Swagrid
Veteran
Shame this thread was made after the voting for years' funniest post closed.
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- Thread starter Kirill Mamonov
- Start date
OtaMota
Legend
Maybe we can find a way to be included for 2024.
Jack Law
Regular
why is this thread actually genuis
CatSharked
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- Dec 17, 2022
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- Location
- Oregon, United States
- WCA ID
- 2023WYAT01
omg guys i used the screenshot feature and saved hundreds!!!!
This entire thread (including this very post I'm writing) is stupid, for a variety of unrelated reasons.
(disclaimer: I have never actively researched anything about this topic, but chances are, this is also true for 90% of you!!)
1. NFT art
I have yet to figure out why the NFT fad was so strongly associated with artwork. The concept of "NFT" (as in, the literal meaning of a non-fungible token) is interesting, but I have never seen a compelling argument for artwork to be used as a basis for an NFT.
When you obtain an "NFT artwork", that's not a certificate of ownership of the artwork itself, per se. It's more like… a certificate of ownership of the certificate itself. This doesn't grant you any rights to do anything with said artwork unless the rightsholder (usually the artist) separately grants you those rights. I don't know whether this is actually done in practice, but my understanding is that it's usually not.
NFTs are also typically built off cryptocurrency blockchain technology, which also means it's hilariously expensive to upload any nontrivial amount of data to the blockchain. Thus, rather than actually containing an image (many kilobytes/megabytes of data), the content on the blockchain is just a URL to an image (tens of bytes), with all the usual caveats of URLs tending to not live forever. In any other context, I would, naïvely, assume that this simple problem has already been addressed at some point in some manner, but I'm inclined to believe that the majority of people involved in NFTs treat it as a get-rich-quick scheme and are more interested in short-term monetary gain rather than fixing fundamental problems.
Also, looking closer at the definition of "non-fungibility": what makes current implementations of NFT art non-fungible? You can't copy the certificate of ownership, but you sure can copy the image no problem. NFT art is as non-fungible as paper money: different notes have different serial numbers and are not entirely identical, but in practice you can (usually) exchange a $10 note for another $10 note because they're functionally identical. (*) In other words, it's non-fungible in a way that doesn't matter, and fungible in a way that matters.
(*) of course there are exceptions to this but blah blah blah, 99.9% of people won't ever encounter them
2. Who's the target audience?
Seriously, who is this NFT art aimed at?
These look like babby's first 3D renders, and they're going for that much? No one in their right mind would treat this as an investment opportunity (the NFT boom is long over + many people are now aware the scene is filled with scammers). The value of art is subjective, but I would still seriously question whether anyone (even OP himself!) would consider these art pieces (**) to be worth nearly 3000 USD altogether.
(**) per previous section, certificates associated with these art pieces, to be more precise
3. Copyright
Some of you think you're very smart for screenshotting or copy-pasting the images.
Guess what: You can do that for other non-NFT digital media too. I would suggest that you don't, at least not unless you understand the consequences of copyright infringement.
4. Wasting time on writing this wall of text
Iunno, I just had to get it out of my system. I'm seeing a lot of kneejerk responses to NFTs in this thread, many of which indicate near-zero understanding of what "NFT" even entails.
Now, given the disclaimer I wrote right at the start, I'm far from an expert on this topic. Just as what I wrote probably looks stupid to someone who has seriously researched it, a lot of this thread looks stupid to me, so I guess I have to try to set some things straight.
After all, the best way to know the right answer is to post a wrong answer. obviously I don't actually endorse doing this
(disclaimer: I have never actively researched anything about this topic, but chances are, this is also true for 90% of you!!)
1. NFT art
I have yet to figure out why the NFT fad was so strongly associated with artwork. The concept of "NFT" (as in, the literal meaning of a non-fungible token) is interesting, but I have never seen a compelling argument for artwork to be used as a basis for an NFT.
When you obtain an "NFT artwork", that's not a certificate of ownership of the artwork itself, per se. It's more like… a certificate of ownership of the certificate itself. This doesn't grant you any rights to do anything with said artwork unless the rightsholder (usually the artist) separately grants you those rights. I don't know whether this is actually done in practice, but my understanding is that it's usually not.
NFTs are also typically built off cryptocurrency blockchain technology, which also means it's hilariously expensive to upload any nontrivial amount of data to the blockchain. Thus, rather than actually containing an image (many kilobytes/megabytes of data), the content on the blockchain is just a URL to an image (tens of bytes), with all the usual caveats of URLs tending to not live forever. In any other context, I would, naïvely, assume that this simple problem has already been addressed at some point in some manner, but I'm inclined to believe that the majority of people involved in NFTs treat it as a get-rich-quick scheme and are more interested in short-term monetary gain rather than fixing fundamental problems.
Also, looking closer at the definition of "non-fungibility": what makes current implementations of NFT art non-fungible? You can't copy the certificate of ownership, but you sure can copy the image no problem. NFT art is as non-fungible as paper money: different notes have different serial numbers and are not entirely identical, but in practice you can (usually) exchange a $10 note for another $10 note because they're functionally identical. (*) In other words, it's non-fungible in a way that doesn't matter, and fungible in a way that matters.
(*) of course there are exceptions to this but blah blah blah, 99.9% of people won't ever encounter them
2. Who's the target audience?
Seriously, who is this NFT art aimed at?
These look like babby's first 3D renders, and they're going for that much? No one in their right mind would treat this as an investment opportunity (the NFT boom is long over + many people are now aware the scene is filled with scammers). The value of art is subjective, but I would still seriously question whether anyone (even OP himself!) would consider these art pieces (**) to be worth nearly 3000 USD altogether.
(**) per previous section, certificates associated with these art pieces, to be more precise
3. Copyright
Some of you think you're very smart for screenshotting or copy-pasting the images.
Guess what: You can do that for other non-NFT digital media too. I would suggest that you don't, at least not unless you understand the consequences of copyright infringement.
4. Wasting time on writing this wall of text
Iunno, I just had to get it out of my system. I'm seeing a lot of kneejerk responses to NFTs in this thread, many of which indicate near-zero understanding of what "NFT" even entails.
Now, given the disclaimer I wrote right at the start, I'm far from an expert on this topic. Just as what I wrote probably looks stupid to someone who has seriously researched it, a lot of this thread looks stupid to me, so I guess I have to try to set some things straight.
After all, the best way to know the right answer is to post a wrong answer. obviously I don't actually endorse doing this
ProStar
Legend
(Any of my limited knowledge in this field is US based)
Yeah, it’s definitely worth pointing out that the image associated with the NFT holds (as far as I’m aware) the same copyright protections as any other image/piece of media. The creator of the image owns that copyright, and assuming that none of you have explicit permission to use the image and your use doesn’t fall under fair use, it is technically copyright infringement. It’s quite unlikely you get sued, but you may find it worthwhile to delete any copies you made/circulated.
My reference to screenshots as a joke probably should’ve added a note saying to not actually do it; that was a bit irresponsible of me