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Comment by capableweb | Hacker News Reader

You're doing everyone, including us who are against NFTs in general, a huge disservice by explaining it that way, as that's not what NFTs are...

Edit: I should have added my own explanation as it's not as obvious to everyone else what an NFT is. If we continue the analogy with paper, then a NFT is a piece of paper with a unique identifier that cannot be copied. If you have that piece of paper you know that A) No one can have the same piece of paper without having that actual paper and B) no one can fool someone else they have that same paper (based on the ID). NFTs have nothing to do with URLs (although some NFTs do have URLs inside of them), the main point is to have something with a unique ID that is unique within that specific blockchain.

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It's a little ironic to complain about a bad explanation without giving an explanation as to why it is one.

(To be fair, a better analogy would involve OP setting fire to a rainforest somewhere as part of the process.)

Yes, I agree. Added a more truthful explanation to what an NFT actually is.

Your explanation is nonsensical.

> If we continue the analogy with paper, then a NFT is a piece of paper with a unique identifier that cannot be copied. If you have that piece of paper you know that A) No one can have the same piece of paper without having that actual paper and B) no one can fool someone else they have that same paper (based on the ID).

This is where the entire argument falls apart trivially. The problem is that NFTs are just random pieces of paper containing a pointer. They're not guaranteed to be the only pointer, the content on them can be copied, they're not actually scarce resources, and everyone can (and does) fool everyone else about whether or not they have the same paper and/or the same pointer.

Additionally with NFTs, the pointer is often to some random centralized resource holder/single server in the 'centralized fiat' world of trust, and quite frequently that turns out to be a $5 VPS running apache that someone stops paying the bill for.

You're missing the forest through the trees.

The technical mechanism of 'Blockchain' might be a novel artifact of the definition of an NFT - but it does not matter.

You're talking about the 'type of paper the deed to the house was written on'.

We don't care about the 'technology used to make the deed' - we care about the implications, i.e. ownership of what, how, when etc..

An NFT is indirectly implied to be 'ownership' of something, but in reality, it's simply 'ownership of the NFT' itself really.

Any legal or popular control over the 'digital content' has nothing to do with NFTs, it's just 'by implication' and has no real social or legal basis.

As such, the 'piece of paper' is a decent analogy.

"It's a record, that references something; you own the record itself, but it means absolutely nothing beyond that".

If you want to think you're cool from owning that, that's cool, or not, or whatever.

It's a good analogy.

> No one can have the same piece of paper without having that actual paper

You seem to have missed what the analogy is: The piece of paper is the blockchain record, the thing that can be exchanged with other people, not the art or whatever at the end of it (hence why a URL on the paper was mentioned).

It's a great explanation for non-technical people.

Misleading explanations are never great. Sure, abstract it a bit to make it easier to understand, yes that makes it great for non-technical people. But misleading them to "prove" your point? Never great.

Anyone with a basic understanding of NFTs will immediately see that you don't understand what you're talking about if you use that explanation, as NFTs have nothing to do with URLs, art or whatever. It's simply a currency with the total supply being 1. Nothing less, nothing more.

Confusing that with the whole "NFT Art" space is just doing everyone a disservice, as there are people who actually understand NFTs, and are against them, but based on their actual capabilities, not some fake thing you've made it.

> It's simply a currency with the total supply being 1. Nothing less, nothing more.

Yes, exactly like that unique scrap of paper, of which there is only 1 in existence. The fact that OP wrote an URL on it is not important, it could have been a sticker, or a coffee mug stain, or even nothing at all. The scrap of paper is guaranteed to be unique since you can never rip out the same piece of paper again, the fringes would be all different

I find it a good analogy

From what little I know of NFTs, that piece of paper is most definitely an NFT. Curious as to why you think it's not. Could you explain?

Just a guess, but its missing the verifiable signature.

Notarize it, and the analogy is back on track.

Because the blockchain is distributed? So It’s more like you are giving your piece of paper to many people around the world who keep it safe for you but can’t change its contents.

Great. Now what?

The person who owns the URL on the paper can change the contents of that URL. Legally, the paper may be a gift, but I'm now the proud owner of a piece of paper.

I can similarly own a map to the Mona Lisa. Everyone in the world may even agree and attest to that fact! I don't own the Mona Lisa as a result. The Louvre can move it, take it off display, burn down, or do any number of other things.

Nothing of what you're writing has anything to do with NFTs, did you perhaps write in the wrong thread?

I'm very much in the correct thread.

NFTs have already gone dark in this fashion. https://twitter.com/CheckMyNFT/status/1369802069729812483

Hell, Jack "sold" his first Tweet for nearly $3M as an NFT. You don't own it. You can't delete it, you can't do anything with it. Jack could delete it! Twitter could delete it! Twitter could make that URL host a page that says "NFTs are dumb". You own the NFT itself.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/22/jack-dorsey-sells-his-first-...

> According to “Valuables,” the tweet itself will “continue to live on Twitter,” but the winning bidder would own the NFT, “signed and verified by the creator,” like a virtual autograph.

The "map to the Mona Lisa" is a perfect analogy. And the best part is that we can even create a new blockchain, call it something like "Besthereum" with another map to the exact same work in the real world. You don't even really own the map but a specific representation of the map, unique to the blockchain it's contained in.

I agree with you.

Main falsehood from je_bailey's comment is that NFTs have nothing to do with URLs, and secondly the entire thing is based around uniqueness within blockchains, so important to highlight when you try to explain what NFTs are.

> NFTs have nothing to do with URLs

This is untrue in practice. In theory an NFT could have no url associated with it. In reality that’s how NFTs were envisioned and how they are actually implemented.

> the entire thing is based around uniqueness within blockchains, so important to highlight when you try to explain what NFTs are.

That’s right. You have to mention the blockchain so that people turn off their critical thinking. Because if you describe an NFT without techy-sounding buzzwords, people will rightly say “that sounds stupid”.

To be more precise, NFT is a blockchain record confirming that you own that piece of paper :)

There was a scam scheme on eBay that if you did not read the item description correctly you would be surprised to discover that you paid $2000 for a picture of the laptop, instead of the laptop itself. NFTs are similar, except the element of surprise is missing. People still buy them, because the word "blockchain" causes their brains to shut down.

How does the original owner confirm they own the thing before it gets logged in the blockchain though? I think that's the hard part. The conversion of ownership record from real life to blockchain.

They don't. That is just one of problems of NFTs.

(if they do - they do it outside blockchain, what makes blockchain part quite pointless, beyond Ponzi part)

All encryption schemes have this problem. You never really know who you're communicating with unless you trade keys irl.

Many are good enough for their purposes (https in general), NFT is not good enough for its stated purposes.

That is not relevant. NFTs do not include ownership of anything else than the record in the ledger. You don't have any intrinsic copyright or other kind of ownership to the token, or to any linked monkey jpegs, by just having the NFT.

It's existence and ownership is not verifiable on a cryptographically secure distributed computer (blockchain)

Existence, perhaps.

Ownership, no. That's a legal concept.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/30/22860010/bored-ape-yacht...

> A pair of non-fungible token projects are testing the boundary between plagiarism and parody. Digital marketplace OpenSea has banned the PHAYC and Phunky Ape Yacht Club (or PAYC) collections, both of which are based on the same gimmick: selling NFTs with mirrored but otherwise identical versions of high-priced Bored Ape Yacht Club avatars. Now the dueling projects are selling their apes while dodging bans from other marketplaces, becoming the latest example of how the NFT world handles copied art.

The only thing that determines the real Bored Ape Yacht Club is an off-chain belief that it's the legitimate one.

Hell, they can't even agree on which one is the real fake.

> Somewhat ironically, PAYC and PHAYC have since fought on Twitter over which one is the authentic Bored Ape Yacht Club ripoff, with PAYC’s founder referring to PHAYC as a “cash grab fraud project.” PHAYC charged people to mint its apes, and CoinDesk reports that it took in around 500 ETH (or around $1.8 million) in sales. By contrast, it says PAYC earned around 60 ETH (or roughly $225,000) from its paid sales.

That's an interesting example, but I consider it semantic only. Your example raises the question of authenticity rather than ownership. It it clear as day which wallet the NFT is connected to. The original NFT and the imitating NFT has different places in the blockchain memory. Regarding authenticity, timestamps are visible since the whole blockchain can be audited and see who got there first on all sorts of metrics

Copyright is a matter of “who created it”, not “who slapped it on a blockchain first”. If I send you my new artwork and you put it up on OpenSea before I do, you still aren’t the owner, regardless of the timestamp.

That's correct, I agree. But I have been talking about personal property this entire time. Your example covers intellectual property.

For a start, I can't myself confirm the existence of this 'NFT' and its record of changing hands or originator the way I can with all actual NFTs.

You can't do that with NFTs either.

https://opensea.io/assets/0xbc4ca0eda7647a8ab7c2061c2e118a18...

https://nftrade.com/assets/eth/0x176e0fe17314def59f0f06e976e...

Imagine you have zero off-chain knowledge. Which one of these is the real one?

On-chain knowledge is the transaction https://etherscan.io/tx/0x798c7060f2e5e0cf2a4d143874be88f404... and their official address 0xbc4ca0eda7647a8ab7c2061c2e118a18a936f13d which is sufficient for me to tell whether it was minted by them or not. The other one clearly is affiliated with some other address in its transaction.

No, that's off-chain knowledge coming into play.

You know Bored Ape Yacht Club and Phunky Ape Yacht Club exist. How do you know which one owns the copyright to the images? Which one's the original artist, and which one's the fraud?

I am not sure what you are arguing for but obviously there are off-chain parts, too. The point is that once Ape Yacht Club or whoever has publicized their address I can always confirm in the future whether an Ape NFT originated from them and how it was traded after that.

Loosely similarly, if I want to communicate with someone securely they first have to communicate to me their public key but once I have it I can always verify that a message comes from them and send them messages back.

I'm arguing there's a massive missing link in the provenance chain.

The person who put a JPEG on the blockchain may not own that JPEG. As evidenced by the existence of the Phunky Ape Yacht Club copies.

A list of transactions after that point doesn't demonstrate ownership if you can't demonstrate ownership by the minter.

Ownership of (most) NFTs has absolutely nothing to do with ownership of the copyright, making this a red herring. It doesn't matter whether the minter of the NFT owns the JPEG. All that matters is whether someone is willing to pay to acquire the minter's digital autograph (i.e. the NFT). Of course if you are expecting a license or transfer of copyright to accompany the NFT then you'd better do your due diligence regarding whether the seller holds the necessary rights, but that applies equally well to old-fashioned signatures on paper contracts.

Are you hinting at the fact that we're missing a giant ledger in which the paper is documented as being Really Really The Really Most Real And Authentic Paper? Since that ledger isn't rooted in anything else than a bunch of people's feelings about it, I think it's fine to leave it out of the analogy.

So yeah, NFTs are like the parent comment explains. Plus that ledger that has no actual meaning.

Edit: I'm not underestimating that giant ledger's technical solution for verifying the piece of paper. All I'm saying is that it doesn't fucking matter.

Apparently it matters enough for you to voice your concerns against it? And no, NFTs are not required to have any URLs in them, that's a separate concern, and parents whole argument is NFT === piece of paper with a URL, so how is that accurate?

But again, "it doesn't fucking matter" so no need to reply me, in fact, if you don't care you probably shouldn't, because replying would signal you do actually care.

I think he’s saying that NFTs don’t matter, not that you don’t matter. You don’t need to get upset.

funny enough, you just described paper money.

a) they have a serial number making each unique b) they are purposefully designed to make it easy to identify forgeries

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