web4

the value is in the limited edition asset signed and distributed by an artist. you can verify this by taking the Beeple PNG and re-minting it yourself to see if others value it the same way. or you can take any popular artist's or photographer's signed print like Damien Hirst and create a copy without a signature to see if people value it.

banks and CEX both have nothing to do with the topic of certification of art. neither a bank or CEX upholds the cert.

interesting that you say NFT-as-certs have no impact for notable artists yet there are a variety of notable artists using NFT-as-certs. see: Hirst, Koons, Pace gallery all using NFT. the nice thing is that this tech is available to all, whether you are a notable artist like Hirst or just an illustrator or pixel artist, such as @jmw327.

https://twitter.com/jmw327

if the value is in the JPG or "image" then anybody can print it at home and play with it in competition. but it is not the norm. likewise, nobody has a collection of self-printed MtG JPGs in their attic, but they do have collections of "cards" which hold sentimental value to them.

equally silly to assume that regulations will force all centralized exchanges to charge 2-5% or 30% as is the case with current payment processors and app stores. that is not going to happen except in totalitarian countries.

the reason those standard take-rates are high are not for consumer protection. interbank fees are about the same or lower as CEX take fees in the range of 0.1-0.5%. corporate infrastructure built on top of these financial systems like PayPal, Stripe and VISA are taking huge profits.

agree, but that is not the game I am describing. many free to play iOS and Apple games use an in-app purchase model and users are fine to pay $1-2 to add new skin or expand their play. in those cases the assets are locked to your apple account, and also include a 30% take fee.

acquiring an nft does not even need to include payment at all. assets can be distributed to users for non monetary reasons, such as some achievement or action taken in the game, or defeating some other player in a pvp battle based on a mix of skills and random chance and as a result winning their hand or rare loot or whatever. it is up to the game to decide these things.

you can forge a cert or a painting by copying it. a good forgery can be very convincing and requires expert investigation. see Salvator Mundi in which the authenticity of the painting is still not clear despite years of investigation by countless art historians and conservationists.

if you try to copy a token you will end up with a new cryptographic hash and a new history of transactions associated with it. there are countless clones of crypto punks for example, but the only one that has any real traction is the one that has a clear history of transactions associated with its contract hash. anybody who can tell the difference between two strings of characters can detect whether a token is a forgery or not, it does not take an expert.

yes obviously centralized exchanges are centralized, they are not the ones upholding the ledger or crypto art certs. even crypto art platforms like Foundation and opensea do not own or uphold the certs being issued and indexed by their platforms. it is more like the way that google indexes search results, it doesn't own the websites on its search results.

yes impersonation is possible but often easy to detect on-chain. if a supposed notable artist is suddenly minting new work from a public key different than the address they've used in the last two years, suspicion would be warranted.

maybe this depends on the game and players. I have seen a lot of MtG folks take pleasure in having a carefully curated deck with some cards that are more rare and coveted than others, and even hold onto these cards years later when they aren't playing any more because they have some sentimental value to them. if supply were unlimited then every player would just have every card in the game.

it is like WoW loot where some items are rare and others are not. if all items in the game were of equal supply and scarcity, there would be no rare or coveted items. you could trade a bronze dagger for a legendary mythril great sword or whatever. after 100 loot drops from grinding you'd have 100 different items of equal rarity rather than say 95 worthless items and 5 rare items.

i guess that is a valid type of game but it seems different than most trading card games and loot based games.

> Art certificates, both physical and digital have existed for… ages?

and they are generally pretty crap? easily lost, forgeable, destroyed, manipulated, unrecognized.

typical certs require a centralized "Certificate Provider" who upholds their value, for example a major auction house might distribute a cert when selling a painting. in crypto art there is no centralized authority that maintains the veracity of the tokens as the provenance and ownership lies in the distributed ledger.

for those who wish to achieve similar goals as a digital cert but with more cryptographic robustness and less reliance on a centralized actor, NFT is a fine approach. that it has sales and market mechanisms built in is a bonus and probably the reason for its booming success as a new digital art market.

> There are better, more efficient solutions/means than crypto and nft for this already.

lol people like to repeat this without pointing to any solutions.

with crypto art an artist can sign their cryptographic key on a transferable and ownable digital asset published on a distributed ledger, set its scarcity and supply, and then use the blockchain as a sales and auction mechanism without requiring an intermediary auction house to handle escrow like sothebys or christies.

what is the proposed alternative for these digital media?

look at it this way: anybody can google images of the rarest MtG cards and print it out on paper, and bring that to play with. but the other player will probably frown on that. because both players have bought into the idea that the "cards" not the JPG image that makes them is what has value in the gameplay.

the same is possible in blockchain setting. ownership of that unique token can hold value for gameplay and collectibility, despite JPG being CC0 and free to download and print out.

it does not have to be expensive. it can be that the entire year of play cost you $10 USD to purchase all your cards, or it could be that you acquired your game loot just through playing for days on end in RPG-like boss drops and not spending anything.

scarcity is part of these games. when you open a pack of MtG cards and one item is rare, player will tend to get pretty excited. same with a rare loot dropped in WoW. without this imposed scarcity all assets would have equally unlimited supply and the game would probably be pretty bland, and there would be not as much reason to trade cards and build a hand.

this is why i say CC0 licensed assets and why the game and publisher has to embrace decentralization. also why this type of usage will be niche and apply to a specific type of game genre.

CC-NC license also sorta works but not as well.. assets can then be repurposed for non commercial uses only.

other licenses should be developed to operate specifically on these kinds of problems. some projects are already exploring this like BAYC licensing token owners more rights.

nope. if a game publisher uses a CEX to exchange the crypto they receive from users into fiat and direct bank account deposit the fees can range from 0% to 0.6% compared to 2-5% for stripe and PayPal or up to 30% for steam and apple. this also does not consider per-transaction fees which in L2 will be very minimal and allow users to engage with micro payments like $0.25 USD asset purchases, which are not realistic with stripe APIs.

https://help.coinbase.com/en/exchange/trading-and-funding/ex...

edit: these fees apply both ways, selling and buying crypto, so the user also pays less. and if the user buys $100 USD of tokens like they would at an arcade, all of those tokens can be spent on the game without exchange to fiat needed. this is different than every interaction with processor taking a cut which happens now if you want to buy 5 assets from a game that uses stripe or an app store or whatever.

the main use case is not an oil or acrylic painting but digital art and digital media. look at highest sales on any platform its memes, gifs, JPGs, digital photographs, 3D renderings, videos, generative art. there was no easy way to distribute signed editions of digital media in limited capacity and have it certified by the artist themself, the only option was to make it a signed physical print which is not a digital substrate.

the only middleman you requires is blockchain indexer like etherscan or TheGraph or an alternative , and if you do not trust those platforms you can run your own local node as the data is not owned by any single entity.

most artists will hire professional printmakers and printers. just because a photographer is good at shooting does not mean they are good in the dark room.

when we talk about editioned prints, most of the effort is not in the print. a screen print takes a couple hours to make, an Epson print is a click of the button. but the work being printed might have been built from years of practice as an artist.

artist prints are routinely forged and resold. this is such a problem in high end artists work like Hirst that they must find complex ways to certify and authenticate their signed prints. sometimes this is with holographic stickers, or separate certificates of authenticity, or even non NFT blockchain certification.

most signed prints are not bought because of what the content is, but because of the signature. you can buy unsigned prints of many notable artists work for 20 bucks while the same signed version sells at sothebys for thousands.

users should not expect NFT to have any more or less resale value than a signed print. but because there is currently a market for it, it is easier to sell a token than a print. in future this may change if tokens are as commonly distributed and purchased as prints are.

or, you can buy a trading card for a game that embraces blockchain and decentralization. the media which is a PNG and JSON can be stored in ipfs , p2p hosted, and licensed with CC0.

this is a niche .. but you can imagine some communities and players might enjoy owning assets that are not tied to a game company. the company can fold and the game go under, and the asset can still be repurposed for another game, or held as a collectible like we do physical trading cards and stamps.

a probably simpler use case for blockchain in gaming is for a simple payment API and market mechanism .. easier to spin up a smart contract and escape payment processor fees and the ridiculous take-rates of Steam and Apple in-app purchases.

a lot of web3’s critical infrastructure like ipfs, TheGraph and Infura, scalable L2s, and zk proof tech is all far more recent and still in development so it will probably still be another few years before it matures i think

ah yes then we agree. especially because each transaction burns ETH thus reducing supply and making token more scarce.

tho I do not think it will always translate to higher market price and valuation in future since the price is determined by a range of factors that are impossible to predict like bugs, stagnation, quantum crypto cracking or just global market fluctuations. this is where I say it need not be seen as a pure investment. market price of ETH might be the same in 1 or 10 years as it is today and network will still have created utility and value all that time for those that did not view the base token as a pure investment.

have you ever looked at USDC and ETH order books on CEX or DEX? they are handling billions of dollars per day. unless your wallet is holding hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto you can make orders on these platforms without making a dent.

your 1000 USDC transfer may have some minute effect like a single drop of water in the ocean.

in reality you but some ETH to cover the transaction, then spend/burn it in order to fill the trade. maybe later your friend will have to pay more or less or the same than you did in absolute USD terms to cover gas costs to exchange the USDC for another asset depending on the future market conditions. and these are risks both parties should aware of , the ledger is not free but the take-rate and fees are notably different than VISA and PayPal

take USDC: you purchase it on CEX or DEX, and transfer to your friend in another country who does not have a US dollar bank account but may have a custodial or non custodial ETH address to receive crypto. they can choose to hold or sell or exchange it for any other asset in the network.

your “investment” in the USD or ETH required for fees is like the fees paid to PayPal or Wise during a transaction. paying these fees doesn’t mean you are now a PayPal investor or have any stake in whether their corporation does well.

if this is all a scam to you then there is not much I can do to change your mind. saying crypto as a whole is a scam is equally as silly as saying the stock market as a whole is a scam. they are both financial instruments at this point with different risks.

edit: the point of my post is to say that you ETH is not about buying the token with expectation that it will go to moon. you can just buy it like you would tokens in an arcade - you use the tokens for fees in transactions in order to accomplish whatever utility the chain provides, maybe with the vast majority of your holdings and interactions in USD pegged assets with no expectation they will moon.

doubtful . these will come from creators and indie game devs first whenever they get over their hatred of crypto and blockchain. eventually major game houses and consoles will follow suit.

similar thing happens in rest of digital art and media worlds. photographers, musicians, and artists all doing NFTs, then later Instagram, Spotify, Adobe, major art auction houses all begin to explore NFTs as they can then capture some of that market.

there is no need to "invest" in ethereum in order to use it. if you wish to send 1000 USDC to a friend in another country, you can buy that amount, send it to them, and then exit the ecosystem entirely.

if you want to buy an artist's work to support them, you can purchase some ETH, purchase the NFT, or just send them the ETH if you'd rather, and then hold no more ETH than you need to pay gas fees.

the idea that crypto requires constant investment is something that is pushed by laser eye btc bros but is not how these networks will be used in future.

web3 is completely overhyped and a16z is part of that hype and pouring funds into it.

the promise of web3 boosters , "everything will be on-chain" is impossible to realize. maybe best to see decentralization as a spectrum or something that lies on multiple axes.

something like an NFT on Eth with IPFS is platform-agnostic and transferable only by whomever has the private key. that owner can also self host the file if they want. but there still will be centralized platforms, pinata hosting, AWS, etc build on top of this ecosystem to make it easier and to attempt to capture value where possible (openSea charges 2.5% on each trade).

it has everything to do with it:

1. you purchase digital items with centralized payment processors like VISA

2. the asset is transferred to your centralized iOS/Steam account. you do not "own" it, the company owns it. if you are banned from Steam, you lose all your games and game purchases.

web3 is asking how these two things can be changed to remove the intermediary.

the best frame for this is not "web3 ideals are not worth pursuing" but "how can we make web3 ideals feasibly work"

this article is lazy, and has no real substance.

> The Web3 community approaches this from the opposite side: Instead of a lightweight communistic take, they follow a heavyweight libertarian path: Everything should be monetized.

the web is already monetized - we pay for games and game skins, software and apps, access to news, media streaming. current web2 payment and ownership model favors payment processors like VISA, and the distributors like Spotify, not the creators and consumers of this media.

> So, unless the setup and maintenance trouble of the initial setup can be reduced (and there are community efforts out there), the best way to go is the centralized model: You pay someone specific to do this. Maybe set up a not-for-profit association to provide the necessary money.

this already happens in web3. OpenSea charges 2.5% on trades for the UX and network effects they provide. other marketplaces offer 0% on trades but do not have the same reach and UX. despite this, users do have a choice to go with any service they desire, since the asset is not locked into any single walled garden.

maybe but this is still better than a centralized server URL for something that is designed to be owned by the commons. if the marketplace goes down users can just re-pin the asset. even if the asset has been completely garbage collected, if it is truly valuable (like Punks) probably at least one computer in the world will have the asset on-disk, and can just re-pin it to revive the IPFS url.

web3 is not "pay for every click." value prop is disintermediation and decentralization. like purchasing a game asset, and not having it tied only to your iOS or Steam account.

you can point MetaMask to a different RPC endpoint or your own local node. it is like suggesting BitTorrent is centralized tech because many users download torrents on a centralized website.

most NFTs (of value) are using IPFS or Arweave not a URL.