Comment by csallen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by csallen | Hacker News Reader

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1. The NFT degree actually could still be useful for proving that you were accepted to the college and that you graduated. Not every entity cares if the college subsequently revoked your degree, and not every entity will check.

2. Other "real world" use cases abound, especially with intangibles. Degrees, certifications, licenses, tickets, contracts and invoices, perks, discounts, coupons, identifications, you name it. And these are just physical goods becoming NFTs, to say nothing of digital goods. Turning any good into an NFT adds it to a blockchain, which (a) enables ownership, (b) makes it part of a publicly accessible API that unlocks infinite creativity, (c) plugs it into a booming and a liquid market where owners can buy, sell, and trade their goods, and (d) guarantees its existence and accessibility for the long term.

3. I completely disagree with you that most games would check to see if Blizzard has marked you as a douchebag. Why would GameX care if a player broke some arbitrary rule that Blizzard has? They wouldn't.

4. The person who wrote that post barely even understands what an NFT is, and gets a whole bunch wrong. For example, they write that the concept of ownership of NFTs is "unenforceable," as if the blockchain needs some sort of enforcement. I'm not sure you want to get your predictions from somebody who doesn't understand the technology. There are plenty of smarter game developers working on NFT companies and writing much more intelligent posts.

1: It doesn't prove it. The only thing it proves is that you have the NFT. The only way to prove you have the degree is to contact the central authority, thereby invalidating the need for the blockchain entirely.

2: All your examples can be done easily without blockchain. Perks, discounts, coupons, tickets etc. We already do all of this just fine.

3: "They wouldn't". Lol. Why not? It takes them zero effort, it would be an automated system, and guess what, it totally destroys your whole assertation. Doesn't it? GameX would check with Blizzard for reason that Blizzard would also check with GameX.

4: Ownership with NFTs is entirely unenforceable. Contrary to your point, you are the one who actually doesn't understand NFTs, nor the real world it seems. You seem to want to turn everything into a bearer bond, when in fact nothing in real life will ever work that way.

ID's? Ok, you have some ID token that "proves" you are 21. Does that mean you are 21? No, the only thing it proves is that you have the token. In any consequential case, the entity wanting to verify your age would have to check back with a central authority to determine if it's valid or not, thereby invalidating the need for the blockchain.

Tickets? You somehow think any ticketing agency on earth will hard over all control to what happens to the tickets they have sold?

Coupons? You've seen all the legalese and prohibitions written on coupons I take it. There are more rules about what you can and can't do with a 10% Off Pizza Hut token than many contracts. Yet you think they'll start putting them on the blockchain?

You live in fantasy-land mate. No game company is going to devote a whole bunch of effort and programming time into allowing someone with assets from a competitor to use them in their game.

1. You misunderstand how NFTs work. They are proof, because anything on the blockchain can be easily traced back to the original distributor, which in this case would be the university. Thats why it's called a blockCHAIN -- you can easily follow the chain of blocks. What do you think the school is going to do if you contact them? Check their database. The blockchain is no different. It's a public database, which obviates the need to call the school to ask them to check their non-public database.

2. None of these things have digital ownership enabled, none are part of a global publicly accessible API that others can connect to, none are part of a market where they can be bought/sold/traded. So all would be better with NFTs.

3. You haven't given a single reason why GameX would care to ban PlayerA just because Blizzard banned them. We see the opposite online all the time: people getting kicked off of one social network while be allowed to operate on others.

4. All of your examples here once again misunderstand how NFTs and the blockchain work, just like with #1 above. With IDs, the central authority that granted you the "21 years old" NFT would be listed as its origin on the blockchain, which obviates the need to check with them.

Anyway, at this point discussion is futile. You don't understand the technical details of how the blockchain works, and the rest of your points are just negative predictions of the future in the vein of, "This is how things work today, therefore this is how things must always work." It's very similar to people in the 90s claiming that no serious company would ever put anything on the internet.

Come back to these comments in a year or two.

Not sure why your comment reply to mine got flagged, but I can't respond to it, so will respond here.

1. You can get around this trivially, by simply either (1) looking at transactions originating from the node that distributes degrees, or (2) looking at the degree directly from a person's wallet. You don't need to use the blockchain for searching. It's not going to replace databases. You can have databases, too. But an NFT degree originating from a school's degree-distributing node is just as good as proof and doesn't require some additional step of contacting the school to find out if it's legit.

2. You've still said zero about the utility of a market where these things can be bought/sold/traded, or the API being publicly accessible, etc.

3. No company was putting their assets on the internet before the adoption of the web started compelling them to.

4. See #3. I'm trying to see your point here, but so far it amounts to, "People are doing X today, so they will always do X," which ignores the fact that technology takes a while to adopt. NFTs are new, and their utility is based on network effects, which means they'll become more useful with more adoption. Of course Apple isn't jumping in to use them right now. That says nothing about the future. That'd be like going back to 2011 and saying, "Nobody is using Zoom yet when they could be." Okay sure, but what does that say about the future? Little to nothing.

Again, of course it's possible that this won't catch on. Likely even. But the reasons you're listing don't seem like deterrents.

No, you are correct. You could do it the way you claim. Build in workarounds, try and get everyone to use less efficient tech, try and fix problems of errors and fraud, but I don't think it ever will happen. It's not going to replace a database? So why do we need it?

Centralized control will always be faster and more efficient and less fragile. Errors can be fixed, fraud can be blocked. Fans of blockchain would be a lot less certain that the tech had value if they were unable to shill a token.

Why isn't Apple jumping in to use them? They could set up their own blockchain right? Well, because the central issuing authority doesn't want to lose control of them. Why aren't ticket resales on the blockchain? Because the central issuing authority doesn't want to lose control of them. And that's what you will run into, every time.

All the things you claim that will be able to be done with the blockchain can already be done. So yeah, I guess we'll wait and see.

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