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How NFTs are significant
Scribbles of thoughts, yet to be polished and revisited.
- Why should we care about NFTs? Why and how are they signifcant?
- The significance of NFTs is better shown in dry technical exposition of blockchains, the environment that they operate in, because what we can do with NFTs is defined by what blockchains can do for us.
- Within blockchains: smart contracts that implement NFT kinds.
- Profile picture NFTs, or PFP NFTs, mislead many people to just look at copies of images. Of course copies have no aura; they should be priced no more than their medium, whether paper and ink or chips and electricity.
- What can blockchains do for us, then? What new and exciting things can we do with them, that we could not do before?
- NFT smart contracts let us publicize a three-way correspondence relationship among an object, a subject, and a token—what can be held, who holds it, and how it is held.
- With smart contracts, we can make certain and clear, to and by ourselves (our publicly maintained network), that someone bears some kind of relationship to something.
- Who guarantees the authenticity of an object, asset, or property?
- Signers and wallets do; for each object we can track its genesis up through the trees and blocks of the chain network.
- How can we ensure that a given signer is the authentic signer that we can trust, that it is this real person or entity that we are looking for?
- Maybe there’s no way to ensure a direct connection between a wallet and a physical subject.
- But the problem of establishing a secure identity correspondence here does not threaten the authenticity of an original object.
- The question here seems similar to this: “It is said that Leonardo da Vinci drew Mona Lisa. We have a painting, purportedly Mona Lisa, here and we’ve got all physical data and historical evidence to track down the artist, which does point at da Vinci. But is this da Vinci the da Vinci that we are looking for?”
- (Is this a meaningful, genuine problem?)
- “What we established as the artist in the series of physical events—is that the artist?”
- “Does our name truly refer to what we purport to name?”
- The question here seems similar to this: “It is said that Leonardo da Vinci drew Mona Lisa. We have a painting, purportedly Mona Lisa, here and we’ve got all physical data and historical evidence to track down the artist, which does point at da Vinci. But is this da Vinci the da Vinci that we are looking for?”
- Who guarantees the authenticity of an object, asset, or property?
- The significance of NFTs is better shown in dry technical exposition of blockchains, the environment that they operate in, because what we can do with NFTs is defined by what blockchains can do for us.
- How should NFTs be priced?
- I don’t know, but a thought: If this is a question about “just” prices, the amount of money that you duly pay for what you expect in your daily life, then the question cannot be answered until lots of properties that are deemed reasonably priced in real life enter the market on blockchains.
- I am thinking of the exchange value of NFTs. Exchange values can be determined only when there are… exchanges.
- On the second thought, though: even if not so many properties are “digitalized,” if NFTs prove their worths in some way, then we can still price them as much. (I sense a confusion within my thoughts. Not all physical objects have to be “uploaded on the internet” to price things sold on the internet. Maybe I am drawing wrong analogies here and there, making the same mistake as people who play down the value of NFTs by just looking at their asset copies.)
- Iconic NFTs like BAYC and CryptoPunks will still be priced high, or even higher, not because of their artworks are beautiful, but because they are the ones inscribed in the Ethereum network early on. (Prehistoric cave paintings are precious not because they are excellent drawings.)
- I don’t know, but a thought: If this is a question about “just” prices, the amount of money that you duly pay for what you expect in your daily life, then the question cannot be answered until lots of properties that are deemed reasonably priced in real life enter the market on blockchains.