this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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NFTs could be useful if they were standardized, internationally recognized tokens of ownership or temporary ownership that were separate but bound to digital content like books, music etc. via meta data within the media. That would facilitate people buying and selling content they own, or lending it, or giving it away, or just destroying it.
The problem is NFTs are not that at all and never will be in their present form. They're just a springboard to launch a thousand scams to separate idiots from their money. e.g. "Give me $10,000 and I'll give you a token representing your rights to an acre of land on Satoshi island". LOL. Or "give me $$$ and I'll sell you a url to a randomly generated picture which will be immensely valuable". LOL. Or the Logan Paul special "give me $$$ and I'll sell you eggs you can hatch in a game and that will be immensely valuable except I'll shitcan the game and just keep your money" LOL.
They would be useful to represent things like software licenses. E.g. Steam is currently being sued in the EU because people can't resell their licenses and for those kinds of applications it would be very useful to have a token whose authenticity as a license can be checked beforehand (by checking whether it's minted by the game devs) as well as have provable ownership -- so that the servers will send you game files after buying it, and not be tied to one particular marketplace.
It's kind of like lasers, which for the longest time had the title of "invention waiting for an application". Then people used them to point at airplanes. (Ok also CDs which came earlier than wide-spread use of pointers but that'd spoil the allegory).
In the case of Steam that could easily be implemented by Steam with no blockchain involved since everything is tied to your account.
I'd see them more as a way to avoid licenses. When you buy a book from Amazon you're buying a license to view the book, not the book. You don't own the book ever. Amazon can and does revoke licenses from time to time. In addition, some countries have zero or reduced VAT on books but you're not buying a book, you're buying a license to view a book so it doesn't apply. So if the case could be made that yes, I'm BUYING the book and here is my token of ownership then a digital book would be cheaper, assuming the publisher sold it as such.
As for software licenses, I think it's a much thornier issue. Even software which comes in a box usually has a software key & license so it's not like other media where digital content could be imbued with ownership and therefore be sold and loaned like physical media.
Software licenses would be a good example of a possible blockchain application, but they could be easily represented by classic tokens, no need for non-fungibility, as all licenses should be exchangeable.
You might want to know who sold theirs so you can clean up associated user data and stuff. You also don't want licenses to be divisible, at least not past the "seat license" level -- It's in fact legal to unbundle volume licenses in e.g. Germany, hence why there's so many legit Windows Pro keys floating around: A cottage industry of companies buying volume licenses at bankruptcy proceedings etc. It would be in Microsoft's interest for the keys to then actually split so they can still track stuff but "shares in a seat license" makes about as much sense as splitting a six pack of beers into twelve pieces.
But yes when actually implementing it you might end up with something in between completely fungible or non-fungible.
Sure, if databases didn't exist, maybe an NFT could be a way to indicate that something is authentic.
But since databases do exist it's easier just to have whichever body is the one that determines something is authentic simply put a record in a database they control to indicate this.
NFTs are a novel solution to a problem that was already solved a long time ago.
The problem with that is authorization. For example videogames that require you to be online for authentication. As soon as Activision decides it isn't worthwhile to keep that authentication server going, they'll shut it down and you can't play that game again without a crack. If you instead authorized through an NFT on Ethereum, your game will always work as long as the network is still running. You'd also be able to sell or trade your game at stores, to friends, or at a garage sale like you used to be able to do with cartridges.
So if they shut down the network the transaction is useless, so move to a network where so long as they don't shut down the network, the transaction is useful?.
I get that the distinction is "network a is owned by a single company" and "network b is owned by a group of companies and interested users" — but they are still networks.
If you asked me to put $100 behind Activision or Etherium still being around in 100 years, I'd probably bet on Activision.