Yeah you got stuff in a blockchain, but the "stuff" you put in there is a mere link to a service which might not survive so long (most services don't).
So yeah in 10-15 years you'll probably have a lot of former nft owners that only own a broken link (or possibly even less).
I have a problem with this one - the membership is supposed to give you access to events/etc hosted by BAYC, so in this case they are the trusted party and can run a database. The blockchain doesn't seem like it adds anything here because ultimately BAYC can choose to deny entry for any reason.
Furthermore, how do they handle the case where a membership NFT is stolen or acquired illegitimately? Do they still honor the stolen NFT and let the thief in? Do they blacklist the NFT and re-mint a new one to give to the original owner? Etc.
Interaction with real-world state is where all blockchain-based projects break down. Blockchains can only enforce their guarantees on the chain itself - replicating it to the real world requires a trusted party, at which point a lot of the blockchain's perks no longer apply and a database starts making more sense.
Ethereum blockchain is the database, BAYC can't delete, modify or censor any BAYC users.
> Furthermore, how do they handle the case where a membership NFT is stolen or acquired illegitimately? Do they still honor the stolen NFT and let the thief in? Do they blacklist the NFT and re-mint a new one to give to the original owner? Etc.
That's a good question and it already happened, I do not have an answer for that.
> at which point a lot of the blockchain's perks no longer apply and a database starts making more sense.
Getting a BAYC is as simple as transfering an NFT from one wallet to another, mint it with a wallet on BAYC website or buy it on a centralized or decentralized market place, anywhere in the world. There is no database with this type of frictionless.
But why does it matter what the blockchain says? The bouncer hired by BAYC to stand at the door of their event can "bounce" you regardless. May as well save resources & complexity by having them run a DB since they can ignore what the blockchain says anyway.
> Getting a BAYC is as simple as transfering an NFT from one wallet to another, mint it with a wallet on BAYC website or buy it on a centralized or decentralized market place, anywhere in the world. There is no database with this type of frictionless.
Getting a brand new BAYC involves "minting it" on their website - no different than buying a ticket on Ticketmaster/etc, and I'd argue the Ticketmaster route is easier as you don't have to worry about safeguarding a wallet/installing Metamask/etc.
Getting a BAYC off someone else involves an Ethereum transaction with its associated fees - in practice those are usually mediated by a marketplace such as OpenSea so decentralization/etc goes away. There's no reason the BAYC website couldn't just manage those transfers directly and skip all of the complexity. There's a theoretical advantage where because it all happens on the blockchain you could transfer an NFT without any third-party involvement (depending on how the smart contract is set up, but I'm assuming good faith and no artificial restrictions preventing that) but how many people do this in practice?
Considering the true value of a BAYC is to get access to their exclusive events (I am ignoring the temporary speculation aspect which is is now on its way out), I still don't see what advantages the blockchain brings compared to them just running an old-school members' club with memberships in a DB, since in practice they can deny entry to the event to anyone regardless of what the blockchain says. If they want to make memberships transferrable they can trivially do so on their platform, since in practice most NFT transfers right now happen on a centralized marketplace anyway.
I understand that innovations do happen but the complexities (like smart contracts), the limitations of an append only database (that only store transactions and signatures), the damage done to our environment (CO2), the impact on electronic availability (video card shortages), the criminal uses of crypto and the life savings lost to a gambling like international market does make you wonder if this is all worth it.
I’m open to be proven wrong but I personally think that web3 and crypto, while very interesting, don’t have the attributes required to be a worthy innovation path for humankind
The criminal uses cases on traditional bank are still not solved. With any open source technology you can not block criminals of using it.
It took 25 years to start seeing some adoption in the ipv4 to ipv6 transition, and we’re nowhere close to finalising said transition…
if you think dns is going away because of the blockchain then i can start laughing way sooner.