[nth_order]

It is unfortunate that NFTs have become synonymous with these (sometimes generative) digital art collection certificates. These are overhyped, useless, speculative rubbish, while NFTs in general are neither a useless concept nor a scam. It simply means that a clearly identified object (could be a real life object, like a bike of a bike rental company) is transacted upon, owned by somebody or otherwise subject to programmatic access by smart contracts. I think NFTs become useful the moment they are connected to the real world. This all applies only if you accept that blockchains have legitimate use cases at all, of course.

[PaulHoule]

Historically people have tried to build decentralized signature systems (say GPG) but they have the problem that you don’t really know who made the key. With a blockchain system I don’t think you have a real answer, but you do have a public database that tracks the history of that key.