Re:NFTs unbundle ownership from enjoyment
by meheleventyone on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @01:21PM
(#26650109)
How does blockchain provide provenance? Anyone can make an NFT for anything.
Surely only the artist can actually do that and that requires the statement saying which NFT is the real one to be stored somewhere for it to work.
Re:NFTs unbundle ownership from enjoyment
by parkaboy on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @01:56PM
(#26650627)
It shows how the art has changed hands and been transacted over time. That is an incredibly difficult thing to do in the physical world over hundreds or thousands of years.
You are correct that at the very initial point of minting there still needs to be some proof (i.e. artist cryptographically signing the data of their work with their private key), which as I understand, is not something that's really done currently (and should be).
Re:NFTs unbundle ownership from enjoyment
by meheleventyone on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @02:50PM
(#26651372)
Right but an NFT is just a link to a URL so there is no guarantee that it points to what it did originally or points to anything at all. All it guarantees is the provenance of the token, not the art itself.
Re:NFTs unbundle ownership from enjoyment
by parkaboy on Wednesday March 31, 2021 @03:13PM
(#26651693)
Yikes. OK that seems like not a proper use of all this, then!! Seems like it would be more valuable to transact with just the artwork data signed by the artist's private key maybe with a bit of other metadata. But a URL??? Sounds like a lot can go wrong with that.
What the blockchain provides, however, which is incredibly valuable in the art world (not saying this isn't vapid, btw) is provenance in a secure verifiable way that would likely extend past the lifespan of any centralized company.
Showing provenance is basically a requirement for any high value work of art, which gets more and more difficult as time goes on and the work changes hands. We're talking timespans of hundreds and thousands of years.
Highly recommend watching the fascinating show "Fake or Fortune" -- on Amazon Prime (at least in the US) -- to really appreciate how much people care about provenance.