That's kinda the point. The "collector" can feel like they own it -- using an idiosyncratic new definition of ownership that you don't really have to agree with but other collectors/speculators/crypto peoplke also feel is real. The artist gets paid (kinda rare for art, much less digital art), everyone else can enjoy their artistic output. System working as designed.
Some people really feel it, I know a few long-term collectors. Some people are into the VR galleries they assemble, others buy non-standard sized displays fit for specific NFTs to display in their homes. It's definitely an odd little community of rich people collecting digital art. And more broadly people feel attachment to their Twitter PFPs and feel like they can't truly use it unless they own it. It's a new social convention that's very unevenly distributed.
But what is it really that they own? Bragging rights, that they paid for the artist to proclaim them the first (or subsequent) person to own a hash on one of multiple blockchains, that contains a link pointing to an image file of an artwork hosted on a CDN? And the artist can create infinitely more? And the image file might be taken down at any time? And while you can trace the provenance on the blockchain easily enough, linking the originating address with the actual artist needs some external evidence off blockchain that might not be around forever? And the blockchain it’s on might well lose popularity at some point and be forgotten? Etc?
I just can’t see why it’d be valuable to anyone, unless they’re just caught up in the hype and don’t think too hard about it. I can however see people taking advantage of the many, many people who feel like they missed out on, say, Bitcoin and want to get in on ”crypto”.
A provenance certificate which is socially interpreted as ownership. Not going to argue whether that's a good or durable interpretation of ownership, just attesting that some people really do feel it.
It's essentially a state of intention: people buying art to appreciate having it rather than with an intention of selling. Most people in the NFT space are flippers riding bubbles, but a few actual collectors really do exist.
Digital art has been free of this "inheritance" for years. We don't need to impose the arbitrary constraints of physical art on digital art. It's as backwards as Blockbuster trying to ban digital video so that they can sell more DVDs. It's philosophical DRM for jpegs.
It's kinda the opposite of DRM though, there's a strong culture of CC0 / public domain licensing in the NFT space. The idea is that you should be able to use and remix media freely but you can preserve a kind of monetary value through which artists get paid via a novel concept of ownership.
Open source funding hits art. Anyone can view it and get the benefit of doing so, the artist got paid to create, somebody gets bragging rights. Everybody wins.
Everybody wins except for the part where a bunch of people wasted a bunch of energy competing to be the one whose computer confirmed the financial transaction in an absurdly inefficient distributed database.
Patreon's been solving the problem of "open source funding" for about a decade without that part.
Suppose you wanted a distributed system where arbitrary nodes can enter without vetting. You'd need to be robust to adversarial nodes that lie and collude. Distributed consensus under asynchrony and adversaries seriously ramps up the difficulty of already challenging problems typically solved by Paxos derived algorithms. The first moderately scalable solution to consensus within such a hostile environment and with relatively few moving parts was built on a proof of work scheme inspired by hashcash. It's not inefficient, it's just a complex domain.
It should be noted that NFTs run on Ethereum which has been in the process of moving to the vastly more efficient proof of stake scheme.
> Patreon's been solving the problem of "open source funding" for about a decade without that part.
There are a number of developing nations whose citizens cannot participate on Patreon. For others, there are workarounds that involve hurdles like navigating providers with worse customer service rep than paypal, giving out sensitive identification, high fees, high withdrawal friction and chaining various third parties who themselves might disappear or be indirectly connected to fraudulent banks.
"Maybe someday crypto will move off of PoW so you should completely ignore the fact that there the networks exist entirely because PoW is how people get paid" is a bunch of bullshit that does nothing to change the fact that Proof Of Wasting A Lot Of Power On Nothing is how it works right now. Right now I consider crypto finding a way to work that doesn't burn shit-tons of energy to be about as likely as The Year Of Linux On The Desktop finally coming to pass.
Yes, it is a completely contrived marketplace based on bragging rights. It seems to work, but it is incredibly stupid and eventually people will move on.
this is another instance of the phenomenon in tech and startup culture where someone claims to solve an already solved problem with a needlessly overly complicated technical "solution"
Original copies of (popular) physical art is expensive. Unknown imitations of (popular) physical art is also expensive. Known imitations of (popular) physical art is generally never expensive.
Art isn't some magic phenomenon. Many many people know that it has value! They pay a lot of money to exclusively own something that can almost always be trivially copied, not because they care it can be trivially copied, but because they _don't_ care.
NFTs are like a combat mech the size of the Solar System.
Someone can use it to have a really ironclad DRM implementation, guarding the art you saved and to make sure only its approved owner can view it (mimicking the tyranny of physical scarcity of meatspace for cyberspace goods).
The reason you saved it and can view it is that nobody's doing that yet. And because there are way easier and cheaper ways to implement DRM than Solar System-sized mechs, nobody probably ever will use NFTs for that. : p
Please explain how someone can have an ironclad DRM implementation that guards access to download a link to a jpeg on a public blockchain that you want everyone to be able to view.
DRM is a fundamentally broken concept. I feel like there has to be a mathematical proof out there somewhere that it is impossible to both make information consumable and, at the same time, prevent its duplication.
What, and trust the central planners at Sotheby's to not steal my apes and slimers? They'll sell off half the pixels to the government because of my back taxes.
Is that different from how crypto operates though? Cryptocurrency exchanges already have to report to the IRS/government and they'll still come after you if you have unpaid taxes.
If NFTs get big enough, there's no reason to believe that the NFT exchanges wouldn't have to register with the government/IRS.