. But as it turns out, proprietary walled-garden mobile platforms move faster than web standards - who knew?!
But, I like the phrase you used - "hoping for an inefficient market". At this point in my tech career and looking around at what the tech market is doing in the world, I think slowing down and getting less efficient might be good for us?
> The author seems to miss that one of Moxie's central criticisms is that, all else being equal, distributed solutions tend to lag centralized ones.
Distributed crypto offerings do not lag much behind in terms of features, but they are costly and inefficient, which drives most users to centralized solutions.
This creates positive network effects for OpenSea (nft), Binance, Coinbase (crypto trading).
L2 / zk-rollups / validiums have potential to change this balance of power by introducing low-cost, fast transactions.
Which can be achieved by making transaction execution/verification faster through ZK proofs and offloading execution off-chain (without sacrificing security). There is intense competition in the space (zkSync, Polygon Hermez, Starkware, Loopring and others).
Some large players like banks or BaaS companies may create or license their own private rollups.
So far most wallets do not support L2 rollups, I've only heard of Argent supporting zkSync.
This is of course a hybrid solution, not for purists.
Blockchain critics will have fun criticizing it for the next 5 years while it scales. :)
It’s a fair point, but it’s unclear to me to what extent these hybrid solutions retain the advantages of blockchain and to what extent they give them up.
I’m not at all an expert, but I’ve been wondering if a world where we all regularly use Bitcoin, but only via large, centralized L2 networks, would be one which feels exactly like the world of today, except (say) Visa or Stripe use Bitcoin instead of…fedwire? I dunno?…for clearance. And as a user, would that actually benefit me?
> what extent these hybrid solutions retain the advantages of blockchain and to what extent they give them up
Security guarantees don't change, zk-proof will guarantee that your transaction was processed as is (without modifications). The resiliency of a rollup would depend on how it's off-chain "backend" is implemented - if it has good load-balancing, if it is multi-cloud etc.
It's possible that a specific rollup can try to censor your transaction (similar to Visa or Mastercard).
I can see a future where if a specific rollup cannot accept your transaction, your wallet would retry successfully with another rollup or try a censorship-resistant channel to push your transaction through.
Transaction fees being negligible simplify the UX for user, they may not even know there was any problem unless they look.
I don't know much about Bitcoin L2 networks, but it makes sense that lots of infra/business logic around that would be implemented by centralized companies (Square, Stripe?). No smart contracts support is a limiting factor.
>but that whenever there's an opportunity to innovate, those innovations will first appear for centralized services.
This isn't really true, though. Even in the example he gave, NFT royalties, they appeared first in individual NFT contracts before they were on OpenSea.
Moxie spoke about how web3 currently works. Not about the hundreds of proposed solutions. And no, proposals don’t “solve” anything, until they’re actually implemented and tested.
I think it's even worse than that, because a significant part of Moxie's argument is that the current centralized web3 approaches have structural advantages (especially speed of innovation) that will leave the "proposed solutions" constantly trying to catch up. And the incredible popularity of the centralized approaches seems to suggest users in the web3 space value those advantages more than they value adhering to the distributed principles supposedly at the heart of web3.
To their credit, the author of the rebuttal acknowledges that the Opensea type approaches are problematic, but misses the greater argument around why they're popular and why trying to replace them with something "better" will be difficult.
No way I can take someone seriously if they think Axie Infinity is saving the Philippines/Vietnam from poverty.
Edit:
Crypto maximalists don’t understand history, economics, or globalism. All while claiming that crypto will solve for globalised economies and save people from poverty.
Do they know why these countries are poor? Do they understand colonialism and modern slave labor? Or that colonising countries dictate the global economy and devalue developing world currencies? And that these countries are poor by design, and their weakened economic status is a result of colonial history?
How does a “Play 2 Earn” game that is provably negative sum by making money from fees - where the poor ”scholars” have to rent tokens from the rich “lords” and share 30% of their income with, help the poor come out of poverty?
Had the same reaction. Seemed like such a silly thing to say. Does he know what the scale of Axie is and what the scale of national GDPs are? Seems so ridiculous.
But I also don't agree with your characterization of developing nation economies. You have your own blinders on. The degrees of freedom a developing country has are constrained ... but not mainly by outside market forces ... more their own internal institutional structures.
India was isolated from all Western banking for the main part for a long time. Also insulated from competition from Western companies. That was not a good time for India. Turns out your own institutions can fuck up pretty well on their own. Openness and liberalization of an economy also come with complications but these are not "slave labor" and "colonization". I feel you have been exposed to some ideologies but have not actually tried to manufacture something in a developing country and seen the friction that prevents local economies from leveling up ... its not the EU or America stopping Indian manufacturing from leveling up ... its India's own internal complexities.
If it was possible to do what you suggest, Taiwan, South Korea, and now Chinese advanced manufacturing would not exist. Countries just need to get their act together.
A lot of your response assumes I was talking about local manufacturing - but I was specifically talking about poverty and its relation to the globalised economy. Local manufacturing solves some things, not all things. But poverty is a result of innumerable things, of which manufacturing is only a small portion.
There is an inherent arbitrage performed by developed economies through outsourcing, and Axie Infinity demonstrates that wonderfully. Obviously the story would never be “GameFi solves poverty in the USA” because it pays well below minimum wage in developed economies.
Aside: There is no basis in humanity that foreign currencies are significantly lower in value than western currencies. It’s purely a result of historical economical forces resulting from colonisation.
The US was a colony to the UK. Singapore was some shanty island town that even Malaysia did NOT want to take in because how bad it was.
Just like you cannot have a fit body without exercising, you cannot become a prosperous nation without hard work and a predictable rule-of-law. There is no way around it and to blame "colonialism" is nothing but empty words that will help no one.
Yes, and by that view, the USA is /still/ colonised by Europeans. The colonised Natives are not represented in any meaningful way.
> Singapore was some shanty island town that even Malaysia did NOT want to take in because how bad it was.
You can feel this way, but that does not justify the colonisation of Singapore by Europe. In fact, it begs the question as to why they would colonise such a “shanty town” if it wasn’t worth something to them.
> cannot become a prosperous nation without hard work
I’m not sure which fantasy you ascribe to that ignores how much hard manual labor the developing world’s people perform for the global economy. In fact, that is literally the basis of colonialism - to find able-bodied workers to enslave and resource-abundant regions to extract value from.
> and a predictable rule-of-law
I don’t know why you have such a negative impression of developing lands, to blame them for all their faults and claim they lack “rule of law” entirely. As if this is perfect in developed democracies, and the sole reason for their status.
> to blame "colonialism" is nothing but empty words that will help no one.
It is important to acknowledge history and not completely ignore it like you have. Regardless, you are right in that “blaming colonialism” helps no one - but that’s because colonisers don’t want to take the blame and fix things, but instead control the global playing field. This affects the poor classes of developing countries too, if you haven’t noticed.
Anyways, I get the feeling none of this will educate you, so probably not worth my time.
I completely agree with you. Crypto bros for some reasons think they are saving the world. The original claim is just pure ignorance. To get start with Axie or other so-called GameFI, players need to have money first. For people with small capitals, they need to participate in 'Guild' and borrow the money from the rich (be it in digital or physical world). So, it is just capitalism all over again. Spending all your time maximizing some games won't save a nation from poverty.
> Illegal images being sent to your wallet, forcing you to go to prison in some places.
My god, I hadn't even considered that, but they're right, there's currently n established blockchain the requires permission to send anything. That's fine with money, but with NFTs that actually represent something that could be a serious risk.
I forget the name but there was an NFT set that was dropped straight to wallets. It was various pixilated dicks. Kinda funny and cute I suppose. They had rarity traits etc.
Someone can send you illegal material through the regular snail mail and call the cops as soon as the mail is delivered. Is this really that different?
I don't have to pay ethereum gas to hand the proof over to the police or to burn it if they don't care. The mail system also doesn't keep a public, permanent record of all things mailed to me that any political opponents might use to imply things.
There are also countries where you don't want to let the police know you own crypto because of laws against alternative currencies.
Real world comparisons don't really work well with public blockchains.
That's the point of this sort of (hypothetical?) attack: poor Bob now has a poison envelope on his private key, he has something which roughly constitutes 'ownership' of illegal bits.
Does our legal structure support immediately transferring it to a null wallet as a disclaimer of ownership? Bob doesn't want to be the one to make that case law. Nor does he want to hand over his private key, or clean his wallet out of everything but the evil image and then hand over his private key.
Basically there are no good options, although burning the offending data by sending it to /dev/null should emerge as a valid defense. Will it?
"I swear officer, the only proof I have of ever being sent those images is this folder filled with infinitely detailed top-down photographs of each one of them lying face-up in my trash can""
But hey, if it was a Bored Cryptokitty, then Bob can't sell it and no one can buy it anymore, so clearly, he doesn't own it.
The same principle should apply to evil bits, the real kicker being that the whole rigamarole is now written to a shared database whose, er, immutability is part of the product on offer.
The NFT principle only applies when content consumers value maintaining a chain of ownership to content authors. In cases where a clear chain of provenance is more of a liability than an asset, it's probably more desirable to forge a new copy for resale and shred the original.
I suspect this is perhaps a part of why OpenSea maintains a lens over all wallet content requests... the impact of a mass mailing of evil bits to wallets would be devastating to the platform, perhaps to the entire crypto ecosystem. Any corporation who wants to be seen as legitimate must have the capability to keep evil bits out of users eyes.
I personally wouldn't want to put possible key disclosure laws to the test in this situation.
With post mail I'd imagine that scenario is somewhat timing-critical, whereas I'm not sure how feasible it is to delete things if they are in the blockchain (consensus for deletion? How does that work?) and the police seize all the computers in your house.
A ransomware operator could send the loot from an operation, channelled through a well publicized address, to someone they don't like which makes their account undistinguishable from that of a fence as seen by blockchain analytics firms maintaining the blacklists of addresses legit players do not task to. Or they could blackmail someone by threatening to burn their account by sending tainted funds.
Politicians could be sent unwanted donations to dirty their reputation by making it looked they're supported by the wrong people.
You can already do that though the regular old banking system, no difference there. Banks monitor and take action when they detect money laundering systems in their transfers, and they use graph analysis that's not dissimilar from the analysis law enforcement uses for tracking anonymous wallets. The mixers in the cryptocurrency world exist as school kids acting as fencers in the real world. A crime ring could definitely "taint" a politician's bank account if they wish to do so, but the manual oversight of the banking system probably wouldn't flag them.
It's not that this isn't a problem with cryptocurrencies, it's just that it's a problem that already exists in the real world.
I realize that it is said to be prohibitively expensive to store an image on-chain - but if an actual illegal image was stored on-chain would that be irreversible? Basically I’m wondering if making the entire ledger illegal to posses is as simple as ponying up the cost? Could that bring down an entire crypto currency? Sorry if this sounds naive, I am just not sure what is currently possible.
It has already happened, and nobody cared. Very early on, the bitcoin blockchain ended up playing host to some illegal images, but nobody took down bitcoin or bitcoin nodes for storing them.
It would be practically impossible, the only way you can remove something from the blockchain is to ask all nodes to revert to an earlier version and purge the offending blocks and any blocks related to them.
This is also why using public blockchains for storing personal information is such a stupid idea, illegal even if the GDPR is involved in any way. Blockchains are designed so no information can be altered or redacted, and that's often an overlooked problem.
Possession if child porn is illegal in many countries. If digital wallets convey any kind of ownership (which anyone using cryptocurrency or NFTs would argue in favour of) then that implies receiving child porn makes you be in possession of illegal material. I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure not reporting such content to the police immediately would be a crime, and even if you do the right thing the police might still suspect you if you're unlucky.
Someone malicious could definitely send a collection of child porn through the mail and report you the second it arrives. If they can time it right, you could definitely be in trouble and the police would likely take all of your digital storage and search for more. It's a lot harder to do such things anonymously in the real world, where security cameras and physical mail boxes are a thing, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone would actually pull off something awful like this.
Of course, the police probably won't arrest you if you immediately report the illegal contents and hand over the evidence (or destroy the evidence without involving the police), but that's not as easy with the blockchain. Transferring the NFT out of your account would likely involve paying some kind of transfer fee (ethereum gas is quite expensive) and the police aren't going to pay that for you. You won't be finding or suing the sender of the child porn either, because this stuff isn't hard to do anonymously. Even if you do manage to transfer the illegal content out of your wallet, the blockchain will forever keep a public record of the content you once owned, so even if you do everything right the accusation of paedophilia will forever be easy to make.
> A lot of NFTs do use Google Drive or Imgur or whatever. However, I can promise you that one of the first things people do when making sure they are not rugged (crypto-term for scammed) is to make sure it’s not possible for the author to suddenly delete or change the image.
I'm curious about this point; if the only thing stored on the chain is a URL (including Drive/Imgur) then there's no possible way to actually preclude the content from changing right?
It actually does seem very weird that people aren't at least putting a #sha1= in the NFT URL to be able to verifiably know if the underlying content did change.
> I'm curious about this point; if the only thing stored on the chain is a URL (including Drive/Imgur) then there's no possible way to actually preclude the content from changing right?
When you use something like IPFS the url is created from a hash of the file contents, so it is not possible to change the file without creating a new url.
Sure if it's IPFS. The article seemed to suggest that there were NFTs that were just Imgur urls and that a savvy purchaser of that NFT would somehow ensure the Imgur image couldn't be deleted or changed, which I don't believe is possible.
seems simple enough right .. to add a ?h=HASH_OF_IMAGE in the URL .. maybe the real issue is that fact that the server pr the actual image itself can disappear ?
This is the TL;DR for me. Perhaps a lot of this will evolve and we’ll end up with some fantastic technologies that are truly revolutionary.
But, a lot of us are pretty jaded by “blockchain is a game changer” with no tangible evidence beyond BTC as a highly unstable store of value and claims of some great future state.
> (...) beyond BTC as a highly unstable store of value and claims of some great future state.
Bitcoin is not a store of value, and never was. A highly volatile asset, specially one whose market price halves overnight without much surprise, does not serve the purpose of a store of value.
I mean, this week alone Bitcoin dropped around 10%, and around 25% during the past month. This is not value being stored. If an asset manager lost 25% of it's wallet in a month they'd be out of a job.
This is the dilemma in a nutshell. There are lots of incredibly smart people working in the web3 space who are aware of its limitations, but for every one of those, there are 1000 people just trying to make as much money as possible.
OpenSea could very easily die. They have momentum, but not a lot of moat. They also don't have a lot of community good will. A well funded competitor could take them down quickly.
Might not happen, but as of now it definitely could.
Sure. My expectation is Coinbase will clobber them, and I'm not excited about that from a decentralization viewpoint. They will have a moat since they're also where a lot of people keep their money. Money will never have to leave the platform, which is an advantage.
There are projects in the works for decentralized exchanges. There are challenges there, but they will eventually exist. I doubt they'll ever dominate, though.
It's a fair question. They don't need the blockchain until the money/nft leaves the platform. But to keep credibility, they'll need the NFTs to show up in on-chain addresses. They may end up only doing that on-request.
The NBA TopShot collectibles work on a blockchain, though the media being traded (NBA game clips) can only be seen on the official platform and you can't sell the collectibles on any other platform. And they're their own on-ramp by taking credit card purchases for the collectibles. As things stand, there's really no good reason for them to be on a blockchain at all, and personally I don't consider them to be a real NFT. None of that has stopped them from being successful, though.
Not particularly. What verification means there is verifying that a certain Bored Ape is really on the "official" Bored Ape contract. It's verifying the contract address and nothing else. The NFTs themselves can be traded anywhere, there's no lockin for OpenSea there.
It's trivial for Twitter to add another contract address verification source.
Will OpenSea verify an NFT minted on a non-OpenSea platform? I had assumed the answer is “no” but I’m not 100% sure.
> It's trivial for Twitter to add another contract address verification source.
It’s technically trivial, but then they are putting themselves in a position to verify the verifiers. It seems like they are outsourcing verification because they want to avoid the overhead of deciding what a verified NFT is, which is something they would have to do if they invited in more sources.
>Will OpenSea verify an NFT minted on a non-OpenSea platform?
Yes. All the popular NFTs were minted on their own contracts, not on OpenSea.
My suspicion is Twitter will move to verifying for themselves in the long run. I get why they don't want to do it to start, but the hassles of dealing with any 3rd party will grow over time.
> This is true, wallets suck so much it’s funny. I was sent a £2k NFT the other day which I can’t sell because Opensea has glitched and my wallet won’t show me the NFT, which means I can’t send it or sell it!
This is not true. An NFT that follows the ERC721 contract standard has a `safeTransferFrom()` function that a token holder can call to initiate a transfer. You do not have to depend on OpenSea: https://etherscan.io/address/0x5754f44bC96F9F0Fe1a568253452a...
You can also use an alternative NFT swapping protocol, such as the ZeroX-backed Trader.xyz: https://trader.xyz/ (fully open source) to initiate a swap.
Yes, quite ironic that the author denounces OpenSea while simultaneously ignoring that they could actually sell their NFT elsewhere if they wanted to. This demonstrates the value of marketplace centralisation.
Decentralized exchanges for NFTs are being worked on. No one has quite nailed the full end-to-end user experience yet, but it will happen. It's inevitable.
The problem that the wallet system (which especially the web3-folks push as "you login with your wallet, so easy!" etc), which is very much supposed to be the user agent is hiding it from him, instead of allowing him to interact with it is another failure, even if "moving to less-broken wallet software" is a solution.
The real problem is that showing a user what NFTs they own requires an indexing service.
Each NFT collection is represented by its own smart contract. So the only way to show a user what NFTs they have is to either iterate over all of the ERC721 contracts on the blockchain and iterate over all of the tokenIds calling `ownerOf()` for each one (millions upon millions of tokenIds to iterate through) or to maintain an indexing service that listens for transfer and mint events and updates state continuously for every wallet address.
Another issue is that someone can send an NFT to an address with or without being requested, just like an email can be sent with or without being requested. On cheaper networks, spam NFTs are a real problem. So OpenSea will hide NFTs unless they're from a reputable collection.
In my opinion, OpenSea's key strength is their indexing service. Beating OpenSea in a decentralized manner will require a decentralized indexer. Protocols like The Graph (https://thegraph.com/en/) are an example of how to do that in a decentralized way.
Reasonable rebuttal to reasonable article. I wouldn't accuse MM of lying, though, I think it's very easy to miss something like whether a thing is normally held on a simple apache VPS.
As for dipping your toes, I'd say it's maybe the hardest area of coding to do that in. Generally I find the documentation is lacking, everything is moving really quickly, there's a huge amount of jargon, and there's a huge number of protocols and standards to read about, with very little authority on what is worth spending time on.
I have a collection of comments in my side projects where I've discovered various surprising things about how blockchain stuff works. Others I know have similar pages of notes on how particular things in the space are arranged.
Moxie captures why this is so: there's a gold rush, and appearances seem to matter more than substance.
I co-founded Fabrica.land in 2017, and in mid 2018 we used an NFT to perform a real estate transaction. That's already 3.5 years, and NFTs were already around.
The first transaction was a bit "rough", but perfectly valid. Lot of progress since then.
From [0]: The ERC-20 (Ethereum Request for Comments 20), proposed by Fabian Vogelsteller in November 2015, is a Token Standard that implements an API for tokens within Smart Contracts.
Note: yes, ERC-20 has a few flaws [1], and subsequent ERC have improved on it.
ERC-20 is for fungible tokens, not NFTs, as I'm sure you know. If you want to trace that idea back, you can go to Vitalik's colored coins idea for bitcoin that predates Ethereum all together.
But yes, it's true that NFTs are older than 3 years old. I thought that was an odd statement.
So far I've read barely one article that mentions web3 and manages to describe the fundamental concepts and problems. Instead, most people writing about this seem to assume that the "problems" web3 is supposed to fix are completely self-evident, and then everyone who is in favor of the current "vision" of web3 simply assume that blockchain is the correct technological answer.
It doesn't seem that hard to state relatively quickly and simply:
Current ways of handling data online generally result in large centralized databases under the control of relatively or extremely large corporations, which gives these corporations too much control over (a) what data is accessible (b) what can be done with the data (c) the lifetime of the data.
Sensible folks generally acknowledge that this either is a problem, or is likely to become one.
So the central issue is: how do we have data available online without it under the control of corporations that run centralized databases?
----
In response to this, cryptocurrency advocates point to blockchain technology and say, in essence, "look! there's an example of a technology that does exactly that"
However, for this to be the best solution to the problem requires a few things to be true that are either untrue or not known (yet) to be true.
* was blockchain designed to handle arbitrary data blobs, or was it designed to handle transaction records?
* does pretending that any arbitrary data blob can be treated as a transaction record help or hinder solutions?
* are there other ways to distribute data storage and access that don't depend on the fundamental technologies/concepts inherent in blockchains?
----
Why anyone feels they can be certain that the answers all indicate that blockchain is the obviously correct technology to use for distributed trusted data storage and access totally escapes me.
Fully agree that these articles often fail to put things in a broader context.
But I'll take it a step further than 'Blockchain is not the answer' and indicate that Web3 itself probably isn't an answer to that much in the first place.
"this either is a problem, or is likely to become one."
Web 1/2 approaches have tremendous advantages.
As the original article stated - people don't want to run servers.
People don't want to manage confusing things.
We want everything mostly SaaS.
Some of those push a bit too far, like Apple locking you out of your Mac - but this is probably best dealt with with legislation.
The privacy and control benefits of self hosting are limited to mostly niche use cases, and of course, blockchains have problems, as you mention.
Web 2 is just a few bits of legislation, a few rational consumer choices, and a few fewer crappy companies away from being fairly ideal.
Don't use iCloud, avoid Google for anything other than search, don't 'depend' on Facebook or Twitter and already you're doing well.
Dialogue and experiments are great, but NFT/Crypto so far is just a lot of MLM noise.
> Just to clarify, this is what the author wanted to do. You can create distributed apps easily using Fleek or by manually uploading to IPFS, Arweave or Filecoin.
Seems like the author has never build an app before. There nothing easy even with the current tech. It's much harder with the tech they mentioned.
Even with that, there's a centralized system anywhere. Liek Arweave's DNS system etc.
I feel like someone should take the phrase “This is true at the moment, but there is work being done on…” and set it to a catchy melody, since it’s clearly the national anthem of the crypto community.
For the verses of the song I would suggest lines such as:
> This is a lie. Most NFTs which sell for millions use IPFS, Arweave, Filecoin or others for decentralised storage of data
Nope - do your research better before you use the word "lie". BAYC did it until very very recently for instance. Definitely as of 27th September they were using cloud functions as you can clearly see in my gist here: https://gist.github.com/JofArnold/bf2c4a094fcdd4aee2f52983c7... I know there is/was plenty of others too because I looked deeply into this around the time.
Ok but currently they are using IPFS so does it matter if they once used the cloud? Go here[1] and scroll down to tokenURI and input 1 and you will get an IPFS hash back.
I don't think the fact they are now using IPFS makes it any more credible either; IPFS is not a new thing and the valuations were huge already by September. They should have done it from the start. Furthermore that they can mess around with the base URL is not cool.
* Although thanks for posting that as without that fact I admit my story was incomplete.
> This is a lie. Most NFTs which sell for millions use IPFS, Arweave, Filecoin or others for decentralised storage of data. A lot of NFTs do use Google Drive or Imgur or whatever.
This is such a he said she said. Can we get some stats on this? Are NFTs primarily stored on the chain or linked to a URL? I'd like to see the breakdown by platform, Opensea, etc.
The thing I think that sucks that hasn’t been covered is how you have to have a wallet specific to each blockchain I want to interact with. I have to know what blockchain the web3 property uses.
Why can’t I have a like universal wallet? I don’t want my NFTs divided among 4-5 wallets, especially as new chains are created as time goes on. Kinda a sucky user experience.
> Illegal images being sent to your wallet, forcing you to go to prison in some places.
Images are not stored in a wallet. NFTs and ERC20s do not actually live in a Ethereum wallet. They live in a smart contract. And that smart contract has a ledger of account for who has the right to transfer that particular asset.
The images themselves, unless they are SVGs, are typically stored on Filecoin or Arweave or a centralized server and marked by an IPFS hash.
Spam NFTs are just like spam email. The receipt of something illicit or illegal does not mean automatic imprisonment anywhere that I'm aware of. If you live in such a jurisdiction, I suggest you flee immediately.
Isn't it the case that these alternative blockchains are only cheap because practically nobody uses them? There's a recent example from the Polygon blockchain, which was also sold on having gas fees on the order of a penny, until the recent launch of a Polygon blockchain game which drove enough transactions to push the gas fees up to half a dollar.
They don't seem to really be solving the scalability issues, but rather just kicking them down the road, at which point yet another blockchain will pop up to "solve" the issue.
One point about NFT metadata and the debate about whether it's centralized or not.
NFTs don't all have to be maximally decentralized. It should be perfectly okay that some NFTs are not on-chain, purely immutable artwork. Besides the extreme constraints that places on the art (given that data storage on a blockchain not purpose-built for storage is expensive), there are some advantages to having mutable NFTs.
You can create evolving NFTs by making them mutable. Users can upgrade their skins (such as adding a Santa hat during Christmas). The NFTs could respond to real-world events (maybe the weather or the outcome of a sporting event influences the artwork). You can use them as game characters that level up in response to playtime, presumably the artwork for the character would change as the character levels up, etc.
It's very difficult to do the above in an immutable, pure fashion, without thinking of all the possibilities beforehand. It's okay that just the mere ownership transfer mechanic is decentralized. Yes, a project could theoretically rug its users and change the art to a poop emoji, but in practice projects develop a reputation over time and those that foster goodwill stand to gain more from community loyalty than they'd gain from pulling B.S.
Even in the case that a project were to rug its community, however, it's entirely possible for the community to create a new smart contract that "wraps" the NFT as a new NFT (you deposit an NFT from a particular collection, and get back a new NFT and the old NFT is burned). And if enough members of a community rallied around the wrapped version, then it could be treated as a consensus fork.
Escape hatches are one of the features that distinguish Web3 from Web2.
Take the money out of equation, and i'm all for it.
Which is what Moxie is suggesting, more or less..
Sadly it's all about money re/distribution, even if all try to dress it in all kind of masks on top..
With a wallet substituting my Identity (or trust, or whatever else that is not money).. it's no different to any other substitution - email, belonging to a club (FAANG+oauth), whatever. Except more involving..
This is a okay response, although the language ain't great.
Half of Moxie's post were using the evil YC company OpenSea as an argument against decentralization, which seemed strange. It's like arguing against decentralized email because so many use Gmail.
The arguments against Infura etc. especially fell flat, as they are just proxies to the decentalized blockchain, the only value they provide is providing exactly the same decentralized blockchain data as your own node would. It's not as decentralized as running your own node would be, but to call it centralization is still wrong.
The point is that when the proxy is a monopoly, it basically becomes the new, centralized source of truth rather than the actual decentralized source of truth.
If 90% of wallets utilize the OpenSea API what the blockchain says doesn't really matter anymore. OpenSea is effectively the new source of truth.
> It's like arguing against decentralized email because so many use Gmail.
Which Moxie does often do, including in the web3 article.
I respect Moxie's opinion on (de)centralization, but I just have different priorities to him. I am personally more concerned about one company (Facebook or Signal, although I do use the latter) owning and controlling access to a platform than I am about perfect end-to-end encryption and forward secrecy.
I should note that while I don't know of a "illegal image lives on-chain" solution, a solution to "illegal image is sent to your wallet" is found in Grin's Slatepacks: transactions have a synchronous component, so the receiver has to accept them.
So in theory, it might be possible to build a "pirate bay" on blockchain (presuming that it has capability to store huge amounts of data) and resist DMCA takedowns?
Buttcoiners' "future" is all about financializing everything. They have ZERO claim to "good old web 1.0 decentralization" because the original web was all about information wanting to be free!
Which means, the technical solutions to the questions raised in the original article this responds to, will probably not have time to be implemented before the rush is over.
Also, one of the main points of the first article, if not the main one (and certainly the first one) is that centralization is a feature, not a bug. People want a central authority and not bother themselves with running their own server/infrastructure.
So the only way for OpenSea to "die" is if it's replaced by a different, but similar, central authority.