That’s not really relevant for status signalling as long as John Doe can somehow be pointed to an easily accessible website showing Greg Moneybucket paid $10k for an image of a turd, regardless of what chain it is.

So just create your own NFT that claims you paid $10k, without actually paying $10k. That's the problem with this, there is no authority regulating which NFT's were created "correctly" and which aren't. For example, that person that sold an NFT claiming ownership over a tweet, anyone could make an NFT claiming ownership of the same tweet, none have more validity than others and the owners of these NFT's still don't actually own the tweet, since they have no control or copyright or anything over it.

There are several aspects to this. For basically provable immutability + decentralized you could build something on top of ipfs. For provenance (time-stamps and proof of transaction) but also practically tamper proof+decentralized+permission-less then a blockchain is necessary.

That still leaves authenticity, which necessarily runs on trust and reputation. Although you can mechanize and formalize many aspects of reputation, I do not follow the crypto/web3 scene close enough to know the practical aspects of this (my interest are in distributed systems and malicious actor resistant decentralized permission-less systems).

I'd say the reason why people can't just spin up new certifiers is the reputation aspect. With regards to art, people aren't necessarily trading copyright or items but basically a right to brag via verifiable certificates which claim links to origins or creators of some piece.

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EDIT: This is a neutral observation on the unique technical properties of a solution concept not a defense of it. The necessity of storing logs on open/permission-less (no PKI setup) networks, which the provenance aspect runs on, can be argued. But once chosen, there are formal limitations (such as bounds on byzantine agreement and limits on asynchronous deterministic consensus) which force to a particular space of solutions ("blockchains"). The social aspect of status goods and signaling (which I've never understood) or the speculative bubble driver of participation are not commented on.

The authenticity part is straight forward: if token was minted from contract X then it is the real deal.

This can be an issue for brand new projects. Bad actors will duplicate it and list at low prices. Most users are savvy enough to only use links from a trusted source. Marketplaces also whitelist the real contract (and show warnings for unverified contracts). You can also look at the contract deployers wallet history to help determine if it is legit. IMO it’s easier to prove authenticity for NFTs than most stuff

Right but no need for a blockchain as CSGO skins or more disturbingly Roblox demonstrate.

You're right that it's not necessary to have blockchain directly. However, NFTs show you're close to a group of people who are connected in the cryptocurrency world, just like CSGO/Roblox flair shows you've invested in those worlds. And a lot of crypto people made a lot of money so it's a good status signal to be close to those crypto people.

All power to you if you want to flex with your crypto bros. But this is a very niche end result for technology that is nominally meant to be revolutionary.

I agree with you about it being niche, but this is the main reason I can think of that would suggest NFTs could be valuable.

The blockchain aspect allows for easy interop: how do you use your csgo skin in roblox?

For a forum allegedly full of programmers and technical people, it is surprising to see this sort of statement posted uncritically.

What characteristic of an NFT makes for "easy interop". Please explain to me how the information in an NFT would add a new skin to another game, in a different engine, by a different company, using a different asset pipeline?

1) It's technically easy to integrate due to being able to access any data without needing special API access. Permissionless open system.

2) There's a more collaborative environment with NFTs because project owners are more open to others giving utility to their NFTs as it drives value back to the project itself. It's not a sell something and end customer relationship model.

3) You can target any specific asset and give it any usecase you want - you don't literally need to map 1-1 every single asset.

… not to mention, anyone here should be familiar with at least the basics of copyright and licensing. If you pull the Mario artwork into Doom and say an NFT gave you permission, Nintendo's lawyers are going to be laughing all the way to the bank.

You have to think blockchain = open access database. That’s all.

I’m not an NFT person, but I think the counterargument is that those are both centralized.

Kevin, the point here is whether that is a useful distinction or not. The article is putting forward a decentralised, cryptographic, non-blockchain equivalent that has the same guarantees as an NFT. My reply was specifically in answer to the parent comments point that it’s about status signalling on an easily accessible website. It’s immaterial in that regard whether the data source of said website is centralised or not because it’s about the social phenomenon not technical implementation.

It's not really about status signaling, the whole idea is trying to flip them for more dollars.

> an easily accessible website

Right... they can just post the PGP NFT to their website, no blockchain required.

$10k for an image of a turd is so little I forgotten how to count that low!

It's a steal compared to $40 million for 20% of a picture of a dog.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-09-09/twenty...

I can buy something from myself on one of those sites for 10k and do the same thing. Also, I've not really heard anyone bragging. Price s get thrown around, but I never know who is buying.

> Right but which chain and which NFT?

whichever them who you want to recognize your status know about.

Which is exactly the point made in the article and why the solution presented there meets the same criteria.