Why NFTs are bad: the short version
antsstyle.medium.com
antsstyle.medium.com
Moot point. Some are already proof of Stake and ethereum will be switched to PoS.
Might as well say storing your photos on the internet is bad for the environment and doesn't provide any benefits.
There a plenty of reasons why NFTs can be bad but this ain't one that applies across the board.
Read that sentence like "As long as proof of stake exists, proof of work is a 'moot point' toward the environment."
They're making an analogy to the OP comment to argue that it's a bad excuse.
A correct version would be: I’ve been trying to convince people that power isn’t bad, even though some is generated with coal, because solar exists.
And that version makes sense.
Anyone bringing up the energy argument lacks any other good arguments.
PoS is a nice concept but we don’t leave in that world yet. The author mentions that Etherium has been talking about switching to PoS but haven’t yet.
Anyone who has thought about it for more than 5 seconds has seen the issues with the switch. Most miners have the majority of their “holdings” not in Etherium but in compute power, because they sell Eth to cover the operating costs, expand computing power, and secure profits (and reduce volatility).
This means switching to PoS will probably cause a massive fork, with the biggest miners staying in the “old” branch (it’s the one they’ll dominate). This leaves the new branch with little compute power and less holders, which makes it very vulnerable, especially since all large holders would rather prefer the new where they’ll get rewards.
What will really determine the successful chain, is where the stable coins go.
A personal opinion vs something rooted in facts.
NFTs can be created on two primary blockchains. Ethereum and Solana. The author manifests no knowledge of those.
Solana is already proof of Stake. Ethereum is going to move to proof of Stake with Eth2.
PoS requires so much less computing power (therefore electricity) than Proof of Work. It's in fact relatively environmentally friendly.
NFTs have the potential to be a game changer. The author here sees NFTs as "Art". They're really not. Sure often NFTs are associated with Art but it's really... ownership of those pieces of Art.
But NFTs are really certificate of ownership. With smart contracts.
There is so much that can be done with NFTs. Memberships. Distributed voting. Royalties embedded in contracts so when NFTs are resold the original creator can get remunerated.
I don't know if that would really work and I don't know if there is a better way. But as people value digital things more and more in games I can see the idea of having a permanent version of something you achieved or bought as having an enhanced value.
I am no expert so please poke holes in this idea!
They are more easily owned by groups, transferred, packaged with others, verified with software etc.
You could think of it like the shipping container revolution but for digital assets. Sure it's possible to do these things with legacy contracts but it's far less efficient and standardized.
DAOs are an order of magnitude easier to assemble and manage than traditional companies. They can buy or trade NFTs by vote done many times per day in hours. And all of the internal processes and governance can be done via software.
If I sell it, the NFT isn't going to notice that it is on display in a museum and take appropriate action.
And so on. Smart contracts are neat, but they depend on all the same mechanisms that other contracts use.
https://mobile.twitter.com/el33th4xor/status/145632957029519...
I dont know why anyone would trust Emin when he freaked out and sold all his Bitcoin years ago. He never understood the value of proof of work.
What matters is the end result, and proof of work is very bad even if cost is ignored - there were multiple 51% attacks on smaller PoW coins while even tiny DPoS coins work well, as far as the consensus itself is concerned.
PoW is insecure and extremely expensive. The writing is on the wall - after ethereum finally fully switches away from mining anti-PoW marketing is going to increase 10x. Supporting bitcoin will become synonymous with wanting to destroy the environment.
Nope, in Marxism value determines cost and is equal to the social labor needed for the production of a good.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/06/19/crypto-m...
Say I could buy a limited version Napoleon skin for the next version of civilization, and it would work on any version of that game that ran on any platform. I think that could work with NFTs and I think it makes sense. Games live longer than the companies that create them. How many companies have published Civ? How many ports? Anyone want to guess how many versions there will be in the next twenty years?
I don't know for sure if that would work but it seems possible.
And on the other hand if the game is open-source ported or anything it doesn't make much sense either because then by definition you have access to whatever you want
edit: also thinking about it, how does the NFT even prove you owned anything in the game in the first place? What do I write into an NFT that proves that I actually earned the stuff in the game instead of just making it up?
a database entry where? on a Microsoft or EA server that they shut down after 5 years?
that's all it is to begin with, a database entry, albeit a distributed one that probably wont go away.
if a game developer rejects a communities investment, another developer can hop in and add support from assets from other games.
imagine a dnd character that you can create once, is hosted and persists forever, and that you can load into any game.
And no other developer can pick up games that are proprietary because the NFT doesn't confer ownership over the games assets or grant you access to the code.
When you own a NFT and it's in your wallet it shows that you own something. This can be used for membership for example where the owner of that NFT is automatically granted access to ... something...?
There are also smart contracts associated with NFTs... Can encode royalties and other things.
For example a creator of an NFT could encode a 5% royalty associated. This means that when that NFT is sold subsequently the original author will make 5% of the sale price.
Some people are starting to sell NFTs like a commitment to give a % of a particular revenue. It's a digital contract.
But sure. Part of owning a NFT you can often display something... Visual. Because well, we live in a visual world.. and right now it's the foundation of many NFT collections.
It's so much more than just art. The smart contract allow many more use cases in the future to prove that you own something, or are a member of something.
There is value in perhaps validation of proof of membership in entities where they have mutual agreements to unlock extra capabilities without having to link their backends, but there are other ways to accomplish the same things... like OAuth.
The obvious advantage for artists is cutting out the middlemen for distribution of their work by taking advantage of public financial facilities such as smart contracts for escrow etc. That does require collectors to honor the ownership records, but they need reliable mechanisms for tracking that and blockchains are an excellent mechanism, as well as a straightforward way to patronize the creators directly.
This is a condemnation of shitty jpeg art being traded for cryptocurrency, sometimes as money laundering or fraud.
What does this have to do with real NFT usecases?
I won't even touch PoW vs PoS vs Po*.
This does not belong here, let alone frontpage.