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Comment by waynesonfire | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, surprising this didn't exist before. A database of who owns what. Due to modern technology, this problem is now ready for disruption. Fascinating, and it's blowing peoples mind. "I don't get what NFTs are.." -- it's no different then submitting a document with the city that you own the property at some address. Everything else is details.

Like, if I make waynesonfire collectable cards, and I produce 10 of them, I'd make a paper certificate or something and maybe announce that I've made 10. I wouldn't know who owns them. However, computers can keep track of that now. That's great.

The question is, does this require a distributed ledger to operate? Maybe.. but, if I was waynesonfire card maker and was popular, I'd be very interested in creating and operating a ledger. This ecosystem seems VERY similar to social media, the ledger with the strongest network will win and there will probably be just a handful of them.

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But the ledger is meaningless. You make 10 copies of a PNG and put them on a blockchain to sell them, nothing prevents me from making a million identical copies of that PNG and give them for free. It’s not even counterfeit. They’re the exact same item. NFTs aren’t even DRM.

Even if you wanted to keep track of who “owned” something, what does blockchain provide that a relational database doesn’t? Commit privileges on a GitHub repo have more real world impacts than who “owns” a no exclusive link to a URL (not even the domain or content hosted on the domain!), but that’s managed through an database.

I could careless that it's on a blockchain. In fact, I suspect the ledger that wins won't be. The claim I was making is that it doesn't matter whether it's a crypto-ledger or a central DB. The winner is the solution with the strongest network. I wouldn't be surprised if FB got into this space.

My point is even more meta. A ledger — of any type — is completely meaningless without access controls on reads. It’s the ACL that ensures rarity and “ownership.

I don't follow. Why?

Because who gives a shit if I own a rare waynesonfire PNG if literally anyone in the world can access it?

Anyone can print out a picture of the Mona Lisa. Yet, millions go and visit it.

Notice how you used the term ‘access’ instead of ‘own’ at the end of your question? Sure, anyone can access it, only you can own it. That’s why people give a shit.

So wait we could potentially disrupt the NFT by adding a primitive form of DRM?

it did exist before. rarepepewallet, though amateurish in its UI and full of unserious and borderline offensive memery, was (maybe still is?) an NFT platform years before the term existed. In some ways is more fully realized for the purpose of trading unique token indexes than most of what goes by the name NFT presently.

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