I’m not sure I agree. I think a good test is to see what happens when someone steals one of these tokens. Will people agree that the work has been stolen? Ownership itself is just an idea. If we...
Does that inherently mean you own anything? No! Again, it's just the database.
I’m not sure I agree. I think a good test is to see what happens when someone steals one of these tokens. Will people agree that the work has been stolen?
Ownership itself is just an idea. If we can collectively agree on a new form of ownership I see no reason for that to be an illegitimate means to own something.
The point I was trying to get across was that trying to ascribe value or legitimacy of ownership to class of blockchain based NFTs is an ill-defined question. It's like if I tried to argue that...
The point I was trying to get across was that trying to ascribe value or legitimacy of ownership to class of blockchain based NFTs is an ill-defined question.
It's like if I tried to argue that digital items stored in PostgreSQL were more or less worthy of value than ones in MongoDB. It doesn't really make sense. That really arises from the context where the NFT is created - what it represents, who it is created by, what players are interacting with it, and so forth.
To be clear, I'm not saying it's an "inferior" means of ownership to rows in a database.
Yes, that's what I said in the blog post However, proxying trust does not mean you inherently proxy value either. It ensures that as long as that blockchain maintains coherence, your record will...
Yes, that's what I said in the blog post
But hypothetically there are situations where there isn't an entity that is clearly trustworthy and authoritative. There, you are essentially piggybacking on the trust of whatever blockchain it's on. So that is the "value" add - piggybacking on trust.
However, proxying trust does not mean you inherently proxy value either. It ensures that as long as that blockchain maintains coherence, your record will exist, but that record only means something depending on the context of its usage.
For instance, the NBA NFTs have a terms of service - if you violate it, they can't take those tokens away, but they can make them illegitimate. That non-technological, social flip changes the meaning of those NFTs.
If we are talking about a virtual item in a video game, "trust" comes down to how the code in the video game was written. To determine ownership, which database does it send its queries to? That's...
If we are talking about a virtual item in a video game, "trust" comes down to how the code in the video game was written. To determine ownership, which database does it send its queries to? That's the database that determines ownership for the players of that video game.
Ethereum is no different in the sense that you have to write code that uses the blockchain as its system of record. The code could have been written differently, but it was written to trust Etherium blockchain. (Or more likely, it's trusting some proxy server that tells it what's on Etherium's blockchain.)
Outside video games, there are similar issues with contracts. What does the contract say you should do? That's what the lawyers are going to argue about if there's a dispute.
Pile up enough contracts and it starts to look like consensus. It's not that easy to rewrite all the contracts.
I’m not sure I agree. I think a good test is to see what happens when someone steals one of these tokens. Will people agree that the work has been stolen?
Ownership itself is just an idea. If we can collectively agree on a new form of ownership I see no reason for that to be an illegitimate means to own something.
The point I was trying to get across was that trying to ascribe value or legitimacy of ownership to class of blockchain based NFTs is an ill-defined question.
It's like if I tried to argue that digital items stored in PostgreSQL were more or less worthy of value than ones in MongoDB. It doesn't really make sense. That really arises from the context where the NFT is created - what it represents, who it is created by, what players are interacting with it, and so forth.
To be clear, I'm not saying it's an "inferior" means of ownership to rows in a database.
It’s not equivalent. A traditional RDBMS requires trust in a way that Ethereum’s blockchain does not.
Yes, that's what I said in the blog post
However, proxying trust does not mean you inherently proxy value either. It ensures that as long as that blockchain maintains coherence, your record will exist, but that record only means something depending on the context of its usage.
For instance, the NBA NFTs have a terms of service - if you violate it, they can't take those tokens away, but they can make them illegitimate. That non-technological, social flip changes the meaning of those NFTs.
Oh wow. Those are worthless in my opinion.
If we are talking about a virtual item in a video game, "trust" comes down to how the code in the video game was written. To determine ownership, which database does it send its queries to? That's the database that determines ownership for the players of that video game.
Ethereum is no different in the sense that you have to write code that uses the blockchain as its system of record. The code could have been written differently, but it was written to trust Etherium blockchain. (Or more likely, it's trusting some proxy server that tells it what's on Etherium's blockchain.)
Outside video games, there are similar issues with contracts. What does the contract say you should do? That's what the lawyers are going to argue about if there's a dispute.
Pile up enough contracts and it starts to look like consensus. It's not that easy to rewrite all the contracts.