Comment by fleddr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fleddr | Hacker News Reader

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I would consider myself an informed skeptic that is selectively pro-crypto.

I would first clear the air by saying this: yes, making money is an important use case of the current crypto industry, if not THE use case. I find it puzzling how people frown upon that. Making money (or at least getting paid) is the number one activity the average person spends a lifetime doing. Many in bullshit jobs that add no value.

You can have all kinds of opinions on how this money is made (speculative), but the crypto community doesn't care. It's their money, not yours. I would personally not touch 95% of crypto with my money, but take no issue with people that go all-in. Live and let live.

As for NFTs, it's funny how you say some discussion participants simplify it too much (just right-click) and then come to sweeping simplistic conclusions yourself: bored apes and crypto people failing to deliver anything new.

This suggests you're keeping track. If so, can you tell me about recent trading volume? The top 10 projects? Which celebrities, artists, musicians and sport teams released popular ones? On which platform? Which are hot upcoming releases? Out of the many issues with NFTs (no infinite storage, copyright acknowledgement, mint duping, etc), which teams are working to address these issues, and what are the solutions? Do you know which non-JPEG NFTs got traction, like unique physical access and lifelong memberships? Which gaming companies are experimenting with NFTs, and I'm talking AAA titles?

I could make that list a whole lot longer. I suspect you don't know the answers, but that's not a personal attack. The point is that the space is vast and extremely fast. This idea that nothing has happened in crypto in 10 years is because you're not looking.

The discussion is not advancing because people don't spent a second learning about crypto or keeping track.

All an NFT is at heart a JSON blob like

{ Id: some unique namespaced string (aka, the part that is a non fungible token) Owner: reference to who currently owns it Payload: data that defines the content of the NFT }

You can put this in a database if you want, or use a block chain as your data storage. I expect many of those teams you mentioned are solving their NFT issues by moving their NFTs from block chains onto postgres tables, or putting them in databases from the start. The listed problems have somewhat straightforward solutions by doing so, and many companies have offered NFT marketplaces based on databases for years and years like the Steam marketplace for gaming. They work fine at scale, too. I expect that most popular digital ownership systems do not use a block chain as their back end, though I do not know what the top 10 are {apple, amazon, google, the us government?}. The most advanced team solving the listed problems is without doubt YouTube though.

What block chain NFTs have over database NFTs is hype. There's a lot of wealthy people with money tied up in crypto investments that want to be able to.

The other feature is that the audit history of changes to the Owner field is guaranteed to be public instead of optionally public, and that guarantee is what of questionable value when "crypto people don't deliver anything new" is mentioned.

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If somebody's managed to make solve identity using a block chain that's quite interesting re: "unique physical access".

I'd expect the block chain to be uniquely incapable of guaranteeing unique access to anything, since access is based on knowing a password, and it's easy to make copies of a password. At best id expect a blockchain to guarantee limited access to people who know one at least one of a set of possible passwords, and a bouncer controls unique access by doing a separate identity checks.

Is this some facial scan? Dna +epigenetics check? Is it trivial to link all your accounts together? What kinds of attacks has it been tested against? Can your twin get in if he knows the right password and borrows your id? Can your spouse get in if you're in the hospital? Next of kin when you die?

Is there a non-blockchain equivalent of gated access to resources based on ownership of a token? People do this a lot in the NFT space (access to certain chat channels based on owning an NFT), is anything like that happening (rather than theoretically possible) outside of crypto?

How about anything with a membership fee?

The token is the mag-key-card that opens the doors to your local gymnasium.

Or a database entry that gets checked when you show your personal ID to get into the flight club lounge you bought lifetime access to via Amex club

Or any kind of website or info-product you bought a membership for, where the token is your email address + password

etc.

These all seem different though.

None function with anonymity by default and you can't sell or even transfer most of these memberships.

I wonder if part of the divide on the "utility" of NFTs involves "internet native" culture (assuming the reality of pseudonyms without need to pierce the veil and use a real name).

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