NFTs

[xjx388]

Originally Posted by jnelso99

But what are you really buying? Are you buying the image or a link to the image? If the URL the NFT was pointing to goes away, what do you have? Does the purchase of an NFT transfer any copyright to the purchaser? If not, it kind of limits what you can do with it. How does it work with the countless NFTs minted by people who stole the artwork from others?

In the case of the Apes, it does transfer rights to the NFT owner.

NFTs minted from other people’s work is not legitimate.

Anything else it just depends.

I am not saying NFTs are a great idea that everyone should love. I don’t love them myself! All I’m saying is that there is a difference between “an idea I think is stupid,” and “an idea that is a flat out scam.”

[psionl0]

Originally Posted by xjx388

While I don’t see a point to owning NBA video clips, bored apes, digital art pieces, someone’s tweet, etc etc, I’m not going to sit here and judge people who do find value in those things or those who want to sell to those people.

These early applications are not very exciting (unless you want to gamble on the value of digital property) but unless I miss my guess, NFTs can be applied to more than just the digital world.

With any physical thing that can be uniquely identified, it should be possible to associate it with an NFT. This means that ownership of the thing can be irrevocably established and only the owner can relinquish that ownership. The legality of such an arrangement is yet to be tested but in simple civil "who owns it?" type cases, NFTs would be powerful evidence.

Maybe it is better to have armies of bureaucrats recording titles and transferring titles at will. The problem is that in a world where the 4th amendment has been nullified to such an extent that the state effectively owns everything you have, many people are losing faith in the government's willingness to protect your rights.

[bruto]

Originally Posted by SuburbanTurkey

According to the blockchain, the thief is the only one with any legitimate claim to the stolen coins. The public ledger doesn't lie.

That may be so and it may well be a fatal flaw in the system, certainly one big enough to give me pause; but it still doesn't change the fact that thievery is thievery and if the system is violated it's so whether the system is weak or strong. There certainly is a good argument against walking into a wild frontier infested with bandits, the bandits are a weakness of the system, not a feature of it.

[xjx388]

Originally Posted by psionl0

These early applications are not very exciting (unless you want to gamble on the value of digital property) but unless I miss my guess, NFTs can be applied to more than just the digital world.

With any physical thing that can be uniquely identified, it should be possible to associate it with an NFT. This means that ownership of the thing can be irrevocably established and only the owner can relinquish that ownership. The legality of such an arrangement is yet to be tested but in simple civil "who owns it?" type cases, NFTs would be powerful evidence.

Maybe it is better to have armies of bureaucrats recording titles and transferring titles at will. The problem is that in a world where the 4th amendment has been nullified to such an extent that the state effectively owns everything you have, many people are losing faith in the government's willingness to protect your rights.

I can envision a future where all art carries an NFT. It would be a great way to establish and track provenance and a lot more secure than a paper COA. Properly implemented, you wouldn’t be able to steal a piece and sell it if you didn’t have the NFT.

Still a lot of security issues to work out for any really serious use, but they are in their infancy. I’m not ready to write the whole thing off as a scam.

[Marras]

Originally Posted by psionl0

With any physical thing that can be uniquely identified, it should be possible to associate it with an NFT. This means that ownership of the thing can be irrevocably established and only the owner can relinquish that ownership. The legality of such an arrangement is yet to be tested but in simple civil "who owns it?" type cases, NFTs would be powerful evidence.

That also means that if an attacker somehow manages to transfer the NFT from your wallet to their wallet, then they will irrevocably became the legal owners of the thing. It's in their wallet, and the wallet says who owns it. Hope it isn't something important like your home.

That's why NFTs simply cannot be the primary means of determining who owns something physical.

[Olmstead]

Originally Posted by xjx388

In the case of the Apes, it does transfer rights to the NFT owner.

What rights exactly? If you own an NFT, you own a unit of data on a blockchain, and you can play around with your unit of data to your heart's content. Imagine the possibilities!

Any other rights would be granted separately using copyright law, etc.

[xjx388]

Originally Posted by Olmstead

What rights exactly? If you own an NFT, you own a unit of data on a blockchain, and you can play around with your unit of data to your heart's content. Imagine the possibilities!

Any other rights would be granted separately using copyright law, etc.

Copyright/IP rights for a particular instance of an Ape transfers to whoever owns the Ape’s NFT.

[psionl0]

Originally Posted by xjx388

I can envision a future where all art carries an NFT.

Not just art. I can see the possibility of any manufactured item being given a NFT. For example, record the vin number of a new vehicle in a NFT during the manufacturing process and you will always have proof of ownership - any where in the world.

Originally Posted by xjx388

Still a lot of security issues to work out for any really serious use, but they are in their infancy.

A lot of legal issues too.

[psionl0]

Originally Posted by Marras

That also means that if an attacker somehow manages to transfer the NFT from your wallet to their wallet, then they will irrevocably became the legal owners of the thing. It's in their wallet, and the wallet says who owns it. Hope it isn't something important like your home.

That's why NFTs simply cannot be the primary means of determining who owns something physical.

Yes that is one of the security issues to be addressed. Bitcoin wallet theft has been a problem in the past and NFT theft is still a possibility even with proper security precautions.

[EaglePuncher]

Originally Posted by xjx388

In the case of the Apes, it does transfer rights to the NFT owner.

Which are 100% worthless.

Edited by sarge:

removed uncivil comment.

[Olmstead]

Originally Posted by xjx388

Copyright/IP rights for a particular instance of an Ape transfers to whoever owns the Ape’s NFT.

Yes, separately. The fact that rights are part of the deal doesn't make NFTs carry any of the rights. It just means that they're also selling something useful along with the useless unit of data.

[xjx388]

Originally Posted by EaglePuncher

Which are 100% worthless.

Edited by sarge:

removed quoted moderated content

Ah, I guess Luddism never goes out of style.

If people are making webcomics with their Apes, selling t-shirts, and selling them on open market places for ridiculous sums of money, they must be worth something to some people, no? Your assertion that they are worthless does not become a universal truth by dint of your utterance.

I actually share your view, sort of: I think NFTs in their current form are a fad built on speculation. I find very little value in them except as novelties. Bored Apes, Crypto Punks…I think these kinds of things will fade away at some point and we will remember them like modern Pet Rocks. But I simply can’t dismiss the underlying idea and technology itself as completely worthless.

We’ll see.

[xjx388]

Originally Posted by Olmstead

Yes, separately. The fact that rights are part of the deal doesn't make NFTs carry any of the rights. It just means that they're also selling something useful along with the useless unit of data.

Well, sure. But what’s new and “cool” about this is that it’s all taken care of with one easy, automated transaction. Whereas prior to this, it would have required separate contracts and teams of lawyers, every time the thing got sold.

That “useless unit of data,” is actually the token that signifies, definitively (in theory anyway, there are still security issues to be resolved) who owns the rights at any given time.

[SuburbanTurkey]

Originally Posted by xjx388

In the case of the Apes, it does transfer rights to the NFT owner.

NFTs minted from other people’s work is not legitimate.

Anything else it just depends.

I am not saying NFTs are a great idea that everyone should love. I don’t love them myself! All I’m saying is that there is a difference between “an idea I think is stupid,” and “an idea that is a flat out scam.”

that's the thing. The NFT portion adds nothing meaningful to the transaction.

It's already possible using ordinary tech to buy the rights to a digital drawing of an ape. Like you say, the crypto blockchain does nothing to verify that the original seller actually has rights to the image they are selling.

There is plenty of indicators of these being outright scams. Wash trading and market manipulation is absolutely rampant. It's totally unclear exactly how much any of these things are actually worth because the secondary market in which these things are selling is being pumped or otherwise manipulated by bad actors.

Many of the times you see these stories of "NFT sells for bajillion dollars" its is later revealed to have been just another wash trade meant to juice interest and fleece some rube.

Originally Posted by xjx388

Well, sure. But what’s new and “cool” about this is that it’s all taken care of with one easy, automated transaction. Whereas prior to this, it would have required separate contracts and teams of lawyers, every time the thing got sold.

That “useless unit of data,” is actually the token that signifies, definitively (in theory anyway, there are still security issues to be resolved) who owns the rights at any given time.

It absolutely still requires all these things. If any of these people ever try to enforce an IP rights to their apes they're going to need lawyers and the process is absolutely going to be needlessly complicated by the pointless layer crypto adds.

[ponderingturtle]

Originally Posted by bruto

I sort of get what you're saying I think, but I think you made a logical misstep here.

I can easily say "a Ponzi scheme is a scam" without implying that no other scams are possible.

I think I could say that Crypto is a scam without implying that there would be no scams without it, though it's not what I actually believe. I don't think Crypto has to be a scam, but I do think its unregulated nature makes it fertile ground for scams, and as that becomes more so I suspect that honest risk-averse investors will forsake it. And I think NFT's are largely a scam: They contain somewhere in their genesis a grand idea of artistic democracy and artists' rights, implemented in a way that makes the idea impracticable. The volatility of collectibles without anything to collect.

This deed says you own this deed.

By and large crypto seems to be a solution in search of a problem.

[ponderingturtle]

Originally Posted by xjx388

You think the stuff sold with NFTs materializes out of thin air?

To a large extent it does, there is certainly not any kind of practical limit to the number created other than the consumption of power to do so. The main "Benefit" to them is that they exist in an unregulated space at this time and so you don't need to worry about gambling laws to run a virtual horse race game

WOW gold certainly does materialize out of thin air but it still has value.

[EaglePuncher]

Originally Posted by xjx388

Ah, I guess Luddism never goes out of style.

Yeah, I'm a Luddite. I wonder what my boss will say when I tell him that I don't want to work in IT anymore because I hate technical things..

ETA

Originally Posted by xjx388

If people are making webcomics with their Apes, selling t-shirts, and selling them on open market places for ridiculous sums of money, they must be worth something to some people, no?

Yeah, I already called them idiots.

Originally Posted by xjx388

Your assertion that they are worthless does not become a universal truth by dint of your utterance.

But it becomes truth when you actually think about it. I mean, you would need to stop fanboying.

[ponderingturtle]

Originally Posted by plague311

Again, this can be applied to a lot of things. Baseball cards of the late 80s and 90s were so mass produced that they're worth nothing. The equivalent of "a file that's like identical to one you have gotten for free" with a pack of gum. Maybe there's a difference in your eyes, I guess I just view it as the same.

Like beany babies. Or those decorative plates that are guaranteed to go up in value, that is a sound financial investment what other investments come with such a guarantee?

[ponderingturtle]

Originally Posted by bruto

That may be so and it may well be a fatal flaw in the system, certainly one big enough to give me pause; but it still doesn't change the fact that thievery is thievery and if the system is violated it's so whether the system is weak or strong. There certainly is a good argument against walking into a wild frontier infested with bandits, the bandits are a weakness of the system, not a feature of it.

Is this theft or simply a legal corporate take over taking advantage of the unregulated state of NFT's as opposed to corporations?

https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgd5...als-everything

Thank god they were an DOA instead of a proper corporation or they might have had some recourse other than begging for the "money" to be returned.

That is totally not a scam by anyone just someone finding a legal exploit in the system. That is something we have to respect and idolize.

[plague311]

Originally Posted by EaglePuncher

Wow, these applications are about making money. Sorry that the scammers webbed you in pretty tight already.

How many applications do you know of that aren't about making money? They have me "webbed" pretty tight, eh? Yeah, the whole $1k I have invested is pretty "webbed", whatever the **** that means.

Originally Posted by EaglePuncher

Crypto and NFT expert, Mind reader, is there anything you're not good at?

No, no there's not. I'm great at everything.

Originally Posted by EaglePuncher

I almost died laughing. That's like "nuclear war for world peace".

Guess we won't arrive at any conclusion then...

No, you have already arrived at a conclusion. That much is clear.

It's actually more like a car company seeing that their product is doing damage and changing to working on electric vehicles. Like the change from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake.

[SuburbanTurkey]

Originally Posted by xjx388

I can envision a future where all art carries an NFT. It would be a great way to establish and track provenance and a lot more secure than a paper COA. Properly implemented, you wouldn’t be able to steal a piece and sell it if you didn’t have the NFT.

Proving ownership is not the hard part of copyright enforcement.

The hard part is that people know they don't own something and decide to use it anyway, which is something that NFTs do nothing to stop. NFTs of stolen artwork are extremely common. The blockchain offers no recourse for people who find their digital asset is being copied and used without permission. Recourse comes from conventional methods, either by filing DMCA takedown requests or other such law-based enforcement.

[Marras]

Originally Posted by xjx388

Copyright/IP rights for a particular instance of an Ape transfers to whoever owns the Ape’s NFT.

I went to bored apes term page (https://boredapeyachtclub.com/#/terms) and I am very much not a lawyer and I have to admit that I didn't understand what exactly is transferred and under which conditions.

The first clause says that the buyer of a bored ape gets complete ownership of the ape, but the next two clauses impose restrictions on that ownership. I don't see how ownership is "complete", if you own the thing only to the degree that Yuga Labs lets you own it.

The second clause says that when you buy an ape token, you get a worldwide royalty-free license to use the art. They apparently mean that if you sell the NFT to someone else, the license transfers along the token, but they don't actually say it in the text. Nothing in the text says anything about transferring or terminating licenses. As written, if you buy an ape one time, you will have a license to use it forever.

I have absolutely no idea what would happen in a courtroom if two people were arguing about who really owns the copyrights of an ape.

There's also the scary sentence: "Ownership of the NFT is mediated entirely by the Smart Contract and the Ethereum Network"

I couldn't find the code for the smart contract anywhere on the site, though I have to admit that I didn't make an exhaustive search. As far as I have understood it, "Smart Contract" just means "a piece of code that someone wrote in an environment where it is not really possible to debug the code before deploying to the production and where it is by impossible to fix a code by design after it has been deployed".

And to reiterate: that sentence says that the legal owner of the bored ape is the one who controls the wallet where it belongs to according to the blockchain.

According to it, it is not possible to steal bored apes. If the blockchain says it belongs to you, it belongs to you, no matter how it ended up in your wallet.

This is not a future that I want.

[xjx388]

Originally Posted by EaglePuncher

Yeah, I'm a Luddite. I wonder what my boss will say when I tell him that I don't want to work in IT anymore because I hate technical things..

ETA



Yeah, I already called them idiots.



But it becomes truth when you actually think about it. I mean, you would need to stop fanboying.

This is starting to remind me of the kind of arguments gamers make when they hate on a particular game they don’t like.

That game is worthless!

Why?

Because the people that play it are stupid!

Why are they stupid?

Because they play a worthless game.

Well maybe they don’t think it’s a worthless game.

Stop being such a fanboy!

Hopefully you have some deeper arguments that you are hiding in there somewhere.

[bruto]

Originally Posted by psionl0

Not just art. I can see the possibility of any manufactured item being given a NFT. For example, record the vin number of a new vehicle in a NFT during the manufacturing process and you will always have proof of ownership - any where in the world.


A lot of legal issues too.

But there is already a mechanism in place for proof of ownership, and though one can also steal a title, it is possible that a title is harder to steal than an NFT, at least at this point. And the current system has both redundancy and time limitation. You don't need to keep the title to the car you junked 20 years ago. If your house burns down and your title with it, you can get it replaced using other proofs of ownership, and so forth. There's an orderly system for transfer of ownership.

It brings up an interesting question as well. Even assuming that the blockchain becomes massively more energy-efficient than it now is, at what point does the proliferation of this information become a source of confusion? Of course cyberspace is infinitely capacious, but I wonder about the ability to index and retain information reliably.

Right now, given the way things are done, one can imagine, if hyperbolically, a world in which, owing to energy demand, cities go dark to support the eternal record of every toaster in the world. But even assuming that is not the case, one is left with the issue that there is a difference between what you can do and what you should do.

Electronic information has a great advantage in its ability to be sorted, collated and stored, but there are advantages of scale. When a police department in Vermont wants to trace a stolen car, they do not need a database that includes the taxicabs in Lima.

[Marras]

Originally Posted by psionl0

Not just art. I can see the possibility of any manufactured item being given a NFT. For example, record the vin number of a new vehicle in a NFT during the manufacturing process and you will always have proof of ownership - any where in the world.

Do you want that a list of everything that you own is publicly available for everyone in the world?

I don't.

Neither do I want that my health records are publicly available for everyone in the world, which is another idea that some cryptobro has proposed.

[EaglePuncher]

Originally Posted by xjx388

This is starting to remind me of the kind of arguments gamers make when they hate on a particular game they don’t like.

That game is worthless!

Why?

Because the people that play it are stupid!

Why are they stupid?

Because they play a worthless game.

Well maybe they don’t think it’s a worthless game.

Stop being such a fanboy!

Hopefully you have some deeper arguments that you are hiding in there somewhere.

This is starting to remind me of the arguments cryptofanboys make when they have dollar signs in their eyes and someone criticizes their prreeeeciiiouuuusss

[EaglePuncher]

Originally Posted by psionl0

Not just art. I can see the possibility of any manufactured item being given a NFT. For example, record the vin number of a new vehicle in a NFT during the manufacturing process and you will always have proof of ownership - any where in the world.

Yeah, that sure is the only way to prove ownership of your car. Uh huh.

When I think of the many many cases where I or a friend got stopped by police in a routine check and after showing them the registration, the policeman went: "I don't believe you. The car is not flagged as stolen but this official piece of paper is not enough, Sir"

[plague311]

Originally Posted by EaglePuncher

This is starting to remind me of the arguments cryptofanboys make when they have dollar signs in their eyes and someone criticizes their prreeeeciiiouuuusss

He ******* literally said he doesn't own any NFTs. Just because some of us push back on your nonsensical claims about the evils of crypto doesn't mean we're "cryptobros" or that we're heavily invested.

I'm definitely not as pro as you are con, that's for sure.

[plague311]

Originally Posted by EaglePuncher

Yeah, that sure is the only way to prove ownership of your car. Uh huh.

When I think of the many many cases where I or a friend got stopped by police in a routine check and after showing them the registration, the policeman went: "I don't believe you. The car is not flagged as stolen but this official piece of paper is not enough, Sir"

This is the most fantastic post I've ever seen. No one is saying that an NFT is "the only way to prove ownership of the car" or even that it should be the only way. I have seen them say that it could be a utility (or in simpler terms "a function added") to an NFT. Something it could be used for in the future when, as they have said ******* repeatedly now, the security issues get cleared up.

You said you work in IT, eh? I'm a bit surprised.

[SuburbanTurkey]

I'm not timid about admitting I'm opposed to wild speculative bubbles and scams. They're bad. They prey on people's worst instincts and ambitions and hurt the least financially savvy the most. All of this powered by a system designed to be maximally wasteful of energy even as we stand on the precipice of climate crisis. This whole crypto movement is disgusting, a showcase of some of the worst aspects of the humanity.

[plague311]

Originally Posted by SuburbanTurkey

I'm not timid about admitting I'm opposed to wild speculative bubbles and scams. They're bad. They prey on people's worst instincts and ambitions and hurt the least financially savvy the most. All of this powered by a system designed to be maximally wasteful of energy even as we stand on the precipice of climate crisis. This whole crypto movement is disgusting, a showcase of some of the worst aspects of the humanity.

Where does extreme hyperbole rank? Asking for a friend.

[EaglePuncher]

Originally Posted by plague311

This is the most fantastic post I've ever seen. No one is saying that an NFT is "the only way to prove ownership of the car" or even that it should be the only way. I have seen them say that it could be a utility (or in simpler terms "a function added") to an NFT. Something it could be used for in the future when, as they have said ******* repeatedly now, the security issues get cleared up.

You said you work in IT, eh? I'm a bit surprised.

Still fanboying, huh? Oh, I'm pretty sure you don't work in IT

Also, we already have ways to prove ownership. That's what my post was supposed to say, but you chose to ignore it and whine and insult instead.

[psionl0]

Originally Posted by bruto

But there is already a mechanism in place for proof of ownership, and though one can also steal a title, it is possible that a title is harder to steal than an NFT, at least at this point. And the current system has both redundancy and time limitation. You don't need to keep the title to the car you junked 20 years ago. If your house burns down and your title with it, you can get it replaced using other proofs of ownership, and so forth. There's an orderly system for transfer of ownership.

"We got along fine without <insert latest technological creation> before. Why do we need it now"?

The answer to this age old Luddite question is the same as always: "We don't". Sometimes new technology is pushed onto the population by profit seeking corporations and at other times, new technology generates public interest regardless. If the new technology becomes popular it may reach a critical mass where it becomes indispensable. (Anybody want to get rid of motor cars and go back to the horse and buggy?)

Cryptos and NFTs are nowhere near reaching any sort of critical mass (although public interest shows no signs of waning). Sure, we can deal with ownership issues with a massive bureaucracy. Maybe it is better that way (those bureaucrats would be unemployed otherwise) but if NFTs ever prove to be a reliable means of establishing ownership then I suspect that these bureaucrats will be in for a lot of competition.

Originally Posted by bruto

It brings up an interesting question as well. Even assuming that the blockchain becomes massively more energy-efficient than it now is, at what point does the proliferation of this information become a source of confusion? Of course cyberspace is infinitely capacious, but I wonder about the ability to index and retain information reliably.

Right now, given the way things are done, one can imagine, if hyperbolically, a world in which, owing to energy demand, cities go dark to support the eternal record of every toaster in the world. But even assuming that is not the case, one is left with the issue that there is a difference between what you can do and what you should do.

Electronic information has a great advantage in its ability to be sorted, collated and stored, but there are advantages of scale. When a police department in Vermont wants to trace a stolen car, they do not need a database that includes the taxicabs in Lima.

Is that what you are going to hang your objection to NFTs on? The size of the data base?

Maybe you haven't heard but data base searches generally run in logarithmic time. That is, if it takes 3 seconds to search 1,000 records then it takes 6 seconds to search 1,000,000 records or 9 seconds to search 1,000,000,000 records etc. If every particle in the universe was properly labeled then it would take about 80 seconds to search the particle data base. And that does not take into account that there are data structures that give priority to some types of searches over others.

It seems unlikely that we would ever use NFTs to establish ownership of toasters (but in a totally cashless digital society, who knows?) but the storage of records of taxicabs in Lima in a global vehicle data base isn't going to bother the police in Vermont.

[bruto]

Originally Posted by psionl0

"We got along fine without <insert latest technological creation> before. Why do we need it now"?

The answer to this age old Luddite question is the same as always: "We don't". Sometimes new technology is pushed onto the population by profit seeking corporations and at other times, new technology generates public interest regardless. If the new technology becomes popular it may reach a critical mass where it becomes indispensable. (Anybody want to get rid of motor cars and go back to the horse and buggy?)

Cryptos and NFTs are nowhere near reaching any sort of critical mass (although public interest shows no signs of waning). Sure, we can deal with ownership issues with a massive bureaucracy. Maybe it is better that way (those bureaucrats would be unemployed otherwise) but if NFTs ever prove to be a reliable means of establishing ownership then I suspect that these bureaucrats will be in for a lot of competition.


Is that what you are going to hang your objection to NFTs on? The size of the data base?

Maybe you haven't heard but data base searches generally run in logarithmic time. That is, if it takes 3 seconds to search 1,000 records then it takes 6 seconds to search 1,000,000 records or 9 seconds to search 1,000,000,000 records etc. If every particle in the universe was properly labeled then it would take about 80 seconds to search the particle data base. And that does not take into account that there are data structures that give priority to some types of searches over others.

It seems unlikely that we would ever use NFTs to establish ownership of toasters (but in a totally cashless digital society, who knows?) but the storage of records of taxicabs in Lima in a global vehicle data base isn't going to bother the police in Vermont.

Psion10, you were the one who introduced the idea of "any manufactured item" getting an NFT. Toasters do not grow in my garden.

You may be right about the speed of accessing databases but I'm not convinced that NFT's would increase accuracy or efficiency, nor am I convinced that the bureaucracy for some of the current operations is all that massive. I have yet to see evidence that the blockchain world has adequately addressed the issue of garbage collection.

[psionl0]

Originally Posted by bruto

Psion10, you were the one who introduced the idea of "the possibility of any manufactured item" getting an NFT. Toasters do not grow in my garden.

ftfy. There is no need to make a strawman out of this. Just because it is possible, it doesn't mean that it is compulsory. There would be little value in giving an NFT for consumables (ie food) for example.

Originally Posted by bruto

You may be right about the speed of accessing databases but I'm not convinced that NFT's would increase accuracy or efficiency, nor am I convinced that the bureaucracy for some of the current operations is all that massive. I have yet to see evidence that the blockchain world has adequately addressed the issue of garbage collection.

I guess it would be hard to convince you otherwise if you haven't done an extensive study of data structures but data engineers have been working with issues like these for a long time.

One type of structure places the least frequently accessed items at the bottom of the list. It wouldn't matter if there were 1,000,000,000,000 items in the list. If only 1,000,000 items are active then these are the only items that will be accessed. The other 999,999,000,000 items are left undisturbed (except for the rare occurrence). It is a self-archiving data structure.

[Marras]

Originally Posted by psionl0

I guess it would be hard to convince you otherwise if you haven't done an extensive study of data structures but data engineers have been working with issues like these for a long time.

One type of structure places the least frequently accessed items at the bottom of the list. It wouldn't matter if there were 1,000,000,000,000 items in the list. If only 1,000,000 items are active then these are the only items that will be accessed. The other 999,999,000,000 items are left undisturbed (except for the rare occurrence). It is a self-archiving data structure.

I'm first to admit that I haven't gone to details of crypto implementation, but I see one big problem with your claim that fetching the information from blockchain is logarithmic. I may have misunderstood something important, but the basic problem is that the blockchain is, as its name implies, a linear chain.

The way how database systems get logarithmic search rates is that they build indices on top of the data. Basically, they add extra data that can be used to find the records fast. Very roughly and imprecisely speaking an index doubles the size of the data that is indexed. (This assumes that the record contains also other information of the one indexed field, if you just store one value, then you can use the index itself to store it).

While there are dozens or even hundreds of ways to build indices for data, almost all of them have some sort of tree structure somewhere in their internal workings. At each level of the index there are some branches and it is specifically the branching that cuts the search time from linear to logarithmic.

Here we come to the problem. The blockchain is by design linear and it is the ultimate arbiter of who owns the token. The token is in the wallet where the latest block of the chain that mentions it says it is.

You can't run logarithmic searches on linear data. So if you want to get logarithmic search times, you need to build an index that is completely separate from the blockchain and query it. But the index cannot give authoritative answers. If for any reason at all one transaction gets not indexed properly, then the index will give an incorrect answer on who owns the token. Every time when the index and the blockchain disagree on the owner, the blockchain wins. To be absolutely certain of the ownership it is necessary to scan all transactions in the chain that are newer than what the index claims as the most recent transaction, and that operation will be linear in the size of the blockchain.

In my opinion the worst weakness in NFTs as proof of ownership is that you need to validate the data using the issuer's keys. There is absolutely nothing technical that would prevent me from copying the data from a random NFT and claiming that my new token is the one and the only proof of ownership. The way this is prevented is that the original issuer signs the token with their private key, the signature can be checked with their public key, and in a serious case of a dispute they can prove that they do, indeed, have in their possession the private key that goes along with the public key.

If the issuer's keys get destroyed by any reason, then it becomes impossible to prove the ownership. If the private key gets leaked, then anyone can create ownership tokens that are indistinguishable from the originals.

I do not trust a random company to not mess up their keys over a long time period. If I buy a house now, I don't want that someone comes in 25 years time with an NFT that says they own the house and I can't prove my claim because a random intern junked the wrong hard drive 10 years earlier.

[psionl0]

Originally Posted by Marras

I see one big problem with your claim that fetching the information from blockchain is logarithmic. I may have misunderstood something important, but the basic problem is that the blockchain is, as its name implies, a linear chain < . . . snip . . .>

Most of this post is all over the place. First you point out that you can't do a logarithmic search on a linear linked list then you say that you can create an index which can be searched logarithmically then you say you can't.

Suffice to say that blockchain explorers have no difficulty in locating a block in rapid time (although in the case of Ledger which is up to its 70,000,000th LCL, the earliest LCLs could not be found with the search engine I used).

Originally Posted by Marras

In my opinion the worst weakness in NFTs as proof of ownership is that you need to validate the data using the issuer's keys. There is absolutely nothing technical that would prevent me from copying the data from a random NFT and claiming that my new token is the one and the only proof of ownership.

Although I haven't thoroughly researched NFT technology (its applications don't excite me yet) I am skeptical of this claim. The data in a block chain is immutable. You could not create a copy of an existing NFT, change some details then add it to the blockchain. The validators would not permit it.

Originally Posted by Marras

If the issuer's keys get destroyed by any reason, then it becomes impossible to prove the ownership.

Again inaccurate. Only the owner (the person who has the private key) can transfer ownership. If the private key gets lost then ownership can't be transferred. But ownership is still firmly entrenched.

Originally Posted by Marras

If the private key gets leaked, then anyone can create ownership tokens that are indistinguishable from the originals.

More accurately, the thief can transfer ownership of the NFT.

Originally Posted by Marras

I do not trust a random company to not mess up their keys over a long time period. If I buy a house now, I don't want that someone comes in 25 years time with an NFT that says they own the house and I can't prove my claim because a random intern junked the wrong hard drive 10 years earlier.

This is the only serious objection to using NFTs to establish ownership of expensive property. The owner would have to exercise extreme diligence over the privacy of their information (especially if there is no legal recourse).

A human bureaucracy is not always safer though. There have been cases where international thieves were able to exploit loopholes in a bureaucracy's owner validation process to steal and sell an owner's house right from under them and the owner had no recourse (and even if he did, since the money is long gone, the buyer would have no recourse). These loopholes have since been fixed fortunately.

[Marras]

Originally Posted by psionl0

Most of this post is all over the place. First you point out that you can't do a logarithmic search on a linear linked list then you say that you can create an index which can be searched logarithmically then you say you can't.

Suffice to say that blockchain explorers have no difficulty in locating a block in rapid time (although in the case of Ledger which is up to its 70,000,000th LCL, the earliest LCLs could not be found with the search engine I used).

The blockchain explorers are using indices if they achieve logarithmic search times. That's given as it is provably impossible to get better than linear search time on an unordered list.

And if they use indices, then there's the danger that the index gets desynced from the blockchain and gives wrong answers.

Quote:

Although I haven't thoroughly researched NFT technology (its applications don't excite me yet) I am skeptical of this claim. The data in a block chain is immutable. You could not create a copy of an existing NFT, change some details then add it to the blockchain. The validators would not permit it.

There is absolutely nothing that prevents me from creating a completely new NFT with the exact same payload that an existing NFT has.

Suppose you buy a Tesla and you get an NFT that says: "This token controls the ownership of car with VIN 12345".

I can then make an NFT that says: "This token controls the ownership of car with VIN 12345" and add it to the blockchain.

Now we have two NFTs that both claim to determine who really owns your car. The tokens have different unique ids, but the payload is the same.

If I come to you and demand you to give me the car, we need a way to determine which one of the NFTs is legit. We can't check which one was added to the blockchain first, because I can do my fake tokens in advance if I know what they will look like.

The way is to ask Tesla for that. Tesla needs to tell us which one of the tokens they made. And they need to do that in some way that is cryptographically secure and for that they need secure keys. One possible way would be that they create cryptographically secure hashes of the tokens and then provide a crytographically signed list of those hashes, so that I cannot spoof them to provide my own list of my faked tokens.

If Tesla goes the way of dodo or they cannot for some other reason (for example, if they lost their keys) provide a proof that one of the tokens is the real one, then no one can do that.

Quote:

Again inaccurate. Only the owner (the person who has the private key) can transfer ownership. If the private key gets lost then ownership can't be transferred. But ownership is still firmly entrenched.

Ownership of the token itself is entrenched. Ownership of the thing that the token refers to needs to be checked from the people who made the thing.

Quote:

More accurately, the thief can transfer ownership of the NFT.

No, the thief can create a new token that claims to control the ownership of the real physical thing. How easy that is depends on the exact validation schema that the issuer uses.

[psionl0]

Originally Posted by Marras

There is absolutely nothing that prevents me from creating a completely new NFT with the exact same payload that an existing NFT has.

There is no point in repeating this claim. It is just nonsense. If NFTs were that easy to replicate then they wouldn't be useful for doggy doos let alone digital art.

If you try to clone an NFT and add it to the blockchain then it would fail the validation test because the same NFT is already on the blockchain.

[gnome]

Help me bridge this gap--how is an NFT made for a physical object that ensures it's the only NFT made from that physical object?