kellyreid

see my post above to understand why I think you need to adjust your definition of Reality. There are entire swaths of society (especially when you get to the under-25 demographic - which I am most certainly _NOT_ a part of) that grew up on Digital, not Physical.

Sincere question, are you old enough to have grown up in an era where, as kids, we coveted cool baseball cards? That industry died some time in my early 20s (I'm well over 30 right now) and that's part of what led me to shift digital.

The real key is that there are a huge quantity of people who care about digital goods more than physical.

The one thing I think you've got quite wrong is about "shitcoin platforms". That just doesn't really apply to NFTs as broadly as you've used it. There are a load of validated, good NFT products, and there are heaps more that are total shit. I would say that painting the entire ecosystem of NFTs as "shitcoin platforms" represents a major blind spot in your evaluation.

I have nothing to sell or convince, just a point of view from someone who's been in this world for a long time trying to fill in gaps in knowledge where I can.

Was this directed at my or the original poster?

I use the term Provenance rather than Authenticity just to be more specific in terminology. However, Authenticity is a very very important subset of Provenance. I'd define Authenticity as "having verifiable facts to support claims of some special provenance".

If you can accept that the Honus Wagner rookie card is worth some ridiculous sum, then I think I can explain the NFT version.

Context: Professional gamer-investor for 10+ years, formerly collectible card dealer.

The Wagner baseball card is iconic in our culture, and humans seem to have an irrational attachment to otherwise-worthless physical objects that seem to preserve some relic of our cultures. We can all agree that a worthless 100 year old slice of paper is an irrational thing to value at a price that exceeds most houses. Note that this is not judgment, as I work in this industry - we all accept how ridiculous the whole thing is.

So now let's move to the next most ridiculous example, CryptoPunks, founded in 2017. It was the first NFT, very basic and simple, a barely-functional proof of concept (as compared to the NFT games we have today). In the Crypto world, four years might as well be forty. As context, four years after Magic the Gathering was released in 1993, the original most scarce first-edition cards were already worth an incredible multiple of their original value around release date.

What I'm saying is, four years in a traditional physical game world is a long time. In Crypto-Blockchain-Hightech, four years is an eternity. Therefore, the "oldest" asset in the industry - the silly pixel art Crypto Punks - has intrinsic collectible value as being "first edition" within an -entire genre-.

I should note that the Punk nfts are literally useless, they have no utility whatsoever. Their only value stems from being, essentially, SUPER First Editions of the entire NFT world. Whether you realize this or not, the NFT world is booming and has been for 4 years.

So there are many many many people who "FEEL" about the old original NFTS, the same way traditional collectors feel about baseball cards and magic cards. Why? They didn't grow up in an era where cardboard was a desirable thing. They grew up on games where these collectible items had Utility and were also attached to memories.

I played World of Warcraft semi-competitively and was very focused on economics; my automations dominated our server's auction houses (not in a predatory way - think market-maker, not scalper). I had some items in my characters which I would equip and use to go slay dragons or what-not. Others would remind me of a fun time with my friends where we got a super-lucky treasure chest in a dungeon. Maybe such an item isn't "great" in the game, however the item has sentimental value. A 100% digital item.

The best contemporary example is Mystic Axies in Axie Infinity. [disclosure, i own some. not shilling my bags, they're not for sale, etc] These were special drops from the First Edition of Axies ever created, and the very rare ones can also be quite stunningly beautiful. These are the Honus Wagner Black Lotus Charizards of Axie Infinity - Axie has been around for more than two years and has grown steadily since Day One. It's got an established player base, economy, and metagame. Thus, it has crossed the threshold where the original super-rare stuff is now "old and rare" in the eyes of a new player, and rightfully so! Venture funds and private investors are snapping up physical rarities _AND_ digital rarities.

In short, there is literally no difference between an NFT and a Physical Collectible other than the laws of physics they obey - You own a Honus Wagner card because you possess the physical cardboard. Atoms. You own a Mystic Axie because the blockchain says so; it asserts this by forcing you to verify you own the "password", the private key, and matching it to the "account", the public 0x address.

To trace the logic a bit, the blockchain states that Address 0x123...789 is the owner of Axie #42069. Anyone who can prove that they are the owner of the address 0x...789 is therefore the owner of that Axie.

This is why Private Keys need to be kept secure. With a baseball card, you would know if someone smashed your window and stole the card, right? But you wouldn't know if someone had stolen and replicated your spare key to your vault. Therefore that person can be understood to "have" your card without physically possessing it. Their ownership of the key acts as a proxy for the card, because the key implies immutable access to any assets owned by that account (0x..whatever).

Basically, the Ethereum network (or whichever protocol the NFT is built upon) acts as the Laws of Physics for digital collectibles. It replaces the concept of "I have this collection of Atoms" with "I can assert access to this resource, which therefore makes me its Owner". However, unlike a physical card which cannot be jointly held by two parties (you can't rip it in half, that kind of undermines the objective...) an NFT can be simultaneously owned by multiple people. If I have a rare Monster and I give you the Private Key, then we both own that monster. In a sense that monster's ownership is in Quantum Superposition until one of the key-holders takes action to move it to a new 0x address (therefore associating the Monster with a new Private Key, which is presumably owned by a single entity and not shared/compromised). At this point, the owner of the NFT is once again a single defined entity until that private key is shared again.

If GigaCorp. goes Busto then the NFT object still exists on-chain, which means the "game effects" are set in stone and the chain-of-custody remains intact.

This allows a "community bailout", whereby the players and any volunteer Devs can continue utilizing the existing smart-contracts to perform game functions.

Further, this allows the rescue-squad to launch a new modified version of the game in a hard-fork - if the Devs abandoned the original game, then the players would largely be in favour of such a hard-fork. This should address your question of the "Renderer", because all the game-piece's metadata and visual data are stored permanently on-chain. As such, it cannot be lost.

An art-piece NFT can be displayed regardless of whether the original minter of the token exists; once it hits the chain, its forever. I should note that _ALL_ of this depends on whether the contracts are truly decentralized. Many games, especially in early dev, have Admin backdoors of some sort; this is not intrinsically "bad", however it is a risk. Some NFT games right now have the capability to lock the entire contract, rendering 100% of the assets functionally un-usable. In this case, we loop back to see-above; community rescue and hard-fork in the case that the original devs just bounce.

in contrast, if Giga Corp had an internal database of assets, the entire chain-of-custody (who owns what, how they got it, what the thing does in-game) is lost forever, the users have _NO_ recourse in this case.

In your guitar example, I would say that another expert guitar-maker could repair and maintain such a guitar. Or, if desired, could attempt a replica. Is it the "original"? No, however it too has intrinsic value as a high quality replica. Further, imagine that this replica improves on some weaknesses in the original 100. These replicas become an homage to the original creators and serve as useful, potentially superior, musical tools.

Seems arbitrary. Whats their basis here?

Yeah, you need to write up this whole trip. And tell me if you ever do

I live in Chicago and grow my own food in my yard. I'm highly interested in this.

How can we talk further?

Nothing troubling about it. Enjoyable :)

As a long-time MTG player, this is TOTALLY WILD. I love it.

Unless I'm discussing it with a mentor or someone else who I -want- to know my revenues, I usually just say "I'm very happy with how things are going".

I've had this happen in quite a few places, including Wrigley Field, GenCon, and other large events. This infographic explains the timing better than any I've seen yet.