[JCVI-syn10]

What's an "actual" transfer of a "virtual" good?

When an NFT is sold a unit of data stored on a digital ledger is transferred. When a D3 item was sold a unit of data stored on in the database was transferred. Why are those meaningfully different?

[frazbin]

Thanks for asking! The difference is that Diablo 3 represents 10E6~ dev hours invested into making a fun game, and items make it more fun. The items are a kind of 'share' in the total fun of the game. Now if we imagine NFTing the Diablo 3 item system, that's interesting.

Mostly what's interesting about it is why it hasn't happened. I've noticed that actors in public blockchain ecosystems VERY strongly seek 'incentive wells' i.e. locally maximized extraction mechanisms. This might be a property of certain general public-ledger economic systems, because it sure comes up a lot. Basically the law is: as long as a blockchain/Dapp/pattern makes money, the people writing it won't improvements to it outside the core extractive mechanic; at least not without some rare external inputs, which inputs are surprisingly rare in practice.

So if your application is on an incentive hill from this perspective, you know it will never get written.

The Diablo 3 Dapp won't get written by Blizzard because it lies on an incentive hill from blizzard's perspective, simply because: assets would (1) increase item prices due to fees and (2) Blizzard would be cut out as a middleman for at least some transactions.

Only once you find public-ledger tech that fixes those incentives (and probably other incentives I've missed) will you start to see interesting and complex distributed applications

[almostkorean]

I don't understand OPs point, but the meaningful difference is that the digital ledger is decentralized. If Blizzard shuts down D3, your virtual goods are gone forever. NFTs and ownership of NFTs live as long as the blockchain lives