Why NFT? Why can't we just "import jpeg" instead of "link NFT"?
1) storing virtual property rights on a public ledger means that it can be shared among different 'metaverses', which provides friction against vendor lock-in; it limits specific vendors (like Facebook) to only providing UIs to underlying property
2) a single vendor going out of business doesn't impact your virtual property; Blizzard could shutdown WOW and you would loose all of your loot, but if it's on a public ledger then your loot survives
I think something like this is the only really plausible approach to building an open and interoperable metaverse (it's also the most compelling application of NFTs IMHO).
From a real-world legal perspective, you're totally right.
But as a means of acquiring an object in one virtual environment and maintaining access to it in others, it seems like a pretty good mechanism.
Someone could just make you a counterfeit with one bit changed and sell it cheaper or free, so it doesn't solve anything. Maybe something with neural hashes could work, but nothing in today's popular nft systems.
Your loot is worthless without the game. Why would you still want it?
So, you can make your metaverse service, I can make mine, and we can both interoperate by supporting each other's APIs. But, some of our services cost us significant money to provide and have market value to our users. We can make with work out for everyone by recognizing ownership of certain NFTs as decentralized verification that a given user has rights to things of value in our services.
We don't have a lot of examples of this so far because corporations are incentivized to wall you off from their competition and the public has not the means to securely control and verify value outside of the blessings of the corporations. But, now we can do it without them.
No one is crying out for a metaverse.
The same way things of monetary value interoperate on the internet currently. Anyone right now can create their own ecommerce site right now and start selling things for money just fine.
But if items and their properties are stored in a public-by-default way, then other games can incorporate those items in it (without Blizzard's permission). So if you get some loot in one game, it can become available in others.
The neat idea is that application data from different sources become composable by default.
Frankly, I'm not much of a gamer - but an open ledger is the only basis that I can see to avoid vendor lock-in for the increasingly nuanced virtual environments that we are building.
It's the same thing with Bitcoin node software - any node could broadcast a transaction that contains more BTC than the address actually has. But the crypto/ledger won't add up, so the network just wouldn't accept it.
In fact, flooding the networks with forgeries would devalue the network (and the operator's investment in the project).
Games built on a public ledger benefit from playing by the rules - doing otherwise would devalue their investment in building on the ledger.
This only makes sense for like gambling games / other financial stuff that values those items as a substitute for money. What game designer would let some other company add items to your game without your oversight? Why would you bother devoting developing time into mao king sure everything renders correctly and has the correct properties in game. What if the other game gets hacked and now people start bringing OP items into your game. If you are designing a game you typically want to have control over the whole experience.
> This only makes sense for like gambling games / other financial stuff that values those items as a substitute for money.
Here's another scenario outside of gaming - suppose I once bought some content on Apple Music, but now use some other platform. If music streaming services stored ownership information on a public ledger, then those permissions (and possibly playlists) could just be imported into arbitrary platforms. What's better, startups that build a better experience than Apple Music could access that data without Apple's permission.
The core idea is that the end-user owns their data by default (ie, no explicit export); not the 3rd party platform.
It's reasonable to doubt that Apple would want to allow this, of course - they do seem to like their walled gardens. But it does give another concrete example.
I'm going to reiterate my main point - a public ledger that no particular party can control is the only mechanism that I see for avoiding vender lock-in as we (for better or worse) lean ever more heavily into online and virtual systems.
EDIT: Tried to reword to make my point more clear
I can just upload my *.loot file, and get it anywhere.
The only "good" thing this does is enforce a way to ensure users pay. Eg. Blizzard can't ensure i bought that new skin for my avatar if i'm just uploading a file, but by transferring an NFT or whatever they can. I would rather not use new-age DRM in my metaverse.
Which is cool. If it weren't for the energy use.
Forced monetization of all that, is a bad thing, not a good thing.
Sorry if your post was sarcasm, NFTs have hit some kind of milestone where I can't tell the difference between the jokes and sincere posts.