2pir

Be honest, were you inspired by Drawful?

I use this all the time, and I tell everyone else to as well.

Way too many comments.

An NFT is not the artwork. In an extreme simplification of the actual technology, an NFT is _conceptually_ an identifier of the form: (Blockchain, Publish Date, Comment, Unique ID, Signature)

Ownership of this token is independently verifiable. It’s creation date is independently verifiable. It is transferable via a decentralized market. It is transferable only by the owner. The creator of this token cannot sell multiple, because the token is unique and can only belong to one individual. The token cannot be sold on a different blockchain, because it’s only valid on the blockchain it belongs to. Even if the Token’s creator later creates and sells similar tokens, this token is unique and only one person owns it.

One use case for NFTs is to act as a _public_ digital certificate of authenticity. Extra emphasis on _public_. When an NFT is published, it is published with all of the above independently verifiable information.

If today Quentin Tarantino publishes an NFT on Ethereum claiming ownership of frame ‘X’ of Pulp Fiction on Ethereum, it would _conceptually_ look something like this: (Ethereum, 12/18/2021, “Pulp Fiction Frame X”, “043f6ca3-f445-46f1-a048-5613d512a7d0”, “xoxo QT”)

If tomorrow he decides to publish a new NFT on Ethereum claiming ownership of the very same frame ‘X’ of Pulp Fiction, it would look like this: (Ethereum, 12/19/2021, “Pulp Fiction Frame X”, “ 17aff37e-74f7-4e3e-b5bc-e023c2ded975”, “xoxo QT”)

These two tokens cannot be mistaken for each other. This is why NFTs are conceptually and technologically useful.

Compare this to physical collectibles, for example artwork. If you had an original painting and a forgery that was identified down to the atom level, but you could verify which one was the original, someone would still value the original more than the forgery.

Don’t be mistaken, the NFT landscape today still warrants skepticism and criticism over the concept of ownership many are trying to sell. Many people are being tricked into investing into NFTs thinking what they are purchasing is some actual ownership or copyright of a digital artifact. In the scenario described above there is nothing inherently preventing Quentin Tarantino from selling millions of certificates of ownership for that frame of Pulp Fiction. But one thing he cannot do is sell more than one copy of the NFT he made today, because there can only be one.