The satirical Non-Fungible Olive Gardens sold more than $130k in volume | Hacker News Reader

The satirical Non-Fungible Olive Gardens sold more than $130k in volume

opensea.io

60 pointsiskander68 comments

To clarify, $130K didn't go straight to the creators. This is trade volume, including people selling these things to each other.

If someone sells it to themselves (wash trade to fake interest) it would also show up in this number.

And that’s a lot of the trick. Folks sell it amongst themselves to create the illusion of demand. Some sucker comes along and buys it, and the trap is sprung.

I wish I was a more unethical person. I feel like I could do really well in this space.

People looking from the outside of NFTs seem to believe this kind of wash trading is a dominant source of volume. In my experience, it's pretty rare and there's a lot of organic demand around each new "hot" NFT. A better way to think of these is each successful NFT series is a mini-bubble, people inside the scene develop an instinct for features might make an NFT desirable but no one can accurately guess the top. So they play hot potato with each other, where buying earlier increases chances of a successful exit.

> In my experience, it's pretty rare

How could you possibly know this? Basically the entire blockchain ecosystem is set up to prevent distinguishing whether wash trading is prevalent or not.

Edit: And even if you can establish that there's multiple people involved, they still might be colluding among themselves to create the illusion of demand.

Participation in discords and NFT trading telegrams. You can see what people buy and that often the hot potato ladder involves multiple verifiably distinct persons.

Is the last person who bought it before the interest diminishes the bag holder?

Yeah, that's right. Though crypto now seems to experience interlocked cycles of "rotations", so interest sometimes comes back after a few months

What are popular telegram groups and discord channel for NFT trading?

There is usually a Discord associated with each project (including the one in this post)

Public NFT trading telegrams are a very noisy/scam-y scene, I think that many people gravitate towards smaller private ones with a circle of <50 friends.

> I wish I was a more unethical person. I feel like I could do really well in this space

Chasing money for ... ? The answer to that question doesn't usually lead anywhere good.

Stay ethical, if you are you're killing it.

Ethics pays more than in good feelings. If you decide to be unethical, eventually you'll be only surrounded by unethical people.

Most people cash out before this happens

I don't think most people cash out and move to the forest where the consequences of their actions never reach them.

Because of the mass recording of our society, I actually think a reckoning of some sort may happen. At least, future generations will have quite the magnifying glass to judge our actions.

I'm actually really hyped for 40 years in the future to see how historians interpret the mountain of videos we'll have.

My optimistic take is the next generation will be able to learn more from the past than ever before from it.

It’s easy to look at something and think “I can do that”, but the reality is such a scam would be a lot of hard work. To start with, no one would know your NFT existed.

If you’re really confident, then you should try it. You can always return the money if you’re successful.

I think that's rather the point of this whole thread, anyone can make an NFT for anything. Many are. If you're quick to somebody else's you can jump on their work, let them promote it as lol-satire while you do your trading to make it seem very popular and … profit!

expensive way to give the team all of your ether from royalty splits over time, this assumption really ignores this disincentive or the trading section of the practically every nft discord, it requires assuming all the ENS addresses involved are also colluding and the same constructive entity wash trading

The creators can also set a royalty percentage for themselves which would give them a share of each transaction. Unclear if that's what they did in this case.

If you are in a state with a sales tax, would you have to pay that?

"Own a piece of a local Olive Garden by paying us money!" is usually treated as financial fraud, not satire – unless there's a reasonable actual contract that allows me to at least theoretically own something if unlimited breadsticks and "Italian" food are suddenly a hit in my area.

Can anyone explain to me how what the projected value proposition of this is?

It's satirical. The whole point is that there is no value proposition. The project is not in any way associated with Olive Garden.

Again, satire ceases to be such when there is mention of an actual corporate entity that exchanges real money for real unlimited breadsticks. Or at least, you have to be very careful.

I don't understand how this is not tantamount to someone selling pieces of the local Olive Garden franchise for $100. That person could equivalently claim satire, because there's no way that could happen in real life.

>Again, satire ceases to be such when there is mention of an actual corporate entity that exchanges real money for real unlimited breadsticks.

Satire doesn't stop being satire just because you used the name of a business.

>Or at least, you have to be very careful.

Check out the FAQ on the website for that bit[1].

[1] https://nonfungibleolivegardens.com/

Not helping. The website says:

> For too long, ownership of Olive Garden franchises has been dominated by the capricious whims of the fiat system. That’s why we’re enabling anyone to trustlessly mint a nonfungible token representing 1 of 880 real Olive Garden franchises in the United States.

Again, they are falsely promising "ownership of a franchise" and "representation of a franchise" right there in the website. Nowhere does it say that the actual ownership will be of an image.

I suppose a skilled lawyer could make the case that they are obviously joking because all NFTs are worthless images, but that would be a bit of an uphill battle in my opinion given the deceptive wording here.

I'm also not a lawyer, but yeah, it sure feels like using the word "own" and having real money, real trades, and a trademarked name in the mix could be problematic.

> Again, they are falsely promising "ownership of a franchise" and "representation of a franchise" right there in the website. Nowhere does it say that the actual ownership will be of an image.

The first sentence is simply untrue. The second sentence is accurate on your part and on the creators' parts: you don't own the picture.

> The first sentence is simply untrue.

How is it untrue? I'll quote it in its entirety.

> For too long, ownership of Olive Garden franchises has been dominated by the capricious whims of the fiat system.

"For too long, ownership of X has been dominated by Y" is a typical sentence used in advertisements that go on to promise "Now, you too can own X" – so it's reasonable to think that the same is the implication in this case too, especially if your continuing sentence is "That’s why we’re enabling anyone to blah blah blah representing 1 of 880 real Olive Garden franchises in the United States."

Edit: after a bit more conversation and reading the page carefully, they are actually promising some ownership, but in a "Roadmap" as a sneaky way out:

> Use project funds to complete leveraged buyout of Darden Restaurants, Olive Garden's parent company. Upon successful completion, all NFOG franchise owners will now own real Olive Garden franchises.

>How is it untrue?

You misunderstand; they are referring to where you incorrectly quote the website as saying, "ownership of a franchise".

>"For too long, ownership of X has been dominated by Y" is a typical sentence used in advertisements that go on to promise "Now, you too can own X"...

Which they don't really do here, so that point is moot.

What they do go on to say is that you can mint an NFT that represents a franchise, but what you're misunderstanding is the word "represent". Anything can represent anything - the pancake I just made (hooray, breakfast for dinner!) can represent the White House. The bicycle in my garage can represent the International Space Station while I'm out playing with my kids. That doesn't mean that the pancake is the White House, or that my bicycle representing the ISS now means that I own the ISS. Quite simply, it means that for the sake of whatever I'm doing - discussing politics, playing with my kids, or making a parody website that makes fun of NFTs - the NFT itself represents a franchise just because. It sounds stupid, but so are NFTs, and that's the point.

That is why myself and others have stressed to you that you need to read the FAQ and the parts where the site goes on to confirm that you do not own, nor have rights to, any Olive Garden franchise just because you have an NFT that represents one.

> What they do go on to say is that you can mint an NFT that represents a franchise, but what you're misunderstanding is the word "represent". Anything can represent anything - the pancake I just made (hooray, breakfast for dinner!) can represent the White House. The bicycle in my garage can represent the International Space Station while I'm out playing with my kids.

My view is that convoluted arguments like this are fine for winning an argument with your friends, and maybe even on an orange website.

They are unlikely to cut ice with the legal system when you get hauled up for accepting money for some "representation" of a trademarked franchise. But I guess time will tell. A good experiment for the authors of this would be go on to offer NFT pictures of Disney characters next, and then go on to explain to Disney's lawyers how they aren't actually Finding Dory, just a token that is a representation of Finding Dory.

I suggested that you read the FAQ, and you quoted the first paragraph on the site, a paragraph that's not in the FAQ.

>Again, they are falsely promising "ownership of a franchise" and "representation of a franchise" right there in the website.

First, ctrl+F "ownership of a franchise" brings up no results, so you're misquoting the website. Second, "representation" is a word that can be used loosely; the NFT can be a representation of the franchise, but that doesn't mean you legally own it. I could sell a stick figure drawing of myself that represents me, but that doesn't mean that you own me.

>Nowhere does it say that the actual ownership will be of an image.

Correct, but it does say, in the FAQ:

>While every Non-fungible Olive Garden is tethered to a real Olive Garden, ownership is currently limited to the Non-fungible Olive Garden Metaverse, granting owners no rights or privileges in meatspace Olive Gardens.

It goes on to say:

>Is this affiliated with Olive Garden?

>No.

I am really not sure how much clearer they can get than that.

When they described Olive Garden's food as "delicious" and "Italian", that's where it was obvious satire.

Everything at the Olive Garden comes out of a plastic pouch cooked in boiling water or microwaved. It's a place where you go to sit down and pay to have TV dinners served to you.

> satire ceases to be such when there is mention of an actual corporate entity

You're just making up rules now.

The lawyers don't care unless it amounts to fair use. But since they are effectively selling the Olive Garden trademark without consent of the trademark owner they might be liable to getting sued.

> because there's no way that could happen in real life.

It does happen in real life.

Government issued Title Deeds for property are the NFT's we had before anybody heard of the term. If the Title's Office says you own the deed, then by definition you own the property. If doesn't matter if you have the property in your possession, built a house on it, or paid a bank for it. All that matters is the Title's Office says you own it. If they do you can take possession of it, tear down the house, and the person who paid the bank for it handed over money for nothing.

That may sound scary, but in reality the Title Offices are pretty good at checking the current owner has authorised the transfer to a new owner. But they aren't perfect: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/she-had-n... And while such mistakes are generally very rare in any one locality (maybe once a decade where I live), I be surprised if it didn't happen once per day in the world at large.

I don't know how it works elsewhere, but where I live the government has a "all care and no responsibility" clause excusing themselves (ie, the Titles Office) from all liability when they do make the occasional mistake, including any responsibility for "setting it right". So once the illegal transfer has happened, it's over. There is no recourse. It's very like a bitcoin transaction in that way.

I smile inwardly when I see people claim NFT's could never work, or are ponzi schemes, or a throw a thousand other barbs when the reality is we've been using something like them for centuries. Unlike Pork Belly futures, put options and CDO's (which, when you think about it, are also a form of NFT from yesteryear), at least (usually, for now) they represent something tangible. It's true that rather some hand crafted legalisation like title law that takes years and an act of parliament to create, the link between the NFT and the thing they represent generally relies on contract law. Anyone can draft a contract of course, in theory a verbal agree suffices. I'm no lawyer, so I don't really know if a well drafted contract is weaker or not. I can say with some authority that signing things with private crypto keys is a damned sight more secure that how the title's office verifies you have ownership now.

The joke is that this is exactly like any other NFT. All you own is the NFT, not the art or Olive Garden the NFT points to.

I don't know if Olive Garden corporate will get the joke. I suppose OpenSea better hope that they do.

There's nothing for olive garden corporate not to get. They made it clear that all you got was a token that limited in supply to one per olive garden and had a picture of said olive garden with a dynamically generated background. That the token did not imply ownership of the chain or any of the IP.

I Could sell tokens based off streets in a town or literally anything it's just a token.

> They made it clear that all you got was a token that limited in supply to one per olive garden and had a picture of said olive garden with a dynamically generated background.

That is not what the opening tagline of "Own an Olive Garden on the blockchain!" conveys.

I'm not a lawyer (and I'm guessing you aren't one either, but willing to be pleasantly surprised), but I find it hard to believe that they can argue that "Own an Olive Garden" for x.xx ETH without any mention of the word "picture" or "image" reasonably conveys an intention to sell a picture or image.

As long as we're all not lawyers here - I would mention that the site is quite obviously satirical in a number of ways and publishing a document that is generally satirical makes the argument easier for any individual components.

That all said most of the parody is directed at NFTs and the Olive Garden seems to be picked as an example mostly arbitrarily. The OG might be able to argue that the site isn't deserving of any parody fair use exemptions for the OG specifically.

>but I find it hard to believe that they can argue that "Own an Olive Garden" for x.xx ETH without any mention of the word "picture" or "image" reasonably conveys an intention to sell a picture or image.

Here's their Q&A section https://nonfungibleolivegardens.com/

Does this confer ownership of or investment in a real Olive Garden franchise?

While every Non-fungible Olive Garden is tethered to a real Olive Garden, ownership is currently limited to the Non-fungible Olive Garden Metaverse, granting owners no rights or privileges in meatspace Olive Gardens. This may change in the future (see roadmap).

Is this affiliated with Olive Garden?

No. We are simply a community of Olive Garden fans invested in both trustless future economies and delicious, reasonably-priced Italian fare.

So am I buying a picture of an Olive Garden?

No. Token artwork is for representation only and confers no ownership over the photograph. You're not purchasing art, you're purchasing ownership of a Non-Fungible Olive Garden franchise.

One of the photos is wrong or out of date.

We've done our best to verify the accuracy of the images used, but there may be discrepancies.

Can I buy a specific Olive Garden?

The initial mint of franchises is random and you're unable to select a location. You can browse franchises that have already been minted on OpenSea and make offers there.

The breadsticks are really free?

Yes. Breadsticks will remain free and unlimited in perpetuity. You will have to pay gas fees to mint them, but these fees go to miners, not to us.

Here's a free idea I couldn't find on opensea yet: Make the entire set of Monopoly streets and properties.

Spend tonight on the project and you might wake up $20K richer.

I understood as a joke. Like.... it might be satire might one day convert it something real, but it's unclear to me how a sober analysis by a conventional semi-educated investor (me), would suggest that this actually leads to anything material, at all.

A particularly unwise investor might buy into this, but, then, they might also buy high and sell low. A certain level of sophistication, even for the lay investor, is presumed.

> "Own a piece of a local Olive Garden by paying us money!"

Who exactly are you quoting here? The site promised that you would own a token associated with a picture of an Olive Garden set within a frame of Olive Garden food. They have promised, however, that when enough money has been generated to buy the company and buy out all of its franchisees that those tokens would be converted to full ownership of the pictured location.

I have no reason to believe they'll default on any of this.

> Who exactly are you quoting here?

The site. It says "Own an Olive Garden on the blockchain! We are a community of Olive Garden fans invested in both trustless future economies and delicious, reasonably-priced Italian fare." Searching for "image" or "picture" yields no hits on the page.

> They have promised, however, that when enough money has been generated to buy the company and buy out all of its franchisees that those tokens would be converted to full ownership of the pictured location.

This just seems more and more like a case of fraud based on its intersection with the real world to me. I'm actually okay if something decides to drop $xx,xxx on an image of an ape, but once you start asking people to invest in convoluted financial schemes to buy out Olive Garden franchises, it's time for regulatory agencies to start taking a look.

>Searching for "image" or "picture" yields no hits on the page.

You've misrepresented what is on that website a few times in this thread now. Ctrl+F for "image" returns 4 results, and 1 result for "picture".

> You've misrepresented what is on that website a few times in this thread now. Ctrl+F for "image" returns 4 results, and 1 result for "picture".

I think the conversation is a bit confused about what website we are referring to here. Ctrl+F for "image" or "picture" yields zero results at https://opensea.io/collection/non-fungible-olive-gardens?tab..., which is the website that this HN post links to, and where a potential consumer would buy the NFTs. Do you disagree?

It seems to yield the results you mention at https://nonfungibleolivegardens.com/, which is a separate website linked by you and someone else elsewhere in thread that purports to provide information about these NFTs. As far as I can tell, it is not linked anywhere from the OpenSea page; and moreover is not the website that this HN post links to.

I should probably start using my time to come up with bogus scams like this instead of working a job I hate (and making less).

I feel this so hard.

Can’t wait to hear the tortured justifications of crypto-enthusiasts for this one.

Hijinks & satire akin to Cards Against Humanity in the non-crypto world?

let's just make a new deck of bullshit cards and sell each cardNFT for 1ETH.

not a bad idea

Any bubble offers the opportunity to make a profit if you get lucky and time it right? (I'm not a crypto-enthusiast, at all)

Any bubble that lasts long enough is a legitimate investment strategy

This NFT was created partly as a satirical critique of the valuelessness of NFTs. I think people in the NFT scene find it funny to drive up the value of that critique and make it a financially valuable asset. There's no justification of actual real world utility, just a continuation of the joke by a small online community.

You’re meaningfully contributing to societal prosperity with your job. These people are not. That’s gotta count for something.

Tulips are sure expensive this year.

I can hold a tulip bulb and plant it.

It might be insanely overpriced, but at least it’s not completely valueless.

These little bits of code on the other hand . . .

Oh but you don’t understand. I’ve been assured that cryptocurrency can be turned back into electricity. After all, it was generated from electricity.

So clearly it must have some value.

Ohhh. Now I get it. Thanks for clarifying

liquidates life savings

Yeah, but next year, they will be even more expensive, so I'm sure to be able to sell them and turn a profit.

The tulip bubble lasted weeks

I was all set to decry this as bullshit, but apparently not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania#/media/File:Tulip_...

It was basically a bunch of rich merchants trying out a new financial instrument for a couple weeks. It's just got one hell of a legend around it.

All of the Olive Gardens were minted inside an "inner circle" over a few days, before the first news article was published (a few hours after there were none left).

Then the value was pumped up by demand to be part of the meme.

Tale as old as time -- and an easy side hustle.

How much of this "volume" is simply people buying the NFTs from themselves to launder money?

As always... There is no way to know it isn't the same person buying and selling all these NFT's to make it look like there is interest in them.

Then as soon as just one person thinks it might be nice to try buying the NFT, all the other people buying and selling go away...

Keep the NFT threads coming guys! Someone exploiting themselves at an adtech conglomerate needs to know there are options

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