this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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There is a lot of talk, for example, in the sustainability space where things like emissions allowances, carbon offsets, etc. are traded the old fashioned way where a digital ledger using NFTs would be both instantaneous and transparent/easily auditable.
But the most obvious example is security exchanges, e.g. stocks, bonds, etc. (which would be a massive threat to the existing financial institutions) because it could allow for instantaneous settlement and fully transparent markets.
HUGE HOWEVER, not all NFT systems would be equally useful for that kind of thing. What we saw with FTX, for example, was a blockchain exchange for tokenized securities where the blockchain aspects served no real useful purpose - it was a centralized, controlled, opaque use case. The distributed ledger model (which I think casual observers of blockchain assume all blockchain systems are) can correct for those failures. I personally think part of what made the FTX story so big was a combination of moves by major financial market players to get out in front of tokenization of securities by created the existing system again but with a blockchain coat of paint on top that then failed under its own scam at lightning speed which then gave the ammo to a whole “blockchain a scam, NFT an even bigger scam” narrative. They are just software utilities that can be used effectively or not just like any others.
Whenever I see someone identify a jpeg as an NFT, or put SBF’s face on a news story about it, I think about how successful the astroturfing of these narratives has been.
So... Just theoretical applications so far?
There are tons of people (actual serious people, not like SBF) working in this space and building these things now, so they are definitely more than theoretical, but they are not at the mass adoption stage.
And no offense, but this response has echoes of people saying federation would never work. But it's just a different utility to accomplish similar goals to centralized forums. And when the old-fashioned, centralized alternatives really start to self-destruct because of their inherent flaws, the merits of the decentralized version become more obvious.
I'm actually pretty shocked that Lemmy/the Fediverse beats the same tired old drums about NFTs (ape jpegs being the most obvious), since they are red herring arguments. A tokenized jpeg has no value because a jpeg has no value. A tokenized security has the value of the underlying security. The token is just there to eliminate the need for accountants since the open ledger shows its work and the entire chain of custody.
A tokenized security is the same thing as a tokenized jpeg. Blockchain has no control over what happens outside it.
I could create a token and say it refers to my Ferrari. Obviously I don’t own a Ferrari, but what can the blockchain do about it? To ensure the token is legitimate, some trusted authority must ensure the Ferrari really exists in the physical reality. Suddenly blockchain doesn’t “eliminate the need for accountants”.
And whenever I want to sell the token, someone must ensure I still own the Ferrari. Who knows, maybe I crashed the Ferrari somewhere in the forest?
Same goes for any asset - including carbon offsets, stocks and bonds. Blockchain is completely unable to say anything about the state of the physical reality.
We still beat the same tired old drums about NFTs because if it doesn’t work for jpegs, it doesn’t work for anything.
You wrote all that out and didn't really think about what you wrote, because you actually proved my point. Yes, they are the same thing, but the difference is one has no value (a digital picture of a monkey) and one has value (a stock in, say, Apple). UNLIKE FTX - the tokenized securities that would be verifiable would be issued directly by the company, so each stock the company issues is done so as an NFT token. You can verify whether it is the company's actual stock or not because it is an NFT, so it would be traceable all the way back to the company and its initial issuance.
Consider what it is like buying one share of Apple today. Think about it. If you buy one share of Apple from Schwab or something, how do you know you actually received on share of Apple? It says you have one share on the Schwab site, but you are just taking their word for it, and they are taking their brokerages word for it, and they are taking the market makers word for it, and they are taking . . . . In fact, in most cases you don't even own that stock (you can find out based on how you are taxed when the company issues a dividend - if it is a qualifying dividend, but you owe normal income taxes on it, congratulations, you never even owned the share). Our entire current "mainstream" stock market is based on beneficial ownership, which is the biggest "trust me bro" in history.
However, if the transaction was done on an open, distributed ledger, it is wholly verifiable. NFT goes directly from company to each owner and the entire transaction history is visible, verifiable, and instantaneous.
As already explained, you don't know what you're paying for with an NFT until a trusted authority has said that they are indeed the issuer of that NFT contract. If you can't know what you're paying for on Schwab it doesn't matter if they sell you a classical contract or an NFT. Either Apple said "these people are selling the real deal on this page on their site" or they did not. NFT only really adds the ability to keep tracking the token as it gets resold elsewhere, but this is solvable without blockchains if the market was to implement stuff like federated transparency logs.
In this case, the NFT would only be issued by the actual issuing company or its agent. This is how it works today but instead of NFTs it is paper certificates or, worse, a ledger entry why the issuing agent that is then confirmed with the centralized shared deposit uprise which actually owns most of the real shares. In most cases, especially in the trading platforms where you can execute free trades, you are just a beneficial owner and not an actual owner of the underlying security. With an NFT there would be no need for beneficial ownership at all anymore. It’s not the only way to do it, it’s just a utility like the others you mentioned, but it is a legitimate use case.
But it's achievable without any NFT
it's quite frustrating how much bandwagon hate and resistance there is to the basic concept of a trustworthy and decentralized system for proof of ownership. i find your thoughts to be very well written, patient and insightful.
yes, the initial and popular use case for NFTs has not been ideal as digital art is easy to copy. but it is not difficult to think of other applications that are far more useful - stocks/securities being the easiest one. almost any product of value could and should have an NFT associated with it. this would make validating authenticity and ownership extremely easy and cut out tons of brokering fees for certain things.
I really appreciate that. As part of my unredditing process and knowing we are trying to make this place better than what Reddit became, I really want to give civility and open back and forth as much of a chance of catching on as possible. NFTs ate something that have been eaten up by this overwhelming hype and anti-hype machine. I think, like most software solutions, that they will find a good niche in appropriate systems and, like most things, once they are implemented, most people won’t even realize they are using it.
No it isn't. Just because both things are "decentralized" doesn't make them the same thing.
It's called a metaphor. We use them to illustrate things people are not familiar with with references to things they may be familiar with. I don't really get why you won't really engage with what I'm saying and just want to "nuh-uh" everything. I don't own or trade in NFTs, and never have, and definitely think both they are blockchain have been overhyped, just like AI is being overhyped right now, but that does not mean that there aren't actual, real world uses for these things that are major improvement over how things work now. The unsexy use cases for NFTs (using them for things that are currently traded or otherwise transferred digitally with manual, disconnected, and/or opaque back-ends) is likely the one that will endure, just like everything else.
Who is actually or supposedly will be in the future using them for this purpose?
Digital scarcity is in and of itself kind of a niche concept.
You are right on. The idea of artificial scarcity is a scam. I replied to someone a little higher up about the securities use case, but the short version of that is, for things like stock in a company, stocks are already scarce (there are only as many shares as the company issues - or there is only supposed to be that many). It's the scarcity of the underlying asset, not the "digital" aspect of it, that creates value. Each share is issued by the company as a single NFT token and there are only as many NFTs as they issue shares.
Who really wants to buy shares and then trade and sell in significant numbers outside exchanges?
The idea is that this would be the software used to run the actual transfer of shares traded on the exchanges rather than what is used today which is just closed ledger entries on books of all the participants. But the current manual process takes multiple days to settle each transaction and this would be instantaneous, and in one transparent distributed ledger.
You can do that more efficiently with transparency logs instead