Why NFTs are bad: the short version

https://antsstyle.medium.com/why-nfts-are-bad-the-short-version-48acff22c54b

by NicoJuicy • 5 years ago

55 54 5 years ago

antsstyle.medium.com

Lesson: HN likes the long version.

sschueller• 5 years ago

"They are bad for the environment, as they rely on cryptocurrencies that cause huge amounts of carbon emissions. They will continue to rely on these systems for security reasons (despite claims to the contrary about moving to other systems)."

Moot point. Some are already proof of Stake and ethereum will be switched to PoS.

Might as well say storing your photos on the internet is bad for the environment and doesn't provide any benefits.

There a plenty of reasons why NFTs can be bad but this ain't one that applies across the board.

williamtrask• 5 years ago

Storing photos on the internet probably vides no benefits?

syysilma• 5 years ago

how long has it been that Ethereum switching to proof-of-stake is right around the corner?

duskwuff• 5 years ago

PoS has been coming "real soon now" since at least 2019.

exclipy• 5 years ago

The author discusses PoS in the long version: https://antsstyle.medium.com/why-nfts-are-bad-the-long-versi...

kelseyfrog4• 5 years ago

Thank you. I've been trying to convince people that coal power isn't bad because solar exists and is gaining production share. As long as alternatives exist, coal does nothing to the environment.

upwardbound• 5 years ago

Can you elaborate? I can't tell if you're being sarcastic. What do you mean by "As long as alternatives exist, coal does nothing to the environment."?

iszomer• 5 years ago

There's a growing popularity (community?) for art NFT's on alternative blockchains like Tezos with Hicetnunc mainly due to Ethereum's barrier of entry and restrictively high gas fees.

jtsiskin• 5 years ago

They are not saying coal isn’t bad. They are saying electricity isn’t bad. You can choose to use solar power already today. And soon by default everyone will be on solar power. Coal is still bad.

rp1• 5 years ago

Your analogy is wrong, even sarcastically.

A correct version would be: I’ve been trying to convince people that power isn’t bad, even though some is generated with coal, because solar exists.

And that version makes sense.

rfd4sgmk8u2• 5 years ago

The environmental argument is a red herring. PoS is worthless, and I don't believe Eth will actually transition anytime soon.

Anyone bringing up the energy argument lacks any other good arguments.

egypturnash2• 5 years ago

I am pretty sure that Etherium switching to PoS will happen in the Year of Linux on the Desktop.

xondono2• 5 years ago

The author covers your own response in the article..

PoS is a nice concept but we don’t leave in that world yet. The author mentions that Etherium has been talking about switching to PoS but haven’t yet.

Anyone who has thought about it for more than 5 seconds has seen the issues with the switch. Most miners have the majority of their “holdings” not in Etherium but in compute power, because they sell Eth to cover the operating costs, expand computing power, and secure profits (and reduce volatility).

This means switching to PoS will probably cause a massive fork, with the biggest miners staying in the “old” branch (it’s the one they’ll dominate). This leaves the new branch with little compute power and less holders, which makes it very vulnerable, especially since all large holders would rather prefer the new where they’ll get rewards.

terrortrain• 5 years ago

Lots of people are staking already, so validators are running. The system shouldn't be vulnerable when the fork goes live.

What will really determine the successful chain, is where the stable coins go.

Traster• 5 years ago

For me, that version was too short.

xondono2• 5 years ago

Yep, I have even more arguments to explain why it will end up collapsing.

djyaz1200• 5 years ago

I'm not an NFT supporter but they might have utility. I'm certainly interested in a more robust debate about their potential than "get off my lawn". Further, it's silly to imply that the current system of tracking + transferring assets doesn't have any carbon footprint.

fullshark• 5 years ago

The only value I can see is impressing people in the digital sphere, and a lot of people have digital friends they are happy to impress. It’s like a signal you were early on crypto right now and that’s giving some people cache with people online.

sfourdrinier2• 5 years ago

They are certificates of ownership.

When you own a NFT and it's in your wallet it shows that you own something. This can be used for membership for example where the owner of that NFT is automatically granted access to ... something...?

There are also smart contracts associated with NFTs... Can encode royalties and other things.

For example a creator of an NFT could encode a 5% royalty associated. This means that when that NFT is sold subsequently the original author will make 5% of the sale price.

Some people are starting to sell NFTs like a commitment to give a % of a particular revenue. It's a digital contract.

But sure. Part of owning a NFT you can often display something... Visual. Because well, we live in a visual world.. and right now it's the foundation of many NFT collections.

It's so much more than just art. The smart contract allow many more use cases in the future to prove that you own something, or are a member of something.

ilaksh• 5 years ago

Several good cryptocurrencies with low carbon footprint such as Algorand, and Ethereum soon transitioning.

The obvious advantage for artists is cutting out the middlemen for distribution of their work by taking advantage of public financial facilities such as smart contracts for escrow etc. That does require collectors to honor the ownership records, but they need reliable mechanisms for tracking that and blockchains are an excellent mechanism, as well as a straightforward way to patronize the creators directly.

leashless• 5 years ago

Avalanche is net zero CO2 today.

https://mobile.twitter.com/el33th4xor/status/145632957029519...

NicoJuicy2• 5 years ago

Could be vs. Is

rfd4sgmk8u2• 5 years ago

Which means its worthless.

I dont know why anyone would trust Emin when he freaked out and sold all his Bitcoin years ago. He never understood the value of proof of work.

nootropicat• 5 years ago

The idea that cost determines value is literally Marxism and it failed economically every time it was tried.

What matters is the end result, and proof of work is very bad even if cost is ignored - there were multiple 51% attacks on smaller PoW coins while even tiny DPoS coins work well, as far as the consensus itself is concerned.

PoW is insecure and extremely expensive. The writing is on the wall - after ethereum finally fully switches away from mining anti-PoW marketing is going to increase 10x. Supporting bitcoin will become synonymous with wanting to destroy the environment.

tata71• 5 years ago

Who is upvoting this?

This is a condemnation of shitty jpeg art being traded for cryptocurrency, sometimes as money laundering or fraud.

What does this have to do with real NFT usecases?

I won't even touch PoW vs PoS vs Po*.

This does not belong here, let alone frontpage.

NicoJuicy2• 5 years ago

Long version is mentioned in the article:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29280317

sfourdrinier2• 5 years ago

I think the author is completely unaware of how things work and this piece is basically a rant on cryptos. The long version starting with saying cryptos are a scam. This sets the tone for the rest of the article.

A personal opinion vs something rooted in facts.

NFTs can be created on two primary blockchains. Ethereum and Solana. The author manifests no knowledge of those.

Solana is already proof of Stake. Ethereum is going to move to proof of Stake with Eth2.

PoS requires so much less computing power (therefore electricity) than Proof of Work. It's in fact relatively environmentally friendly.

NFTs have the potential to be a game changer. The author here sees NFTs as "Art". They're really not. Sure often NFTs are associated with Art but it's really... ownership of those pieces of Art.

But NFTs are really certificate of ownership. With smart contracts.

There is so much that can be done with NFTs. Memberships. Distributed voting. Royalties embedded in contracts so when NFTs are resold the original creator can get remunerated.

bobsmooth• 5 years ago

What problem do NFTs solve that regular contracts and IP law don't? As far as I'm aware, NFT sales don't usually include the rights to the IP.

georgeecollins2• 5 years ago

I don't know if NFTs solve this problem, or if there is a better solution without NFTs. But I can see a person winning buying or earning content in a game that they want to be able to authenticate. Obviously the servers of a game can authenticate that content but maybe it is possible to have content that is independently validated so that no change of ownership could prevent you from being able to claim your prize.

I don't know if that would really work and I don't know if there is a better way. But as people value digital things more and more in games I can see the idea of having a permanent version of something you achieved or bought as having an enhanced value.

I am no expert so please poke holes in this idea!

kelseyfrog4• 5 years ago

The problem of rug-pulling irl generally being illegal.

TimJRobinson3• 5 years ago

Automation, efficiency and composability.

They are more easily owned by groups, transferred, packaged with others, verified with software etc.

You could think of it like the shipping container revolution but for digital assets. Sure it's possible to do these things with legacy contracts but it's far less efficient and standardized.

627467• 5 years ago

How do you enforce contracts all around the world without having to hire lawyers from all jurisdictions and hope for timely legal resolution on any jurisdictions?

Wowfunhappy• 5 years ago

The “long version” has a very extensive explanation of why the author thinks proof of stake is useless.

georgeecollins2• 5 years ago

I am a little skeptical about crypto but I actually think NFTs seem to be a much more logical application than payment. I can think of a number of reasons you might want to watermark content with a neutral party, but let me give a real world example that makes sense to me. People buy a lot of digital content in games. They play those games across platforms and sometimes even you play a game after the owner of the game changes-- someone buys the publisher, the developer, or they go out of business. That's a real thing that happens.

Say I could buy a limited version Napoleon skin for the next version of civilization, and it would work on any version of that game that ran on any platform. I think that could work with NFTs and I think it makes sense. Games live longer than the companies that create them. How many companies have published Civ? How many ports? Anyone want to guess how many versions there will be in the next twenty years?

I don't know for sure if that would work but it seems possible.

kelseyfrog4• 5 years ago

I cannot wait to for game mods to enable right click, save as functionality in games.

egypturnash2• 5 years ago

What makes you think this NFT skin is going to be any better supported than a normal skin, in the event of Civilization changing hands or its publisher going out of business? Why would the creators of the 2042 edition of Civ bother supporting what will no doubt be a terrible-looking, low-res skin by their standards?

Barrin922• 5 years ago

what's the advantage of an NFT over a database entry? The NFT doesn't give you access to the actual content, which is always at the discretion of the game developer (who can always reject your 'NFT ownership', in fact they're incentivized to do so)

And on the other hand if the game is open-source ported or anything it doesn't make much sense either because then by definition you have access to whatever you want

edit: also thinking about it, how does the NFT even prove you owned anything in the game in the first place? What do I write into an NFT that proves that I actually earned the stuff in the game instead of just making it up?

esjeon• 5 years ago

Yup. NFT in gaming is a total hoax by design. There's just no guarantee that game companies will always accept the changes on the NFT side. It's just a tool to boost stock prices.

basch• 5 years ago

what's the advantage of an NFT over a database entry?

a database entry where? on a Microsoft or EA server that they shut down after 5 years?

that's all it is to begin with, a database entry, albeit a distributed one that probably wont go away.

if a game developer rejects a communities investment, another developer can hop in and add support from assets from other games.

imagine a dnd character that you can create once, is hosted and persists forever, and that you can load into any game.

Rd6n6• 5 years ago

My major complaint against crypto right now is what it is doing to the price of GPUs. People can no longer afford them, which is really worrying for indie devs who who aren’t going with a low poly or 2d art style

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/06/19/crypto-m...

Gigachad• 5 years ago

Crypto mining isn’t causing GPU prices. All cards are expensive and the vast majority of them are useless for mining. The PS5 is still hard to find but useless for mining.

TimJRobinson3• 5 years ago

This will be going away next year. Ethereum is the main thing people use GPU mining for and that is moving to proof of stake in the next 6 months. When that happens there will be a flood of cards hitting the market.

Why NFTs are bad: the short version

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