It is like crypto is a solution looking for a problem. It feels like the whole blockchain hype all over again. More noise than actual substance.
Anyone know of an example for a lay user where crpto has a huge benefit compared to other tech in the space?
Disclosure: I own ~$1 in cryptocurrency I forgot the password to years ago
The 3 in Web3 is just there to wipe the slate clean in order to resell just about any original vision that previously failed.
But blockchain itself does not prevent copyright infringement of digital assets. I.e. the artist may sell his photos as NFTs, but I can still use them without permission or resell them through other channels.
See, for example, the many NFTs traced directly from artwork by real artists.
A lot of folks hopping on the hype train mentioning they are doing X with blockchain are missing the revelation. blockchain is just a piece of the innovation, imagine if when the car was invented and suddenly inflatable tires got all the hype … that’s pretty much the times we are in. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
All the pieces that made bitcoin were already there. Satoshi was just the first to arrange them in the right order
There are also some new and interesting paradigms however, that enable different systems and possibilities on the web than what we can achieve with our traditional, centralized walled gardens and payment services. See here for an idea:
Digital artwork is not magic: someone holds the copyright and needs to pay for hosting. NFTs don’t help the first problem because blockchains are too inefficient; IPFS helps only if you find value in paying for your hosting using that protocol rather than something else — nobody is hosting DRMed content for free so it’s just a question of what storage characteristics fit your budget. Since blockchains are inefficient, more expensive, and require you to maintain a complex operating network coordinated with other people just to use them, that’s unlikely to be a preservation success.
Rights is similar: NFTs are a distraction by people trying to get you to buy their Ethereum. What actually matters is a legal statement transferring ownership – if you have an NFT and the artist says they didn’t sell the rights, you’ll get laughed out of court but the reverse is true if you have any statement from the artist saying they did – we don’t need PKI, even, a witnessed email or note will suffice. That’s important for the discussion about forking: just as nobody is offering truly free hosting, whatever “the community” says is noise — what matters is what a court accepts, and a community which tries to ignore that will get DMCAed off of the internet.
Not sure what you are arguing about hosting. IPFS is already working well for many NFT projects, because the artist + collectors have an economic incentive to continue to host and maintain the media pointed to by the blockchain tokens.
Also, you may perhaps be aware that NFTs don’t usually convey ownership but a high percentage of the discussion confuses that. Whether or not that’s an intentional sales tactic there are a lot of people who’ve been confused on that point and left wondering why the price is so high for a link to content owned by someone else hosted somewhere else.
Ownership in the context of NFT is not about ownership of the artistic intellectual property.
Further reading:
https://nathanielstern.com/text/2021/custodianship-copyright...
How does pricing compare to the existing options? On-chain hosting already limits you to public works, which many people are not going to be comfortable with, but this usually comes down to cost and reliability.
> Ownership in the context of NFT is not about ownership of the artistic intellectual property.
I'm aware but that's not how most of the marketing sounds and it also gets into the question of value. If an NFT doesn't convey real rights and requires paying more for hosting (which is also separate in the case of almost all NFTs currently), the ceiling for long-term value is pretty low.
The decentralised part acts as the security and it would be hard to forge records, could make the process more transparent and therefore less corruption.
As a side note, I'm shocked by the amount of cynicism in this thread. It seems a lot of people have been put off from the negative media surrounding crypto rather than looking at the technology behind it with an open mind. It reminds me of when P2P file sharing was demonised by the media because of pirating.
As for the cynicism, note that this is an audience with deep technical knowledge and the ability to reason about systems, years into salespeople making big claims which have not been delivered. Given the conflicts of interest inherent to a system which requires outsiders to put fresh money in before insiders can cash out, skepticism seems warranted.