Comment by smt88 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smt88 | Hacker News Reader

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> If I took a photo of an idable, signed and noterized document stating that "the owner of X NFT is the owner of Y real item," then made that photo into an NFT, that would be embedding proof.

First of all, you're essentially talking about DRM. The signed and notarized contract is what determines ownership, not the NFT. It's centralized in (and can be modified by) the legal system.

For example, that contract could be nullified or invalidated by a court opinion, and the NFT becomes meaningless. It's just a digital document with a paper trail.

Think of it like this: does a Google Photo become more useful if A) it can only be on one computer at a time, and B) I have a log of every computer it's ever been on?

I could also copy the embedded digital asset and put it into a different NFT. Then there would be two NFTs with the exact same "proof" in them. Which is the real one? The document can't specify which NFT it applies to because the NFT is minted after the document is signed.

> Then there would be two NFTs with the exact same "proof" in them. Which is the real one?

The one that came first. Are you really that invested in claiming knowledge on this subject? If so, how could you not immediately grok that this would be the answer?

> For example, that contract could be nullified or invalidated by a court opinion

Or it could be not. In which case, it would be embedding proof. Your argument hinges on the idea that something is impossible yet requires special circumstances to make it so, while my argument is that something is possible and gives an imaginable scenario for it.

> The one that came first. Are you really that invested in claiming knowledge on this subject? If so, how could you not immediately grok that this would be the answer?

Sorry, you're right. I was talking about something theoretical instead of something practical.

In real life, it would make more sense for a fraudster to sell NFTs with their own forged contracts, e.g.: a photo of a signed, notarized paper document saying that the owner of the NFT owns ____ artwork.

In that case, they could either sell their forged NFTs without waiting for the artwork's owner to create their own, or they could only forge NFTs of famous pieces and hope that they become NFTs.

If, for example, you know that a certain painter's work is being sold as NFTs, one by one, then you could reasonably expect to create a confusing enough (though not identical) NFT with an earlier timestamp.

The point, though, is that the NFT is a photo of a contract, not a contract.

> Or it could be not. In which case, it would be embedding proof.

Yes, but as a buyer, how do I know the difference?

After the contract is nullified, the NFT could still be transacted. The NFT is unreliable, so, again, it's absolutely meaningless in terms of ownership.

> you could reasonably expect to create a confusing enough (though not identical) NFT with an earlier timestamp

The timestamp is the block-chain, not what's written on the document.

> Yes, but as a buyer, how do I know the difference?

As it stands, you'd have to know who you were buying from fairly well. Just as you would with a physical art piece (which could be also be a fraud).

Personally, I'd make sure that the image being hashed was also hosted somewhere only accessible through official means.

For instance, I'd have the louvre host the image denoting the NFT as ownership on their official website, then tweet them to make sure they weren't just hacked, and wait a few days to confirm.

But all of these issues are more related to what NFT's are now, vs what they may become. There are definitely ways of solving these issues.

Though I still don't see why any non-official NFT would ever be of any value.

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