> No, that is just one example of a payload - the token itself is non-fungible, so presumably some one could write code to associate the ownership of that token to some game feature. Lets say a mount in WoW, then you could trade said token as part of a secondary market.

I don't know why you started your sentence with "No". What you describe is exactly the same as buying the name of a star, except it's on blockchain instead of some kind of database.

If you like, you can write code to associate the ownership of that star (by access whichever star registry institution you like) to some game feature. Or you can let the player submit a "star ownership certfication. It's just the same except the data source is decentralized.

I read your dismissal as 'that is stupid that would not work'.

Right now I dont think there is a programmatic way to do that with star certificates. I guess I dont see what your point is - are you just trying to link two things that seem frivolous to you?

My point is that they're stupid for the exact same reason.

You buy "something". That "something" doesn't represent any legal right for you. If you buy a NFT of an image, you won't be the copyright owner of that image. You can't stop other people from using it either. Maybe there are some exceptions, but generally you just don't get anything legally. Similarly, buying a star doesn't give you legal right on that star.

Why does doing this programatically make it different? Plus, buying a star is not inherently non-programmable. You can launch a star registry with an API. You can laucnh an NFT for stars. What makes buying a star stupid is that it doesn't represent any legal right, not that it's doesn't scale.

Sure, if you use a nonsense example you get nonsense results. Not really blaming you for that, I have no idea why people acted like an NFT with a url payload represented ownership given that it didnt interact with any of our systems of ownership.

The hypothetical under examination here is if I built a system that used NFT ownership as ownership of some in game thing - it represents a promise to value a given token, which is wholly different from the star thing (they dont value that certificate in a meaningful way). If your first instinct is to launch into a tirade about how dumb that is then great - total agreement. But, you could build it and it would work, and it would be meaningfully different from star ownership certificates.

Please explain how a promise to a value is different from a star certificate NFT? With the star system you can encode the position in the sky at a certain date in the block chain itself. The date of discovery (assuming this is for new star discoveries only) can act as a verifier when determining who discovered this first.

Because the issuer of the certificate will not in any way meaningfully enforce your 'ownership' of that star.

In my hypothetical game I can enforce that relationship. Lets say the game is pokemon except with scorpions, and each scorpemon is represented as an NFT. Your wallet contents then determine what scorpemon you can play with.

Does that make sense?

you don't own the scorpemon though. The second that original game shuts down or decides its not worth hosting that asset you have unique nft to nothing. It's up to the game maker to interpret whatever the hell your nft is worth hence it's not that different to ownership of a star. You can't just make up an imaginary decentralized world where people just make a scorpemon game and host it for free forever lmao. Someone is trying to make a profit.

Yes, obviously. Who are you trying to dunk on?

> Lets say a mount in WoW, then you could trade said token as part of a secondary market.

This use-case always broke down for me when I realized you inherently can't have a secondary market when you still rely on the first market (the owners/operators of WoW) to maintain the integration(s) with token<->game.

If I sell an owned mount token to a friend but the ownership of that mount doesn't actually transfer in-game, the entire system breaks down. Ergo, the livelihood of any secondary market relies entirely on Blizzard maintaining whatever in-game functionality uses the tokens, rather than solidifying a promise of any real decentralized ownership.

Correct, in this case Blizzard would have to release a mount NFT whose ownership their code checked. There must be a first party NFT market for the second party one to make sense.

The system as described doesnt 'break down' if that transfer doesnt relay to in game, it never launched whatsoever.

I dont know what would be in it for developers to tie into such a system - unregulated video game markets are notorious for the scams they breed (don't believe me? Meet me in Thais depot for some fast hands), so ceding control so that a secondary market can spring up sounds.. counterproductive.