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by ses1984 1913 days ago
I am not really following you. The appeal of an nft is that it doesn't rely on a saas, it doesn't rely on a trusted third party that needs up time that needs to be available in the future.

Jacob Collier tried to sell an nft that granted lifetime access to his concerts.

The appeal of such an nft is that it can be traded independently of any third party, on the open market.

Of course it depends on Jacob's promise to honor it.

He went back on it when people raised environmental issues.
2 comments
SpicyLemonZest 1913 days ago
Most NFTs depend on trusted third parties to determine what they even are. Collier’s proposal makes a lot more sense; a promise to grant specific rights to the holder of a specific token really does make the token valuable. But in the typical case, an NFT is really just a dangling pointer to some content (encoded in the Ethereum blockchain to varying degrees of completeness). Nothing stops me from minting copies of any NFT I’d like and selling them as the one true SpicyNFT of the underlying media - and if my platform outcompetes the others, eventually the SpicyNFT will be the only one that matters. (Equivalently, nothing stops me from minting NFTs of art that has nothing to do with me and securing first mover advantage over its actual owners.)
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ses1984 1912 days ago
You can't mint a copy of Collier's NFT because if you show up at Collier's concert with SpicyNFT they'll turn you away.

The arguments about SpicyNFTs is just kind of a distraction. It would be like if I argued against banks by saying, I could hang a shingle, accept deposits, and then just run with the money.

Do we really need to enumerate all the possible ways that a new, very limited, technology can be misused? We might be here a while, I'm pretty sure there are infinitely many ways that NFTs can be abused.

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TomSwirly 1913 days ago
So it's like a contract, but not enforceable.

In other words, worthless.

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ses1984 1912 days ago
Right, an NFT by itself is worthless. A NFT granting access to a concert is only as valuable as the promise associated with it.

It could be tied to an actual contract.

The value prop of an NFT is pretty much limited to just being able to transfer it reliably without relying on a trusted third party.

It's not like it provides a cryptographic guarantee that some contract that exists outside it will be honored.

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