Ask HN: What happens when someone copies an NFT onto another blockhain?
Let's say I'm the owner of the nyan cat NFT (I'm not). Is there anything that prevents someone from duplicating the nyan cat and putting it on another blockchain? If not, does the uniqueness of my nyan cat (which is on Ethereum, I believe), rest on the assumption that one blockchain will be the defacto NFT implementation, and the rest won't be taken seriously?
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Basically many mentioned everyone will know the Monalisa in Louvre is the original one or the starwars characters are owned by Disney.. Well the reason everyone knows that is because all those names built an outstanding brand and that's why everyone know the name "DISNEY who was the first creator of this NFT is a real deal. Same goes for watch market (Rolex, AP, RM &...)
So in the case that I save an image of unknown artist and put it in the blockchain and create a new NFT, considering that the artist behind the art is MR.NOBODY. Then who the hell can find out the real work was NOT done by Me until MR.NOBODY BECOME MR.SOMOBODY and find out about the fraud.
Keep in mind the date the NFT was created can't necessarily be a validation point alone since the date is only obvious when people got to know MR.NOBODY. (in other word, MR.NOBODY built a successful brand and became MR.SOMEBODY).
Any counter arguments which can help me and others to understand the scenario better ?
Basically many mentioned everyone will know the Monalisa in Louvre is the original one or the starwars characters are owned by Disney.. Well the reason everyone knows that is because all those names built an outstanding brand and that's why everyone know the name "DISNEY who was the first creator of this NFT is a real deal. Same goes for watch market (Rolex, AP, RM &...)
So in the case that I save an image of unknown artist and put it in the blockchain and create a new NFT, considering that the artist behind the art is MR.NOBODY. Then who the hell can find out the real work was NOT done by Me until MR.NOBODY BECOME MR.SOMOBODY and find out about the fraud.
Keep in mind the date the NFT was created can't necessarily be a validation point alone since the date is only obvious when people got to know MR.NOBODY. (in other word, MR.NOBODY built a successful brand and became MR.SOMEBODY).
Any counter arguments which can help me and others to understand the scenario better ?
Let’s say the Ethereum main chain forks into two over contention over an EIP.
You are now effectively holding two copies on it on different blockchains and can transfer them independently.
Which one is “the real one”? That’s purely subjective. Just like with fungible tokens (“Bitcoin cash is the real bitcoin”)
The same principles apply when just making a copy on the other chain.
It’s data and signatures, the rest is just interpretation.
You are now effectively holding two copies on it on different blockchains and can transfer them independently.
Which one is “the real one”? That’s purely subjective. Just like with fungible tokens (“Bitcoin cash is the real bitcoin”)
The same principles apply when just making a copy on the other chain.
It’s data and signatures, the rest is just interpretation.
so, the principle of non-fungability is now rendered invalid. The whole point to a unique token is the trait of uniqueness. Moving it to another chain is just a derivative.
I see. So then among the (enumerable) number of blockhains that people trust, the first token (not exactly sure if "first" is as simple as it sounds) = the "real" one, and the rest are replicas?
The recent hype is unfounded. NFTs are simply tokens like others, but the difference is that the tokens itself are unique.
A normal token is like having 5 dollars, with no individual/per token owner, history or storage.
With an NFT you will have 5 times 1 dollar with their own owner, history and storage.
Their value should be based on the legal contract or utility that they represents. Which often is 0.
For programmers it should be easy to understand.
Token: key value store of a global userid->amount
NFT: NFT class (name, jpg checksum, jpgurl) for example
And a global key value store of: userid->NFT instance
Just read any ERC20 and ERC721 template, it’s just a few lines of code.
A normal token is like having 5 dollars, with no individual/per token owner, history or storage.
With an NFT you will have 5 times 1 dollar with their own owner, history and storage.
Their value should be based on the legal contract or utility that they represents. Which often is 0.
For programmers it should be easy to understand.
Token: key value store of a global userid->amount
NFT: NFT class (name, jpg checksum, jpgurl) for example
And a global key value store of: userid->NFT instance
Just read any ERC20 and ERC721 template, it’s just a few lines of code.
The value of that NFT is directionally proportional to people's recognition and trust in that block chain.
For example for someone who has not heard of the chain, the contract is meaningless and worthless.
I hope these two sentences highlights my feeling about this. That said I've been following some of those artists for years and I'm glad they're getting paid. I just feel bad for the other talented 98% who are missing the bus with their jaw on the floor drooling.
For example for someone who has not heard of the chain, the contract is meaningless and worthless.
I hope these two sentences highlights my feeling about this. That said I've been following some of those artists for years and I'm glad they're getting paid. I just feel bad for the other talented 98% who are missing the bus with their jaw on the floor drooling.
What happens when someone prints a replica of a Picasso?
Nothing.
Nothing.
So then the original Picasso is known to be original because it was signed by its creator, whose key is known? How is that key verified initially?
Well, the initial owner buys (or receives as a gift) the painting directly from Picasso. That's an easy one!
It gets more complicated later: experts assess the credibility of the painting by examining the ownership history, if available, the signature on the painting, the quality of the work, chemical properties of the pigments and canvas, etc. They sometimes get it wrong, though (cf. Beltracchi!). It's more a probability that a work is genuine, rather than a 100% certainty.
It gets more complicated later: experts assess the credibility of the painting by examining the ownership history, if available, the signature on the painting, the quality of the work, chemical properties of the pigments and canvas, etc. They sometimes get it wrong, though (cf. Beltracchi!). It's more a probability that a work is genuine, rather than a 100% certainty.
an original picasso is a historic artifact with the same paint that the artist himself used and his brush marks etc.
a copy isn’t. an nft is just bytes. a copy is exactly the same as the original. it’s impossible to get an exact copy of a picasso because he himself only ever painted one. you can carbon date it etc
a copy isn’t. an nft is just bytes. a copy is exactly the same as the original. it’s impossible to get an exact copy of a picasso because he himself only ever painted one. you can carbon date it etc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amu2mOsIz-w
There are experts that can verify Picasso. Digital assets are copied verbatim with 100% fidelity and zero error.
There are experts that can verify Picasso. Digital assets are copied verbatim with 100% fidelity and zero error.
I could be missing something big but to me the principle of nft seems to be to find a greater fool who will buy it, and the crypto part helps sell it to the greater fool.
For an ownership right to be meaningful, it needs to have some legally recognized meaning by your centralized authority. If I have a peice of paper that says I own a house or a car or whatever, it’s only useful because I can show that in a court and the people with guns working for the state will give it to me instead of someone else with a fraudulent claim. And if you have that, then the distributed crypto part is redundant... It gets more complicated with art; especially like the jpeg that was just sold at an auction. What does it mean to own that digital image? What value/ rights does ownership give me? But, fundamentally the ownership being tabulated in a blockchain doesn’t do much a piece of official looking paper doesn’t do, except sound more exciting. I think of it is as notarizing a title to something, but in a new cool way associated with getting rich off Bitcoin.
For an ownership right to be meaningful, it needs to have some legally recognized meaning by your centralized authority. If I have a peice of paper that says I own a house or a car or whatever, it’s only useful because I can show that in a court and the people with guns working for the state will give it to me instead of someone else with a fraudulent claim. And if you have that, then the distributed crypto part is redundant... It gets more complicated with art; especially like the jpeg that was just sold at an auction. What does it mean to own that digital image? What value/ rights does ownership give me? But, fundamentally the ownership being tabulated in a blockchain doesn’t do much a piece of official looking paper doesn’t do, except sound more exciting. I think of it is as notarizing a title to something, but in a new cool way associated with getting rich off Bitcoin.
Provenance. There's a huge problem with fake art. It's not a matter of securing ownership with police/justice/government, but securing valid provenance. Anyhow I know very little about this and could be wrong.
Doesn’t provenance need to be proven outside of the blockchain by some experts or something though? And then written down into the blockchain? It seems like the same problem with a different “authority”
But that only has to occur once with the blockchain. Once it is encoded, and recognized to be authentic, the record will remain. Transfers will be recorded perfectly in the ledger. With physical items, the provenance has to be determined independently every single exchange.
The physical item still has to be examined by experts on every exchange, if you want to avoid the risk that the legitimate owner of the real thing sells a fake and secretly keeps the real item for themselves. The blockchain can't stop that.
NFTs are generally being used for digital art at this time. Physical art of course still has this requirement.
But authenticity is only a concern in physical art.
No, it's not. It's even more of a concern in digital art because until blockchains came around, it was virtually free to make a perfect digital copy of something.
What does it mean to own a digital artwork?
To own the copyright in it? Blockchain doesn't really do much here because ownership of copyrights is determined by the legal system not by a blockchain. (And normally when an artist sells an artwork they keep the copyright themselves; you only get the copyright too if you specifically negotiate with the artist for that, or if you commission the art as a "work-for-hire".)
To own the only digital copy of it? Blockchain does nothing to stop people making more digital copies of it. Blockchain is not a DRM system.
It seems like "owning" digital art where one doesn't have the copyright or exclusive possession of digital copies is basically a meaningless form of ownership. It is the status of "ownership" stripped of all substantive content.
To own the copyright in it? Blockchain doesn't really do much here because ownership of copyrights is determined by the legal system not by a blockchain. (And normally when an artist sells an artwork they keep the copyright themselves; you only get the copyright too if you specifically negotiate with the artist for that, or if you commission the art as a "work-for-hire".)
To own the only digital copy of it? Blockchain does nothing to stop people making more digital copies of it. Blockchain is not a DRM system.
It seems like "owning" digital art where one doesn't have the copyright or exclusive possession of digital copies is basically a meaningless form of ownership. It is the status of "ownership" stripped of all substantive content.
Of course it does. The NFT is created and recognized by the artist's public Ethereum address which can only be generated by their private key.
Full rights can be attached to the artwork, as was done with the Hashmasks sale: https://www.thehashmasks.com/
It is completely up to the artist to customize. It can be embedded into an NFT just like a license.md file can be embedded into an open source code repository. It can be explicit, rights can be transferable, or non-transferable.
Any other address producing an NFT is a forgery.
Blockchain is better than a DRM system. See:
https://audius.org/developers https://opensea.io/blog/announcements/opensea-raises-2-milli... https://eulerbeats.com/
Full rights can be attached to the artwork, as was done with the Hashmasks sale: https://www.thehashmasks.com/
It is completely up to the artist to customize. It can be embedded into an NFT just like a license.md file can be embedded into an open source code repository. It can be explicit, rights can be transferable, or non-transferable.
Any other address producing an NFT is a forgery.
Blockchain is better than a DRM system. See:
https://audius.org/developers https://opensea.io/blog/announcements/opensea-raises-2-milli... https://eulerbeats.com/
You seem deeply confused. Making perfect digital copies is not something that is prevented by blockchains. Computers make perfect digital copies. If you want to prevent people from making perfect digital copies you have to get rid of computers, and good luck with that!
You seem confused. Blockchains and crypto created the concept of digital scarcity 12 years ago. Its a $1.8 Trillion dollar industry and counting. It's going to eat traditional finance.
You can't copy a Bitcoin. And you can't copy an NFT.
https://coinmarketcap.com/ https://defipulse.com/
You can't copy a Bitcoin. And you can't copy an NFT.
https://coinmarketcap.com/ https://defipulse.com/
Pardon my ignorance re: NFT's, but does anyone verify the status of the person creating the NFT as the owner/creator of the digital art/item in question?
Marketplaces like OpenSeas, Nifty Gateway, Rarible, and Zora do work to verify known artists. But not all artists have a reputation, so surely there is risk among some of the NFTs out there. However, the price for unverified NFTs from unknown artists is usually reflective of that risk.
So... at the end of the day, it’s still centralized?
And if somewhere down that chain someone sells the real artwork to one person and the NFT to someone else? who owns the 'real' artwork - the guy with it on their wall, or the guy with the bits?
This seems no different from a fungible document in that regard. The trust is still with a verifying third party.
you may be right but these people are getting rich while we can only take satisfaction in knowing it may eventually crash
Absolutely, and lots more will be rich still. Find-the-greater-fool is often a very profitable game for everyone but the greatest fool, and I certainly didn’t mean to say no one should gamble on these, or even that we should run out of “fools” anytime soon.
It’s not like people who own bars of precious metals are betting that suddenly we will have a huge demand for gold and silver electronics after all, most are looking for something to offload to other people who want something easy to offload later still.
It’s not like people who own bars of precious metals are betting that suddenly we will have a huge demand for gold and silver electronics after all, most are looking for something to offload to other people who want something easy to offload later still.
By that logic you should buy into every Ponzi scheme and speculative bubble you can find.
What if we're a bit more creative and look at any of the number of trading card games (TCGs, such as Magic the Gathering).
One of the key issues of the TCGs is that in their digital form, trading of items is up to the whims of the game author. Providing a standardized NFT allows the players to trade in game items, just as you can trade physical cards today.
Just because you don't see the implications today (I agree, buying GIFs for 7M USDs is crazy) that doesn't meant that NFTs aren't a very interesting development.
One of the key issues of the TCGs is that in their digital form, trading of items is up to the whims of the game author. Providing a standardized NFT allows the players to trade in game items, just as you can trade physical cards today.
Just because you don't see the implications today (I agree, buying GIFs for 7M USDs is crazy) that doesn't meant that NFTs aren't a very interesting development.
Why would a developer implement this? What incentives do they have, other than being able to say they did? Digital cards being locked to an account was the greatest achievement for TCGs in the past decade. Non-tradability is a feature.
This applies to every single form of game-based NFT. What incentive does a Game Developer have in implementing their items on the blockchain? So I can trade my WoW Health Potions for FFXIV Health Potions? In a kind world, when I'm tired of WoW I could safely transfer my wealth from WoW to FFXIV, but does Blizzard want that? Better to ensure lock-in. Further there will never be the case where a game like WoW would recognize an item from FFXIV as canonical and equal value. I wouldn't be able to buy a FFXIV health potion and use it in WoW.
The only games that will implement NFT items will do it as a gimmick. TCG, or normal game, or anything.
I have yet to see an actual compelling use case that solves a problem that game developers have. Remember, solving a problem a player has doesn't mean the incentives for game developers are aligned.
This applies to every single form of game-based NFT. What incentive does a Game Developer have in implementing their items on the blockchain? So I can trade my WoW Health Potions for FFXIV Health Potions? In a kind world, when I'm tired of WoW I could safely transfer my wealth from WoW to FFXIV, but does Blizzard want that? Better to ensure lock-in. Further there will never be the case where a game like WoW would recognize an item from FFXIV as canonical and equal value. I wouldn't be able to buy a FFXIV health potion and use it in WoW.
The only games that will implement NFT items will do it as a gimmick. TCG, or normal game, or anything.
I have yet to see an actual compelling use case that solves a problem that game developers have. Remember, solving a problem a player has doesn't mean the incentives for game developers are aligned.
Simple, there exists an open marketplace and game theory suggests that some game developer will figure out that aligning the player's interests with their own will result in a profitable niche for themselves.
You may not necessarily be able to use FFXIV health potion in WoW, but could you imagine that an up and coming 3rd party dev gave you a discount because you had a FFXIV NFT? Could you conceive of a group of indie publishers banning together to create a collaborative ecosystem of NFTs that all their games share and recognize? Could you imagine achievements in certain games unlocking secret levels in others?
You may not necessarily be able to use FFXIV health potion in WoW, but could you imagine that an up and coming 3rd party dev gave you a discount because you had a FFXIV NFT? Could you conceive of a group of indie publishers banning together to create a collaborative ecosystem of NFTs that all their games share and recognize? Could you imagine achievements in certain games unlocking secret levels in others?
Their incentive is from getting a cut of transactions. And in theory, putting their items on blockchain would be more appealing to people spending money because blockchain makes them more permanent. The percentage of people that actually cares is really small so it’s unknown whether it’s worth it or not to implement it.
There’s also an interesting use case where game history is attached to the item. For example if you know some counter strike skin was used by pro player to win big tournament and that history is all locked into the blockchain. If I were going to be spending a ton of money on said skin, I would feel more comfortable doing so vs. if all that data is in the developers private database. Would other people feel the same way? Who knows
There’s also an interesting use case where game history is attached to the item. For example if you know some counter strike skin was used by pro player to win big tournament and that history is all locked into the blockchain. If I were going to be spending a ton of money on said skin, I would feel more comfortable doing so vs. if all that data is in the developers private database. Would other people feel the same way? Who knows
Why do this on a blockchain instead of with a central authority? If they have the copyright, they don’t need a blockchain they can just use a database. If they don’t have or don’t want to enforce copyright, why would the players want scarcity?
Sure, you can go and build your own API and setup your own trading infrastructure or simply use a public infrastructure that already exists. This also means that players can use existing NFT markets to trade these or even regular markets can be adapted to simply allow trading these.
Having the ability to take your digital cards and store them wherever you want and trade them with whomever you want is really nice, if you're trying to replicate standard offline trading card games.
Having the ability to take your digital cards and store them wherever you want and trade them with whomever you want is really nice, if you're trying to replicate standard offline trading card games.
Ownership and chain of title pre-dates many of the centralized governments that even exist today. For example, who was the monarch of Italy when Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa? How many times has the government changed hands since it was painted? How many times has the painting changed hands? How do you determine the Mona Lisa's authenticity?
Many heirlooms go back centuries and pass down through generations even as those generations move jurisdictions.
The Nyan cat gif NFT was composed by the original meme creator. That gives it value.
What does it mean for a baseball to be autographed with Babe Ruth's signature? If it's authentic, it means a great deal. There's no court of law that is going to validate if a Babe Ruth baseball is authentic or not and whether that fact gives it value or not. That is going to be up to the market of appraisers.
The crypto part gives you a perfect chain of custody. I'm giving you a digital item, that is provably rare and verifiably linked to the original creator of the artwork.
Many heirlooms go back centuries and pass down through generations even as those generations move jurisdictions.
The Nyan cat gif NFT was composed by the original meme creator. That gives it value.
What does it mean for a baseball to be autographed with Babe Ruth's signature? If it's authentic, it means a great deal. There's no court of law that is going to validate if a Babe Ruth baseball is authentic or not and whether that fact gives it value or not. That is going to be up to the market of appraisers.
The crypto part gives you a perfect chain of custody. I'm giving you a digital item, that is provably rare and verifiably linked to the original creator of the artwork.
Except the concept of authenticity doesn't really apply to digital information. There exist infinitely many copies of any piece of digital art and none of them is more authentic than the others. They are all equally authentic.
No. The whole point of blockchain and crypto is digital scarcity. Bitcoin has been proving this concept since 2009.
Why is a BCH coin cheaper than a BTC coin? Why is a Doge coin cheaper than either?
The supply & demand of each is completely different.
NFTs are not infinite. They are provably scarce. They not only cost money to mint, but any artist who cheapens their NFTs by distributing too many copies will see the effects in the price and valuation of their art.
Why is a BCH coin cheaper than a BTC coin? Why is a Doge coin cheaper than either?
The supply & demand of each is completely different.
NFTs are not infinite. They are provably scarce. They not only cost money to mint, but any artist who cheapens their NFTs by distributing too many copies will see the effects in the price and valuation of their art.
> NFTs are not infinite. They are provably scarce.
But the art itself is not scarce. In the physical realm, it's like a painting that can exactly replicate itself. The certificate of authenticity doesn't, though, and is the scarce component.
I think it's reasonable for someone to ask "if the duplicates are always exactly the same, what is the value of a certificate of authenticity? It would be drastically harder to forge a fake than it is to hit the button to make an exact copy".
It shifts the entirety of the value away from the art. The art itself is worthless. Anyone that wants a copy of the art can do so with a Google search. You have a scarce digital token proving that you are the rightful owner of a worthless piece of art.
That's why I don't see it working.
But the art itself is not scarce. In the physical realm, it's like a painting that can exactly replicate itself. The certificate of authenticity doesn't, though, and is the scarce component.
I think it's reasonable for someone to ask "if the duplicates are always exactly the same, what is the value of a certificate of authenticity? It would be drastically harder to forge a fake than it is to hit the button to make an exact copy".
It shifts the entirety of the value away from the art. The art itself is worthless. Anyone that wants a copy of the art can do so with a Google search. You have a scarce digital token proving that you are the rightful owner of a worthless piece of art.
That's why I don't see it working.
I'm not necessarily an NFT proponent, but to be fair, you can also duplicate art in the real world. Forgeries and replicas of the Mona Lisa and other famous art exist, and are sometimes so good they fool museum curators for years. Yet, they're almost worthless compared to the original. Why?
Reproductions are not "worthless" by any stretch of the imagination. They are worth less than the original but this is easily understandable. It's because they are not the same thing. On the other hand, digital copies are exact to one another and also mass produced by a machine (a computer) and thus not having a different "story" that could set them apart.
Because they’re still “almost”. The NFT is made up of digits values that can be replicated exactly - a brush stroke or photography negative cannot.
Of course, but a work of digital art, which is what we are talking about, is not scarce. There are infinitely many exact copies of it and each copy costs nothing to produce. Anyone pretending that one of the copies is more authentic than the others are kidding themselves.
The concept of private property or ownership predates all government.
Of course governments and police rarely get involved with small property disputes unless part of something larger like an assault.
Smartphone locking is similar to NFTs in that it is an extrajudicial process of enforcing property rights.
Likewise we also have algorithms that can take away all your photos and emails with basically no recourse to government or person.
NFTs just don’t seem that different to many things we’re already doing.
Of course governments and police rarely get involved with small property disputes unless part of something larger like an assault.
Smartphone locking is similar to NFTs in that it is an extrajudicial process of enforcing property rights.
Likewise we also have algorithms that can take away all your photos and emails with basically no recourse to government or person.
NFTs just don’t seem that different to many things we’re already doing.
As long as you don't put an armed guard around, the property depends only on the law. The law depends mostly on the population paying attention to the jurys' verdicts.
Without that, there is nothing stopping me from selling/buying/giving/using/renting a gif, a building, a village, or a city.
E.g. what apes have is not a property. You only keep stuff as long as your alpha doesn't want it. That's a different concept.
Without that, there is nothing stopping me from selling/buying/giving/using/renting a gif, a building, a village, or a city.
E.g. what apes have is not a property. You only keep stuff as long as your alpha doesn't want it. That's a different concept.
Not really. There is value in exclusivity and/or being the first owner.
You can get a perfect copy of the Mona Lisa at your house. You either print a high definition picture or have someone paint an exact copy. Will anyone confuse the one in Paris with yours? Will the Mona Lisa in Louvre lose value?
Regarding the authority.. you don’t need men with guns. You just need to prove that yours is the original. The registration date is a strong indicator.
You can get a perfect copy of the Mona Lisa at your house. You either print a high definition picture or have someone paint an exact copy. Will anyone confuse the one in Paris with yours? Will the Mona Lisa in Louvre lose value?
Regarding the authority.. you don’t need men with guns. You just need to prove that yours is the original. The registration date is a strong indicator.
Interestingly, many things up for sale as an NFT are not only not tied to an original, they’re often not offered by anyone who owns it. So in that case, the “original” ends up basically being “whoever made it an NFT first”.
I don’t see how this problem is relevant.
Same thing happens in the physical world with papers, paintings, licenses, etc.
Who invented the calculus? Newton or Leibniz?
Same thing happens in the physical world with papers, paintings, licenses, etc.
Who invented the calculus? Newton or Leibniz?
The whole point of NFTs is that the provenance is 100% traceable. The value is derived from a market created by the artist, not the fact that it exists on the chain. The blockchain simply provides a way to prove that it is authentic and trace its ownership history. So if you copy one to another chain, you've created a new piece of art that will only have value if you can create a market for it. It might be a bit-for-bit copy of the original, but it won't have come from the original artist, and therefore won't have the same value.
Wow - this is the most insightful comment and is downvoted????
The key idea - the artist can be the one who creates a market is extremely insightful for me.
It means that the art is an extremely risky value storage since entire market is limited at the moment and may never expand. The number of players in the market is what makes it thrive or disappear.
Of course there are somehow two institutions fueling this market. The author and ethereum users with some visible synergies.
The key idea - the artist can be the one who creates a market is extremely insightful for me.
It means that the art is an extremely risky value storage since entire market is limited at the moment and may never expand. The number of players in the market is what makes it thrive or disappear.
Of course there are somehow two institutions fueling this market. The author and ethereum users with some visible synergies.
Wow - this is the most insightful comment and is downvoted????
I get some auto-downvotes on every comment I make...it's been happening so long that it doesn't even bother me anymore lol. Every once in a while, someone still reads a comment of mine, while it sits at the bottom of the page :).
I get some auto-downvotes on every comment I make...it's been happening so long that it doesn't even bother me anymore lol. Every once in a while, someone still reads a comment of mine, while it sits at the bottom of the page :).
> it won't have come from the original artist, and therefore won't have the same value
All copies ultimately come from the artist, and they are all bit-by-bit identical. Why wouldn't they have the same value?
All copies ultimately come from the artist, and they are all bit-by-bit identical. Why wouldn't they have the same value?
The artwork can be copied, but not the provenance. If the artist publishes address(es) from which authorized tokens are released, authenticity can easily be verified. A NFT purporting to have been created by them will not have been originally sent from an authorized address, as long as the artist's private key(s) have not been compromised. So whatever value is attached to the art having been created by that artist is lost, because it cannot be proven that it came from them.
> authenticity can easily be verified
Authenticity of what? What does it mean for a JPEG of some work of digital art to be authentic? As long as it is bit-by-bit identical to the original, authenticity (whatever it means) makes absolutely no difference.
Authenticity of what? What does it mean for a JPEG of some work of digital art to be authentic? As long as it is bit-by-bit identical to the original, authenticity (whatever it means) makes absolutely no difference.
What does it mean for a JPEG of some work of digital art to be authentic?
Authentic means that it was put on the blockchain by an address owned by the artist. It means that the art could have only come from a specific artist.
As long as it is bit-by-bit identical to the original, authenticity (whatever it means) makes absolutely no difference.
Of course it makes a difference in value. If your neighbor was able to exactly duplicate a Picasso, do you think it would hold the same value as an original Picasso? It wouldn’t. A big part of the value of art is the provenance and the story behind it and the artist.
Authentic means that it was put on the blockchain by an address owned by the artist. It means that the art could have only come from a specific artist.
As long as it is bit-by-bit identical to the original, authenticity (whatever it means) makes absolutely no difference.
Of course it makes a difference in value. If your neighbor was able to exactly duplicate a Picasso, do you think it would hold the same value as an original Picasso? It wouldn’t. A big part of the value of art is the provenance and the story behind it and the artist.
That's because a Picasso is physical object and people feel attached to physical objects. We don't feel attached to a particular digital copy of a JPEG. And, by the way, the JPEG is not on the blockchain. The NFT on the blockchain tells us nothing about the provenance of the various JPEG copies that exist or about their authenticity.
Again, the blockchain can positively tell you that the data (whether it’s just a reference to the image or the image itself) was put there by a specific person that had the keys to a specific address. If that address is associated with the artist, then the artist (or someone with their private keys) put it there. Depending on who that person is, it can add value. This NFT by Beeple [1] just sold for $70 million. Something tells me that your copy, which will not have been put on the blockchain by an address associated with Beeple, won’t fetch the same price.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/beeple-nft-christies-record-sale-...
[1] https://apnews.com/article/beeple-nft-christies-record-sale-...
I don't think that you understand NFTs at all. What's been sold for $70 million is an NFT—a digital token on a blockchain. Not a copy of a digital work by Beeple.
Yes, and that NFT had value because it could be proven that it came from Beeple, and represented a specific piece of art. It’s as simple as that.
Exactly, it's as simple as that. No piece of digital art was sold in that auction, and no provenance of any piece of art was established either. Your point was?
NFTs are representing ownership of physical or digital objects.
As far as physical ownership goes, it comes from what ownership record keeping system are you going to trust? For land, we have trusted state provided system so far. This can change with NFT like technology, provided people including the state trust it to manage those records.
For digital items ownership, there is literally nothing that prevents others from getting a copy of your item. You just get to claim the ownership rights to it, which doesn't mean much when everyone can get a copy of it, like you do. It's essentially reduced to bragging rights, claiming you own it, on a record keeping system which people trust. But would people even care to trust a system for ownership when literally anyone can hold a copy of that digital item in their possession? If someone else copies it over to another record keeping system, what difference does it make? Not much. There isn't much value in bragging rights to ownership, as much as it is in possession, which in digital items isn't securely feasible in this manner.
As far as physical ownership goes, it comes from what ownership record keeping system are you going to trust? For land, we have trusted state provided system so far. This can change with NFT like technology, provided people including the state trust it to manage those records.
For digital items ownership, there is literally nothing that prevents others from getting a copy of your item. You just get to claim the ownership rights to it, which doesn't mean much when everyone can get a copy of it, like you do. It's essentially reduced to bragging rights, claiming you own it, on a record keeping system which people trust. But would people even care to trust a system for ownership when literally anyone can hold a copy of that digital item in their possession? If someone else copies it over to another record keeping system, what difference does it make? Not much. There isn't much value in bragging rights to ownership, as much as it is in possession, which in digital items isn't securely feasible in this manner.
The entire point of an NFT is to act as a sort of proof/certificate that this is the Real Version of a given piece of media. Someone could create a new NFT on a different blockchain for the nyan cat, but it wouldn't be Your NFT. As a result, it could be said it's not the Real NFT, and thus doesn't have the same value.
An artist selling their art as an NFT would probably say "hey This NFT on this chain is the real NFT for my art, anything else is a fake". A fake would never have this announcement, and there wouldn't be a record of the original artist owning/creating the NFT on the new chain.
So it's not so much that one blockchain is the defacto NFT implementation, but it's up to the creator to specify the blockchain that has the defacto NFT for that piece of media. They could even announce their own signature, and point out the transaction by their signature that created the NFT. Or something along those lines
An artist selling their art as an NFT would probably say "hey This NFT on this chain is the real NFT for my art, anything else is a fake". A fake would never have this announcement, and there wouldn't be a record of the original artist owning/creating the NFT on the new chain.
So it's not so much that one blockchain is the defacto NFT implementation, but it's up to the creator to specify the blockchain that has the defacto NFT for that piece of media. They could even announce their own signature, and point out the transaction by their signature that created the NFT. Or something along those lines
I suppose one could make the same argument about bitcoin. Why not just make your own cryptocurrency with its separate blockchain? You certainly can and many people have.
But in order for your forked bitcoin to have any value you need to give people some reason to prefer it over the existing bitcoin blockchain. If it really is just a clone of something that already exists, no one will value it very highly.
The same is true of NFTs. If an existing NFT is tied to an established blockchain like Ethereum and you fork it, then you would need to come up with a compelling reason for someone to prefer your forked blockchain over Ethereum.
But in order for your forked bitcoin to have any value you need to give people some reason to prefer it over the existing bitcoin blockchain. If it really is just a clone of something that already exists, no one will value it very highly.
The same is true of NFTs. If an existing NFT is tied to an established blockchain like Ethereum and you fork it, then you would need to come up with a compelling reason for someone to prefer your forked blockchain over Ethereum.
Nothing stops you from minting any "art" as an NFT. What it comes down to is whether it is an officially sanctioned NFT by the artist or not, as that is what will give it "value".
>rest on the assumption that one blockchain will be the defacto NFT implementation, and the rest won't be taken seriously?
An alternative is that cross chain transfers are respected. For example on one chain your NFT gets deleted and on another chain a duplicate is given to you. The same can happen in reverse to swap back. This does rely on whatever security guarantees the other chain has.
An alternative is that cross chain transfers are respected. For example on one chain your NFT gets deleted and on another chain a duplicate is given to you. The same can happen in reverse to swap back. This does rely on whatever security guarantees the other chain has.
In the art world they use the term provenance.
Random web definition: Provenance is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object
Even in the blockchain world anyone can deploy a token with ticker USDT. There is the established understanding that there is one USDT contract that people use and transfer and store value in.
Random web definition: Provenance is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object
Even in the blockchain world anyone can deploy a token with ticker USDT. There is the established understanding that there is one USDT contract that people use and transfer and store value in.
It largely depends on the party doing the recognition of ownership.
Other chains like Tron or Binance are pseudo-decentralized. They do have multiple miners/nodes, but Tron/Binance controls them all. So if they want to roll back a transaction, they can if they want. In Ethereum, that's not the case anymore. Eth did rollback and do a hard fork a long time ago, when the network was much smaller, but they had to get the buy-in for multiple parties in order to do it. It was be largely inconceivable nowadays.
So if I'm the counter-party that's to recognize your ownership in an NFT, I'm probably going to downgrade in my mind an NFT claim on a Tron or Binance chain, as opposed to Ethereum--because I care a lot that transactions can't be rolled back.
But if I'm a counter-party that doesn't care, because I think the risk of that happening on those chains is low, then maybe I would honor an NFT claim on those chains.
Like money, ownership is largely a social contract. The power of an NFT derives from its power bestowed by those honoring it. And the party honors it because of certain properties of the Ethereum chain, such as immutability--but it depends largely on why they're going to honor an NFT and for what purpose.
Other chains like Tron or Binance are pseudo-decentralized. They do have multiple miners/nodes, but Tron/Binance controls them all. So if they want to roll back a transaction, they can if they want. In Ethereum, that's not the case anymore. Eth did rollback and do a hard fork a long time ago, when the network was much smaller, but they had to get the buy-in for multiple parties in order to do it. It was be largely inconceivable nowadays.
So if I'm the counter-party that's to recognize your ownership in an NFT, I'm probably going to downgrade in my mind an NFT claim on a Tron or Binance chain, as opposed to Ethereum--because I care a lot that transactions can't be rolled back.
But if I'm a counter-party that doesn't care, because I think the risk of that happening on those chains is low, then maybe I would honor an NFT claim on those chains.
Like money, ownership is largely a social contract. The power of an NFT derives from its power bestowed by those honoring it. And the party honors it because of certain properties of the Ethereum chain, such as immutability--but it depends largely on why they're going to honor an NFT and for what purpose.
This is not about the immutability of the chain. You can create various collection contracts on top of the Ethereum blockchain, independent from each other. If you want to verify that I'm in fact the owner of the Nyan cat NFT you need to first decide which contract hosts the "true" Nyan cat NFT.
I should have made the connection more clear.
Yes, you can create various collections on different chains. Say there's one on Eth, and one on Binance.
If I want to purchase the NFT, which one should I buy from? Which one should I honor? Well, depends on what I value as a counter-party.
I know that Binance owns all the nodes, and can roll them back at their whim. I know that no one in Eth can roll back easily.
So if I value this kind of immutability as a potential owner of an NFT--I want my transactions to be final--then I'm going to go with the NFT contract on Eth.
There may be other things I value instead of immutability, but the point is just the answer to "which NFT contract on which chain is the 'real one'?" is simply, "The one your counter-party honors, for whatever reason."
There may be instances where both are honored at the same time, but in different domains.
Yes, you can create various collections on different chains. Say there's one on Eth, and one on Binance.
If I want to purchase the NFT, which one should I buy from? Which one should I honor? Well, depends on what I value as a counter-party.
I know that Binance owns all the nodes, and can roll them back at their whim. I know that no one in Eth can roll back easily.
So if I value this kind of immutability as a potential owner of an NFT--I want my transactions to be final--then I'm going to go with the NFT contract on Eth.
There may be other things I value instead of immutability, but the point is just the answer to "which NFT contract on which chain is the 'real one'?" is simply, "The one your counter-party honors, for whatever reason."
There may be instances where both are honored at the same time, but in different domains.
I understood that but you can have several instances of the same asset on a single immutable chain, for example Ethereum.
To the best of my understanding, there is a lot of confusion around what is being sold when an NFT like the Beeple JPG NFT changes hands.
What people think was sold is the JPG. What was actually sold is the right to say you purchased an NFT that represents the JPG. In the case of the NFT sale, ownership of the JPG was not a part of the transaction.
Clarification may be required, and an example will help. If you see a JPG of The Mandalorian on the Web, you can be sure that Disney, Inc. owns that image. Which means that Disney, Inc. can stop others from using it; can charge license fees for including it in other works; can sell the rights to do so to others as it pleases. You cannot download an official Disney Mandalorian image, change a few pixels, and resell it. Disney owns the work. If Disney sells it, the buyer can then charge license fees, etc.
By contrast, the entity that purchased the NFT for the Beeple JPG does not have any rights whatsoever over the JPG or its intellectual property. That entity owns the right to say they are the sole owner of a slot on a blockchain known to be the entity that purchased a given slot on a blockchain (there may be many equivalent slots on that blockchain). They can sell the right to ownership to that slot on the blockchain, but they do not have any claim on future use of the Beeple JPG. If the buyer makes derivative works ("change a pixel or two") for resale, Beeple could sue for damages. In any common understanding of "ownership," the NFT buyer does not own the Beeple JPG.
Going back to the Mandalorian example, Disney could sell an infinite quantity of NFTs around all the images and video clips they currently publish for free on the Internet. (The NBA is currently doing likewise.) Like the Beeple NFT, those wouldn't convey ownership in any real sense, but could pad Disney's margins in a very real fashion.
What people think was sold is the JPG. What was actually sold is the right to say you purchased an NFT that represents the JPG. In the case of the NFT sale, ownership of the JPG was not a part of the transaction.
Clarification may be required, and an example will help. If you see a JPG of The Mandalorian on the Web, you can be sure that Disney, Inc. owns that image. Which means that Disney, Inc. can stop others from using it; can charge license fees for including it in other works; can sell the rights to do so to others as it pleases. You cannot download an official Disney Mandalorian image, change a few pixels, and resell it. Disney owns the work. If Disney sells it, the buyer can then charge license fees, etc.
By contrast, the entity that purchased the NFT for the Beeple JPG does not have any rights whatsoever over the JPG or its intellectual property. That entity owns the right to say they are the sole owner of a slot on a blockchain known to be the entity that purchased a given slot on a blockchain (there may be many equivalent slots on that blockchain). They can sell the right to ownership to that slot on the blockchain, but they do not have any claim on future use of the Beeple JPG. If the buyer makes derivative works ("change a pixel or two") for resale, Beeple could sue for damages. In any common understanding of "ownership," the NFT buyer does not own the Beeple JPG.
Going back to the Mandalorian example, Disney could sell an infinite quantity of NFTs around all the images and video clips they currently publish for free on the Internet. (The NBA is currently doing likewise.) Like the Beeple NFT, those wouldn't convey ownership in any real sense, but could pad Disney's margins in a very real fashion.
and who would have enough money to buy something like that and get be dumb enough to think it has value? mark cuban? i can only think of a few midwits rich enough
The person who bought it (pseudonym Metakovan) runs https://metapurse.fund/ and says that Beeple's NFT is worth a billion.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessedamiani/2021/03/12/beeples...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessedamiani/2021/03/12/beeples...
> The person who bought it (pseudonym Metakovan) runs https://metapurse.fund/ and says that Beeple's NFT is worth a billion.
I am not at all surprised that the person who paid that much is involved in hyping NFTs. IIRC, they also paid for it with Ethereum, and I think it's highly likely that they were someone who hit the crypto jackpot by getting it when it was very, very cheap, and are hoping lightning strikes twice.
I am not at all surprised that the person who paid that much is involved in hyping NFTs. IIRC, they also paid for it with Ethereum, and I think it's highly likely that they were someone who hit the crypto jackpot by getting it when it was very, very cheap, and are hoping lightning strikes twice.
You mean a person who sunk a lot of money into it and has a vested interest in having other people think it has a lot of value thinks it has a lot of value?
Holy shit.
Holy shit.
> By contrast, the entity that purchased the NFT for the Beeple JPG does not have any rights whatsoever over the JPG or its intellectual property.
This varies by NFT. Like software, different NFTs have different license agreements. Some grant exclusive copyright ownership to the holder of the NFT. The industry as a whole lacks standardization in this respect. But the main NFT marketplaces are working on this.
This varies by NFT. Like software, different NFTs have different license agreements. Some grant exclusive copyright ownership to the holder of the NFT. The industry as a whole lacks standardization in this respect. But the main NFT marketplaces are working on this.
> for the Beeple JPG
is not an industry problem. Another big player is NBA Top Shot, which also is not selling IP rights.
In theory, something like an NFT could be useful. But this isn't about standards at this point. The NBA isn't retaining IP because there's no standards, they're doing it because they're not going to give away their valuable IP when suckers will pay to say they paid for a receipt.
is not an industry problem. Another big player is NBA Top Shot, which also is not selling IP rights.
In theory, something like an NFT could be useful. But this isn't about standards at this point. The NBA isn't retaining IP because there's no standards, they're doing it because they're not going to give away their valuable IP when suckers will pay to say they paid for a receipt.
Selling the copyright on an image is completely orthogonal to the NFT it is being accompanied with, however. The NFT is only acting as a certificate of ownership saying that someone verifiably possesses the NFT. In my opinion, the NFT bring sold alongside the copyright adds very little value that couldn't already be done pre-blockchains. Courts were perfectly capable of evaluating ownership claims in the past.
And many of these NFTs don't even pretend to sell ownership of any underlying asset. Take Jack Dorsey's tweet, or the burned Banksy artwork for example. When you buy those, you get ownership of exactly 0 actual assets. It's just cashing in on NFTmania (and the larger cryptomania).
And many of these NFTs don't even pretend to sell ownership of any underlying asset. Take Jack Dorsey's tweet, or the burned Banksy artwork for example. When you buy those, you get ownership of exactly 0 actual assets. It's just cashing in on NFTmania (and the larger cryptomania).
Not at all. You can hash a document that contains the rights to IPFS and embed that file hash on the NFT itself. I can imagine in the future we will see license agreements similar to how open source software has MIT, Apache, GNU, etc delineated by a LICENSE.md file in the root directory of the repo. It removes all ambiguity. It's even defensible in court.
The burned Banksy also had a digital representation attached to the NFT. The Jack Dorsey tweet was sold by the man himself. He verified it on his own social network. In that sense the Jack Dorsey NFT is as good as an autographed Babe Ruth baseball.
The burned Banksy also had a digital representation attached to the NFT. The Jack Dorsey tweet was sold by the man himself. He verified it on his own social network. In that sense the Jack Dorsey NFT is as good as an autographed Babe Ruth baseball.
But it doesn't convey any ownership rights, unlike a copyright license.
The person who bought the NFT representing the tweet can't, for example, delete the tweet. It's not actually theirs.
The person who bought the NFT representing the tweet can't, for example, delete the tweet. It's not actually theirs.
It makes it easier to trade ownership rights. Of course it was possible before, just not very convenient.
Just as NFTs do not represent the thing being sold, NFTs have no license or license agreement.
I purchased all NFTs ever.
Huh. Guess it doesn't sell you that right. Merely the right to prove it. How often are people proving they own the NFTs? Never?
Huh. Guess it doesn't sell you that right. Merely the right to prove it. How often are people proving they own the NFTs? Never?
For art, never, it doesn't make sense. For other use case like owning a piece of virtual land, the game server could perform that verification to configure which game-world privileges the user has. Multiple independent applications can be built on top of the same virtual land layer, enforcing the underlying ownership contracts, this can't be done with traditional virtual environments. Same for membership NFT, you could "prove" to one organization that you are a member of another organization.
Couldn't you for art have a separate right for being allowed to hang the actual piece in your living room, and for selling prints?
Then somebody could own it for their living room, somebody else could make money selling prints.
In that case a NFT could work just fine.
Then somebody could own it for their living room, somebody else could make money selling prints.
In that case a NFT could work just fine.
2 x 0 = 0
I spent a long time doing reasonably deep dives into the legal nature of tokens, blockchain-based ownership and so on. Nevertheless, I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.
Most "digital art" NFTs do not confer any particular rights in relation to the artwork in question. Unless you have a written agreement which states otherwise, you do not have any rights at all, except for rights over the NFT. The NFT does not give you the right to make copies of the artwork, to claim royalties from others who make copies, or to issue DMCA takedowns or similar. This is for the simple reason that the copyright in the artwork is retained by the original artist unless agreed otherwise. This is, of course, true of physical art too: I can buy a physical Banksy, but Banksy keeps the copyright and can decide to deny or permit the making of copies.
When I buy the physical artwork, what I'm buying is the fact that the artist personally created it. I could buy a print, but even if it is a perfect reproduction it lacks the direct connection to the artist's physical involvement. Because people value authenticity, my authentic artist-created copy is worth more than a print.
NFTs work by creating a connection to the artist, albeit a fairly minimal one: the artist's digital key was used to sign a record on the blockchain, and now I own that record (loosely speaking). It is, I suppose, more like owning an autographed copy of a print. However, since this is the most authentic connection we _can_ achieve with respect to digital art, it is deemed (in some cases) to have significant value.
In more concise terms: NFTs are not artworks, they are not copies of artworks, they are signed digital records which refer to an artwork, which are valuable because they are (believed to be) signed by the artist.
To the original question, then: what happens when someone copies an NFT on to another blockchain? It's not obvious to me how someone would do this. Of course, anyone can create a "fake" NFT just like anyone can create a fake autograph. But "copying" here is very difficult, because you can't create a duplicate of a transaction that was signed by a particular private key unless you have a copy of the private key yourself. So, either the artist is minting multiple NFTs for the same artwork, or someone has stolen their private key.
If the artist is minting multiple NFTs, a question we need to ask is whether they ever committed to _not_ doing this. If they did not, then it's hard to see what reason anyone has to complain. If they did commit to this, then the owner of the NFT may have some claim against them (again, this is not legal advice). If there is a social norm against minting multiple NFTs, then the artist's reputation may suffer and the value of all of their current and future artworks will decline. Since some NFTs give the artist a cut of all future re-sales, they do have some economic incentive to avoid doing this. If someone has stolen the private key then we have a very interesting conundrum!
Most "digital art" NFTs do not confer any particular rights in relation to the artwork in question. Unless you have a written agreement which states otherwise, you do not have any rights at all, except for rights over the NFT. The NFT does not give you the right to make copies of the artwork, to claim royalties from others who make copies, or to issue DMCA takedowns or similar. This is for the simple reason that the copyright in the artwork is retained by the original artist unless agreed otherwise. This is, of course, true of physical art too: I can buy a physical Banksy, but Banksy keeps the copyright and can decide to deny or permit the making of copies.
When I buy the physical artwork, what I'm buying is the fact that the artist personally created it. I could buy a print, but even if it is a perfect reproduction it lacks the direct connection to the artist's physical involvement. Because people value authenticity, my authentic artist-created copy is worth more than a print.
NFTs work by creating a connection to the artist, albeit a fairly minimal one: the artist's digital key was used to sign a record on the blockchain, and now I own that record (loosely speaking). It is, I suppose, more like owning an autographed copy of a print. However, since this is the most authentic connection we _can_ achieve with respect to digital art, it is deemed (in some cases) to have significant value.
In more concise terms: NFTs are not artworks, they are not copies of artworks, they are signed digital records which refer to an artwork, which are valuable because they are (believed to be) signed by the artist.
To the original question, then: what happens when someone copies an NFT on to another blockchain? It's not obvious to me how someone would do this. Of course, anyone can create a "fake" NFT just like anyone can create a fake autograph. But "copying" here is very difficult, because you can't create a duplicate of a transaction that was signed by a particular private key unless you have a copy of the private key yourself. So, either the artist is minting multiple NFTs for the same artwork, or someone has stolen their private key.
If the artist is minting multiple NFTs, a question we need to ask is whether they ever committed to _not_ doing this. If they did not, then it's hard to see what reason anyone has to complain. If they did commit to this, then the owner of the NFT may have some claim against them (again, this is not legal advice). If there is a social norm against minting multiple NFTs, then the artist's reputation may suffer and the value of all of their current and future artworks will decline. Since some NFTs give the artist a cut of all future re-sales, they do have some economic incentive to avoid doing this. If someone has stolen the private key then we have a very interesting conundrum!
Great explanation.
> the artist's digital key was used to sign a record on the blockchain,
How do I verify the artist vs someone who just says they are the artist?
Couldn’t I generate a private key, call myself Banksy, sign a new token and add it to Bitcoin’s blockchain instead?
In this situation is Etherium running some pki that can prove that Banksy is really Banksy?
Or does Banksy tweet out his public key and just announce that only signatures from his key are authentic?
I guess the challenge in my mind is if there’s no root name authority to verify who is who, and there’s no legal provenance for who signs what, then someone could start creating new NFTs for Banksies and add them to any blockchain. So the desireability comes down to whether I want an autograph from the Banksy matching the signature his Twitter says vs an autograph from some rando claiming.
How do I verify the artist vs someone who just says they are the artist?
Couldn’t I generate a private key, call myself Banksy, sign a new token and add it to Bitcoin’s blockchain instead?
In this situation is Etherium running some pki that can prove that Banksy is really Banksy?
Or does Banksy tweet out his public key and just announce that only signatures from his key are authentic?
I guess the challenge in my mind is if there’s no root name authority to verify who is who, and there’s no legal provenance for who signs what, then someone could start creating new NFTs for Banksies and add them to any blockchain. So the desireability comes down to whether I want an autograph from the Banksy matching the signature his Twitter says vs an autograph from some rando claiming.
These are all really good questions. I'm not sure that there are equally good answers.
Right now, it seems that people are taking things on trust, buying only from digital artists who have very active online presence, and whose social media accounts are presumed to be true representations of the artist.
Nobody is running what I would consider to be a robust system for verifying digital identities for signing NFTs.
Right now, it seems that people are taking things on trust, buying only from digital artists who have very active online presence, and whose social media accounts are presumed to be true representations of the artist.
Nobody is running what I would consider to be a robust system for verifying digital identities for signing NFTs.
That’s interesting. I wonder if they are real purchases or just crypto purchases based on high growth, not necessarily high investment.
I suppose since there’s no identity authority, if Twitter were to remove my account then I could just create somewhere else and repost my keys.
Does this mean that artists are keeping wallets or private keys somewhere? Or are these identity keys only held by intermediaries? I guess we’ll get some stories how people get scammed out of their keys.
I can see an attack to get the keys after an artist’s death and start cranking out and selling new NFTs until I get caught.
I suppose since there’s no identity authority, if Twitter were to remove my account then I could just create somewhere else and repost my keys.
Does this mean that artists are keeping wallets or private keys somewhere? Or are these identity keys only held by intermediaries? I guess we’ll get some stories how people get scammed out of their keys.
I can see an attack to get the keys after an artist’s death and start cranking out and selling new NFTs until I get caught.
NFT's are a weird thing, it is half scammy (practicality) and half useful (ownership, non-fungibility of the token itself). I am reading up on the NFT standards (ERC721 is the simplest one) [1] and this is the core contract API:
All good. But that's all she wrote. Banksy can list his digital artwork on the internet and many people can bid on it. That is actually valuable if you think about it in isolation. The problem is on the auction side, with decentralized bidding - you have no idea if this artwork was pumped up by fake buyers. There is no Sotheby's or Christie's auction house to mediate this.
URL metadata is also weird - now you're passing on the value of the token to whoever owns the Domain Name and the servers responding to the GET request. If the artist decides to sell or forgets to renew the domain name, your NFT is useless unless the data was backed up somewhere. Even then, the next buyer of the NFT would want to access the URL and get their goodies instead of getting it from anywhere else since that's not on the tokenMetadata.
[1] Source: https://medium.com/crypto-currently/the-anatomy-of-erc721-e9...
contract ERC721 {
// ERC20 compatible functions
function name() constant returns (string name);
function symbol() constant returns (string symbol);
function totalSupply() constant returns (uint256 totalSupply);
function balanceOf(address _owner) constant returns (uint balance);
// Functions that define ownership
function ownerOf(uint256 _tokenId) constant returns (address owner);
function approve(address _to, uint256 _tokenId);
function takeOwnership(uint256 _tokenId);
function transfer(address _to, uint256 _tokenId);
function tokenOfOwnerByIndex(address _owner, uint256 _index) constant returns (uint tokenId);
// Token metadata
function tokenMetadata(uint256 _tokenId) constant returns (string infoUrl);
// Events
event Transfer(address indexed _from, address indexed _to, uint256 _tokenId);
event Approval(address indexed _owner, address indexed _approved, uint256 _tokenId);
}
All good. But that's all she wrote. Banksy can list his digital artwork on the internet and many people can bid on it. That is actually valuable if you think about it in isolation. The problem is on the auction side, with decentralized bidding - you have no idea if this artwork was pumped up by fake buyers. There is no Sotheby's or Christie's auction house to mediate this.
URL metadata is also weird - now you're passing on the value of the token to whoever owns the Domain Name and the servers responding to the GET request. If the artist decides to sell or forgets to renew the domain name, your NFT is useless unless the data was backed up somewhere. Even then, the next buyer of the NFT would want to access the URL and get their goodies instead of getting it from anywhere else since that's not on the tokenMetadata.
[1] Source: https://medium.com/crypto-currently/the-anatomy-of-erc721-e9...
Isn’t the problem also on the seller side, where anyone can claim that they’re Bansky and then a trusted central 3rd party has to verify if they actually are?
Yes, but if Banksy himself advertises the auction and provides the proof that the NFT is issue by him, then there is no confusion. Imagine if Banksy interviews with CNN and advertises his auction. Or Youtube or in person in an event.
Beeple did just that.
But, I get what you're saying. There is a verification process to traditional art as well. You cannot simply impersonate Banksy and call Sotheby's, they need to verify you are actually Banksy.
Beeple did just that.
But, I get what you're saying. There is a verification process to traditional art as well. You cannot simply impersonate Banksy and call Sotheby's, they need to verify you are actually Banksy.
NFT only exists inside a specific smart contract operated by someone within some specific rules implemented in the contract. If the smart contract is seriously built, in order to "control" the NFT cloned as an "exact" copy of it, the copier has to control an exact "copy" of the smart contract where the NFT resides.
The only way I see to achieve this is to know the private key of the owner of the original smartcontract or of someone who has the power to operate it.
It follows that if they control the "exact" copy of the smart contract in an "cloned" blockchain (forked or crafted) they also control the smart contract in the original one.
At that point the problem wouldn't be the "copies" but the "original" NFT.
If they instead craft a copy without crafting the original smart contract, that would be easily spotted.
Your nyan cat besides being unique, has also an "origin", the smart contract, and that can be easily being verified.
The same applies if someone creates "another" nyan cat inside the same blockchain. That would reside on some other smart contract and easily spotted as a copy.
I think the point of the OP is that you need a central authority to define which copy of the contract is the one with the "authentic" asset.
If I may piggyback on your question: isn’t it only the hash of the digital asset that is unique and that you own as a NFT (e.g. an ERC-721 token wrapping the hash)? So if I change a single pixel or compress the picture with a slightly different setting, I get a new hash and can upload it as a different NFT. At that point you need to compare the NFTs and decide whose claim of true progeny to trust with things like original owner address and timestamps. Or am I missing something?
No, I don't think you're missing anything. I had the same question, and midway through typing it realized that it's really all about verifying that the person who signed your NFT was in fact the artist that created it.
NFTs for art are a bet on new titling systems. Duplicating an NFT to different chains, or just different NFT frameworks/systems on the same chain, is akin to filing a Chinese copyright for something already filed in the US. Which one is valid or "real" depends on which system you subscribe to.
The existence of the tokens on a chain means nothing without the social acceptance of their meaning.
The existence of the tokens on a chain means nothing without the social acceptance of their meaning.
By copying the NFT onto another blockchain you have created a different, new NFT. The original NFT owner still owns it, and can transfer it to a new owner
NFTs, that are based on the ERC-721 standard, are not really transferrable to another blockchain. This is because NFTs have internal state variables that are managed in the Ethereum VM and you cannot trust the execution environment of external blockchains. This makes them stickier to the native chain they are minted on than even ERC-20 tokens.
Of course, in an open source world, there's nothing stopping anyone from forking your work at any time. How many Bitcoin forks have been spawned off? You can copy the BTC source code but you can't make a community follow you. Likewise, if someone were to mint a Nyan cat on another chain, nothing is stopping them, but the Ethereum chain will be given more weight by the community at large because it's the community that spawned the concept in the first place. And the Nyan cat creator publicly announced his NFT sale on Ethereum, so there is provenance.
Of course, in an open source world, there's nothing stopping anyone from forking your work at any time. How many Bitcoin forks have been spawned off? You can copy the BTC source code but you can't make a community follow you. Likewise, if someone were to mint a Nyan cat on another chain, nothing is stopping them, but the Ethereum chain will be given more weight by the community at large because it's the community that spawned the concept in the first place. And the Nyan cat creator publicly announced his NFT sale on Ethereum, so there is provenance.
But multiple people can create separate NFTs for the same underlying object. So the verifier still has to decide which one is the true one.
They can't do it with the same Ethereum address. NFTs are minted by a transaction associated with a unique address. Each ETH address develops a reputation over time. Couple this with a listing on a public marketplace and public confirmation of your ETH address (could be artist's Twitter profile, a decentralized ID, a personal website confirmation, a NYTimes ad, etc, whatever works). Not all NFTs need the same level of provenance guarantees. These are very broad abstractions.
Short answer: no.
It is also my understanding that NFT need a central authority defining which chain is the true one to work. This is true for all NFT use-case I think, event tickets, membership, game assets...
This can be fine and still interesting for these use-cases, for example several independent organizations can agree about the validity of a token independently. Personally I don't think NFT for art make sense though.
This can be fine and still interesting for these use-cases, for example several independent organizations can agree about the validity of a token independently. Personally I don't think NFT for art make sense though.
I can only see "value" for NFTs in context of some digital application which can constrain supply of the thing the NFT represents. e.g A chat application might decide that only the owner of the nyan cat NFT can use the nyan cat emoji. So if there's a different blockchain with another nyan cat, it doesn't really matter, as long as the chat application doesn't use that other blockchain.
I'm sorry if this has been answered elsewhere in this thread, but honest technical question:
Couldn't someone own an NFT within a smart contract, which can itself be fungible and transferrable without paying the author fees? Much like an artwork can be held as property of a shell corporation (well, an actual corporation with a single asset) and the corporation itself traded between collectors.
Couldn't someone own an NFT within a smart contract, which can itself be fungible and transferrable without paying the author fees? Much like an artwork can be held as property of a shell corporation (well, an actual corporation with a single asset) and the corporation itself traded between collectors.
If it is on a different blockchain it isn't a copy.
If a given claim means anything, then similar claims that are illegitimate probably won't mean anything.
Given that NFTs so far appear to be pretty much meaningless, attempts to duplicate them will also be meaningless.
If a given claim means anything, then similar claims that are illegitimate probably won't mean anything.
Given that NFTs so far appear to be pretty much meaningless, attempts to duplicate them will also be meaningless.
Let me try rephrasing the question into a scenario. Would be great if someone who understands NFT better than me can take a stab at it:
What if a more well known artist copies the art of a barely known artist and puts it back into the chain again? There’s a good chance this “replica” of the original art would sell for greater value until the original one is found?
What if a more well known artist copies the art of a barely known artist and puts it back into the chain again? There’s a good chance this “replica” of the original art would sell for greater value until the original one is found?
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Can someone explain the point of these NFTs to someone who has no real knowledge of them but what they do know makes them seem pretty pointless.
If I have a copy of a digital piece of art I don't care if someone has an NFT, I still have an exact copy right? I don't get it.
If I have a copy of a digital piece of art I don't care if someone has an NFT, I still have an exact copy right? I don't get it.
I'll give it a shot – and you might already know all of this.
So let's say you're Van Gogh, and you just finished painting "Starry Night." Let's say in this hypothetical scenario, you made it in a context that already celebrates your work and is willing to pay you insane sums of money for it. You sell it to the top bidder and there's all the papers that say X buyer now owns "Starry Night," bought the original painting for $70million. But you as Van Gogh still own the rights to licensing reproductions of it, even if there's only one original. The entire village you're a part of now buys printed copies of the painting. You get to hang the original painting on your wall. Everyone else also gets to hang a printed copy on their walls. Everyone, including Van Gogh and you and the village people, all know who owns the original one. The copies maybe can be resold for perhaps $1.00. Maybe even $10.00 if you're a shrewd negotiator. But the original can resell for a bajillion dollars.
So I know people throw this example around with variables swapped out. And for me, I'm a digital artist, and it didn't click until I saw artists I genuinely respect and admire and have followed for years post their GIFs on NFT sites. Other artists' work that I'm not interested in, I thought to myself, "This is stupid; what a load of crap." But for the artists I genuinely admired? I didn't go so far as to want to buy their GIFs but I definitely was rooting for them to get top dollar. For me, I already valued their work before any NFT stuff. So when they posted it on auction sites, I knew it was worth something and had power to it. I could see myself saying, "It would be cool to own that GIF" for the first time ever. It's a feeling, that is different from right-clicking. It felt more like a personal connection to the artist.
So if the artist were to then mint the exact same GIF on another platform because the ETH 1.0-based ones collapse, OR, this who NFT art speculation thing goes bust and it becomes worthless? I'd feel like the mad left with the bag, so to speak, and feel a bit dumb. But I can't deny that I wanted to own rights to GIFs from artists I deeply respect, and that seeing many others ascribe real monetary value to said GIFs completely changed my perception that GIFS can be imbued with value. Again, if the bubble pops and these become worthless? Then yeah, everyone who paid any money for these GIFS looks like an idiot.
Long story short it feels like a kind of personal connection to the artist. Might just be some woo woo nonsense, but seems like many people buy things from a visceral emotional reaction, rather than cold hard logic and reasoning. Not saying everyone does. But many definitely do.
So let's say you're Van Gogh, and you just finished painting "Starry Night." Let's say in this hypothetical scenario, you made it in a context that already celebrates your work and is willing to pay you insane sums of money for it. You sell it to the top bidder and there's all the papers that say X buyer now owns "Starry Night," bought the original painting for $70million. But you as Van Gogh still own the rights to licensing reproductions of it, even if there's only one original. The entire village you're a part of now buys printed copies of the painting. You get to hang the original painting on your wall. Everyone else also gets to hang a printed copy on their walls. Everyone, including Van Gogh and you and the village people, all know who owns the original one. The copies maybe can be resold for perhaps $1.00. Maybe even $10.00 if you're a shrewd negotiator. But the original can resell for a bajillion dollars.
So I know people throw this example around with variables swapped out. And for me, I'm a digital artist, and it didn't click until I saw artists I genuinely respect and admire and have followed for years post their GIFs on NFT sites. Other artists' work that I'm not interested in, I thought to myself, "This is stupid; what a load of crap." But for the artists I genuinely admired? I didn't go so far as to want to buy their GIFs but I definitely was rooting for them to get top dollar. For me, I already valued their work before any NFT stuff. So when they posted it on auction sites, I knew it was worth something and had power to it. I could see myself saying, "It would be cool to own that GIF" for the first time ever. It's a feeling, that is different from right-clicking. It felt more like a personal connection to the artist.
So if the artist were to then mint the exact same GIF on another platform because the ETH 1.0-based ones collapse, OR, this who NFT art speculation thing goes bust and it becomes worthless? I'd feel like the mad left with the bag, so to speak, and feel a bit dumb. But I can't deny that I wanted to own rights to GIFs from artists I deeply respect, and that seeing many others ascribe real monetary value to said GIFs completely changed my perception that GIFS can be imbued with value. Again, if the bubble pops and these become worthless? Then yeah, everyone who paid any money for these GIFS looks like an idiot.
Long story short it feels like a kind of personal connection to the artist. Might just be some woo woo nonsense, but seems like many people buy things from a visceral emotional reaction, rather than cold hard logic and reasoning. Not saying everyone does. But many definitely do.
Thanks. I still don't really get it, I don't see myself ever buying into it. But then I can remember thinking having a camera on a phone was pointless back in 2003/2004 too so what do I know.
So after a few more days of wrestling with wanting to make vast sums of money from the current hype with NFT art, and finding no settled ground to rest upon, I think it's kinda silly. I even went so far as to download GIFS from artists I respect and admire. I then made a slideshow of them on my phone. It was one of the most easiest DIY projects I've ever done, and even if I love making art, I'm not a DIY type of person for home improvement projects. All that is to say, with each passing day, I think it's kinda bullshit. It seems like if you're an artist trying to get in on the money faucet from crypto whales, you tacitly or explicitly choose to rub shoulders with the crypto riche, make art that appeals to their vanity and ego, and hype yourself up and other fellow artists and NFT buyers, to hope they do the same when it's your turn up at bat. It turned my social media feeds into an unbearable and overwhelming hype machine frenzy and I had to get away from those spaces altogether. I think the whole thing is kinda corny, but some of my buddies are making serious money from playing into all of it. I wonder what it will look like if and when the money faucet shuts off.
So long story short, you should see the entire purchase history of a NFT and see who is the creator by their Ethereum address , and then if its the address of your preferred artist you would buy that NFT ..!
Atm there's little that can be done about it :( If you're interested in learning more about NFTs, highly recommend you check out this tutorial: https://docs.alchemyapi.io/alchemy/tutorials/how-to-write-an...
NFTs have a signature, that's it. What happens is that the author address changes. No one wants a mona lisa that says "deft" on the bottom corner.