[HN Gopher] What is an NFT from an artist's perspective?
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What is an NFT from an artist's perspective?
Author : jds375
Score : 61 points
Date : 2021-02-27 03:54 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (alex-pardee.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (alex-pardee.medium.com)
| almost wrote:
| It's amazing the absolute bullshit people will force themselves
| to believe when their might be some money in it for them.
|
| All these articles gloss over the technical side (which is really
| not complicated, because there's very little THERE). And gloss
| over the demand side (sure, people want to "own" the art even
| when "own" means absoluely nothing in that context). I can only
| assume that on the demand side there's a mixture of stupid money
| ("I don't know what this is but it seems like it might be the
| next big thing so I'm buying") and people working one of various
| angles.
|
| At least some artists are getting paid stupid amounts of money,
| if someone's got to get a windfall it might as well be them. But
| let's not pretend thing actually makes sense as an overall thing.
| woleium wrote:
| Aren't NFTs just digital authenticity certificates, complete with
| blockchain protected provenance?
|
| In some artworks the certificate is the only non transitory asset
| (e.g. banana taped to wall, or the famous lawyers dot painting)
| eyaltoledano wrote:
| Smells like a bottomless pit and quacks like a bottomless pit
| Igelau wrote:
| There is also bottomless pit poo on my windshield.
| jarofgreen wrote:
| Q: What's to stop me taking sometime else's art I find online,
| claiming it's mine, turning it into a NFT and making money from
| it?
|
| A: Absolutely nothing ... I think?
| [deleted]
| dorkwood wrote:
| This guy made a few hundred thousand by doing just that.
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/muratpak/status/13585748601721569...
| Igelau wrote:
| Oh man, it's even structured like a penny auction where the
| majority tile holder 'owns' the "final creation".
|
| I'm willing to grant that it's slightly _slightly_
| interesting to consider what some works would look like if
| they were chopped to pieces and reconstituted from only the
| pieces people would individually bid on. There 's an artistic
| statement in there somewhere.
|
| But the pomp and slime that this is presented with completely
| obscure that.
| grenoire wrote:
| Jesus Christ...
| tomgp wrote:
| Every generation gets the million dollar homepage it deserves
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| But is that substantially different from this?
|
| https://www.christies.com/lot/lot-andy-warhol-colored-
| mona-l...
| jarofgreen wrote:
| Or artists like Richard Prince. Prince has been sued
| several times and made several settlements.
|
| But - his court victories depended on the argument that he
| actually transformed the works he copied. If someone just
| claims ownership of a art work on a blockchain, I'm not
| sure that's the same thing.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| In my project, we use robust near-duplicate image detection
| based on image fingerprints that are generated from deep
| learning models. So if an image has already been registered on
| our system, no one else can register it.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Do you have a system in place for an artist to say "hey some
| asshole registered my art before I even heard of your
| project, no seriously, here is a screen grab of it in the
| editor/a closeup of the canvas/some other snippet of the
| Original File"?
| dorkwood wrote:
| If a "behind the scenes" screenshot outweighs an NFT in
| terms of proving authenticity, then why are we making NFTs
| in the first place?
| eigenvalue wrote:
| Yes there will be a decentralized mechanism for posting
| essentially a "petition for relief" where they can lay out
| their case, but it will be optional and at the discretion
| of the operators of the "masternodes" in the system whether
| to grant relief. If the petitioner can attract enough votes
| then it would nullify the original registration. Anyone can
| operate a masternode but it requires locking up a lot of
| the coin to prevent Sybil attacks.
| jarofgreen wrote:
| And is there many cases of that happening yet? "There
| will be" worries me.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| That doesn't seem to be a very confidence inspiring
| answer to deal with fraud.
| arduinomancer wrote:
| I think the reason it doesn't make sense is that when you buy art
| IRL you actually own the original which can't be duplicated.
|
| This is not true of a JPEG. I can perfectly duplicate it.
|
| Now where it might make sense is if everyone views the asset
| through an authoritative "viewer".
|
| For example cryptokitties website.
|
| In that case it somewhat makes sense.
|
| As an analogy if I create a private World of Warcraft server and
| give my character a billion gold, no one cares.
|
| But if they see my character on the official server (the official
| "viewer") has a billion gold then its impressive.
| sneak wrote:
| At that point if you have a single authoritative site, you can
| just use postgres to store the who-owns-what and skip the added
| complexity and risk of a blockchain.
| dbspin wrote:
| Except that there's a huge market for 'official' numbered
| prints. Often the sales of print editions by an artist can
| rival or exceed the value of an original painted piece. These
| prints are more more authentic than any other print of the same
| piece. Their value derived from scarcity, provenance and
| association with the original creator. All of these are present
| in an NFT.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Can you provide an example of a print being valued more than
| the original painted piece?
|
| That defies all logic unless the print isn't just a print --
| e.g. it's in a million dollar gold frame or was previously
| owned by the Pope or something.
| __s wrote:
| Does anyone know where to find resources on how taxation works
| with NFTs? I'm in Canada. My understanding is the seller is
| supposed to pay 13% HST. Do they also have to consider it income,
| or does that only happen when transferring back to fiat?
|
| Reading https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/programs/about-
| canad... it says "trade or exchange cryptocurrency, including
| disposing of one cryptocurrency to get another cryptocurrency"
| but are NFTs considered an asset rather than a security?
| (cryptocurrency isn't considered currency)
|
| Not sure how taxes work out fair market value of art
| lasagnaphil wrote:
| Proof of authenticity, whether being digital or not, doesn't mean
| anything until
|
| 1) the culture of the general people around you support it, or
|
| 2) there is an entity with political power (such as the state)
| that forcefully protects that authenticity through law/police/the
| military/etc (for example, intellectual property supported by law
| enforcement).
|
| But firstly I think NFTs are totally antitheical to the current
| culture of the Internet era, where it is given without question
| that data can be freely copied and shared (regardless of the
| countless efforts by DRM technologies), and virality and mass
| transmission is regarded as an important communal cultural value.
| Who cares if someone "owns" the Nyan Cat meme, when you can
| freely Google it and view it on your smartphone, and can also
| save it to your hard drive if you want to preserve it? And I
| really don't think state power is really supportive of general
| crypto right now, so number two is off from the start. The
| problem I have with NFTs (and cryptocurrenties in general) isn't
| about the technology, it's more about the culture surrounding it.
|
| (Also, think the blockchain is permanent, because it's supported
| by "math"? If the infrastructure surrounding Ethereum vanishes,
| your piece of NFT is essentially gone. And Ethereum's consuming a
| hell of a lot of energy and infrastructure to maintain, and you
| might start to think backing it up in a few hard drives is the
| easier and saner option...)
| woleium wrote:
| Who cares who owns the Mona Lisa, when I can see it online
| better than I can in real life (infrared imagery, x-ray scan)
|
| As soon as "real" art collectors start buying them (already
| hapenening) then they will mutually invest in protecting their
| investment, no need for government when civil courts can
| preside.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > Who cares who owns the Mona Lisa, when I can see it online
| better than I can in real life (infrared imagery, x-ray scan)
|
| Exactly. The only things canonical-physical artworks are good
| for are conspicuous consumption/bragging rights and money
| laundering(/other money-laundering-adjactent activities).
| cam0 wrote:
| And the bragging typically manifests by hanging the
| physical work on the walls of your home(s) so your guests
| can view it and be impressed as if they're at a museum or
| gallery. I'm wondering how the bragging rights for NFTs
| will manifest... 25 OLED screens decorating my walls with
| jpegs?
| lasagnaphil wrote:
| First of all, civil courts are supported by the civil law,
| and that law is supported by the government. One example of a
| civil law is copyright enforcement, which is often enforced
| by the Supreme Court.
|
| And also, when actual powerful entities (whether that be
| governments/corporations/etc) start to involve in protecting
| NFT investments using the law, is there any benefit of
| "crypto" being used to protect the value of the asset
| anymore? Isn't it just private property with extra steps?
|
| I really don't think the Mona Lisa comparison doesn't fit
| with the current conversation with NFTs, since NFTs deal with
| digital assets, and trying to convert an analog artwork like
| Mona Lisa to fit into NFTs would already demolish its
| authentic value as an amalgamation of detailed, non-
| reproducible paint strokes (which I think is the authentic
| value you're emphasizing about).
| edent wrote:
| It has all the hallmarks of an MLM or Ponzi scheme. Lots of
| people hyping it up, hoping to sell on their "asset" to a bigger
| fool.
|
| You can't restrict ownership of digital goods. Decades of DRM
| have shown us that.
| [deleted]
| porcc wrote:
| It's not about not allowing access to people--it's about
| provably being the person named "owner" of a given good.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > It's not about not allowing access to people--it's about
| provably being the person named "owner" of a given good.
|
| Like this? https://lunarland.com/
| lasagnaphil wrote:
| The fatal problem is literally: "who cares". Real
| "authenticity" doesn't comes from math and comes instead from
| culture. Using the "if a tree falls in a forest" philosophy
| meme: if the blockchain claims that you have the Nyan Cat
| image but nobody cares about it, then do you really "own" the
| image?
|
| More about the history of authenticity: Religion supplied
| this culture of "authenticity" for some time, but after the
| Industrial revolution the widespread duplicate production of
| commodities, along with the invention of photos and videos,
| has been eroding away the value of the authentic "the one and
| only" irrelevant for some time. Walter Benjamin has a nice
| essay about this change of culture in his famous essay - "
| The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". And
| the Internet seems to further accelerate the notion of
| communal art, where memes only have value if they are shared
| freely and not when someone hangs it in a museum. My gripe
| with NFTs has nothing to do with the technicalities of crypto
| and everything to do with everything else (primarily,
| politics and culture in relation to technology).
| dageshi wrote:
| You can't restrict ownership of physical goods or art really,
| it's just that there's "authentic" goods and "fake" goods.
|
| So you're right you can't restrict possession of digital goods
| but you _can_ restrict the right to sell a digital good because
| any potential buyers will want to know what they 're buying is
| "authentic".
|
| CSGO skins go for thousands with the rarest going for tens of
| thousands, you can download them and possess them right now but
| valve says you don't "own" them and can't sell them.
| stevewodil wrote:
| CSGO skins are a slightly different case because of their use
| in-game. You can't play in an actual competitive game of CSGO
| with a knife/skin that you don't own.
|
| Yes, there are servers that will let you try out custom skins
| and knives but you can't play an official game with them. The
| knives also offer different animations which look cooler than
| the default one. It's slightly different to me in that
| there's no inherent usefulness of the NFT's (at least
| currently - maybe in some metaverse future they have a use).
|
| It doesn't seem like people really want to "own" the NFTs,
| they are viewing them only as investments which means
| eventually someone will be left holding the bag. In contrast,
| people DO want to own the CSGO skins and knives.
| Igelau wrote:
| The DRM comparison is one I was dying to see. This NFT stuff
| feels like the returning nemesis of open culture from previous
| web sub-eras. I hardly want to own a work. Take it, build on
| it, sing it somewhere with someone else who likes it.
| disposekinetics wrote:
| Best case this is trying to find a chump to hold the bag when
| the music stops, and worst case is a Ponzi scheme.
|
| Either way I don't think there is value in 'DRM but on a
| blockchain'.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| Well, no; the _best_ case is they 're trying to sell bragging
| rights in the style of "I'm so rich I can buy original
| Picasso paintings for no reason beyond showing off how rich I
| am!". Which is stupid and says depressing thing about human
| civilization, but isn't really any worse than trying to sell
| any other kind of artwork in physical form.
| asymptotically3 wrote:
| Bitcoin is my favourite non-fungible token.
| nr2x wrote:
| I was the first person to allow bitcoin donations for music and
| netted roughly $10 at the time, which today would be worth nearly
| half a million dollars. I happened to be lucky my interests in
| emerging tech and music lined up when I had an album finished. So
| I'm definitely an artist who has benefited from cypto. That said,
| I've read a few NFT FAQs and this seems wholly pointless and
| idiotic.
| lvass wrote:
| >For example, I had a friend who worked in fiber-optics and phone
| lines. He once tried to explain to me how a phone call worked and
| I almost threw up. Instead, I just accepted that it DOES exist
|
| This explanation of "the" blockchain almost made me throw up.
| It's absolutely fine if you are too lazy to understand certain
| things, just don't assume everyone is and please do not try to
| explain things you do not understand, unless you're honest about
| it or it is simply exercise.
| KirillPanov wrote:
| No really, officer, I wasn't laundering those drug proceeds, I
| was just buying a non-fungible token from Pablo Escobar in order
| to resell it to El Chapo. NFTs are just like artwork, officer.
| You know, the kind of artwork that billionaires use to launder
| money? We're just doing the same thing they do, but on the
| blockchain!
| geraldbauer wrote:
| FYI: I curate some awesome pages on non-fungible token (NTF)
| pages, that is, the Awesome CryptoKitties & Copycats [1] and the
| Awesome CryptoPunks & Copypastas [2]
|
| [1]: https://github.com/cryptocopycats/awesome-cryptokitties-
| bubb... [2]: https://github.com/cryptopunksnotdead/awesome-
| cryptopunks-bu...
| mikeiz404 wrote:
| So when I first heard about NFTs for art it seemed pretty silly.
| As it is now there is nothing stopping some one from copying the
| digital asset and still deriving as much enjoyment strictly from
| that digital asset. The other added benefit strictly from the
| token might be as a status symbol and the ability to profit by
| selling that status symbol to some one else. So if you are buying
| the art for solely personal enjoyment then there isn't much of a
| value add it seems (maybe you can acquire the digital asset again
| if you lose it by proving ownership of the token to some
| service?)
|
| However if a DRM ecosystem pops up supporting this which adds
| enough friction to showing digital assets without tokens (ex a
| high end DRM only digital photo frame, DRM only music and video
| players, DRM enforced public hosting services, ...) then I could
| start to see how this might gain some traction. Legal enforcement
| would help as well.
|
| As other comments have stated this does seem pretty antithetical
| to the culture of the original internet. Though that seems to be
| less relevant as the years march on.
| XVII wrote:
| I see it mainly as a way of supporting the work of an artist
| minitoar wrote:
| You could just send them money.
| sneak wrote:
| For most NFTs the artist sees no part of the profit whatsoever
| beyond the first sale.
| suyash wrote:
| Yes, and ownership with authenticity proof.
| jarofgreen wrote:
| But there seems to be no guarantee that the person who
| registers the work as a NFT actually is the artist?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| NFT sellers are dodging the elephant in the room: Buying an NFT
| is more like buying a _print_ of an artwork than buying the
| artwork itself. Or more accurately, a link to a print of the
| artwork.
|
| Yes, using crypto and blockchain you can prove that this was the
| first NFT print of the artwork, but that's it. It's an expensive
| way to proclaim that you have the keys controlling the NFT that
| links to the print of the artwork, and that it was associated
| with a crypto-denominated transaction of a certain value, but
| that's it.
|
| These NFTs are also a goldmine for wash trading scams. NFT
| holders can "sell" the NFT to themselves over and over again at
| increasingly higher prices, creating an illusion of a very
| valuable and high-demand NFT.
|
| Want to own an expensive NFT? Buy a cheap NFT, then use a second
| wallet to "buy" it from yourself. The last trade price gets
| recorded in the blockchain and you can now brag about having an
| NFT worth as much money as you were willing to scrounge up for
| the transaction.
| hanniabu wrote:
| NFT art is worthless imo, but NFT for digital goods as a whole
| is very valuable.
| enko123 wrote:
| NFT is a glorified receipt. Some people collect receipts:
| like ticket-stubs for world series games or concerts, but
| first you have to convince the MLB or Ticketmaster to sell
| tickets on Ethereum, which is a big ask.
| woleium wrote:
| This is the traditional way to launder money with art, only now
| much easier!
| dleslie wrote:
| Bingo.
|
| Folks aren't buying a verified unique token for obscene
| amounts just to brag about it. They might brag, but many have
| other reasons to hold an object of such "value" .
|
| Anyone thinking that NFT is anything other than a vanity
| token for the wealthy and a money laundering mechanism for
| the same is fooling themselves.
| jVinc wrote:
| And to me the interesting question here is, if we both buy
| cheap 10$ tokens, and agree to buy these from each other at
| 1000$ and "lose our keys" will we be able to collect
| insurance on the lost asset? Will we be able to deduct the
| loss in taxes? Or if we donate the "artworks" to each others
| charities will we be able to deduct them in taxes?
| woleium wrote:
| the tax scam will be: 1. make shitty meme with alt dirty
| account 2. buy meme with real account for $1mm 3. gift meme
| to charity auction, write off 1mm in taxes 4. launder 1mm
| from dirty account by buying shitty meme from main account.
| 6nf wrote:
| Good luck finding an insurer that will insure these for you
| chpmrc wrote:
| Not sure about the first point, after all with digital art what
| matters _is_ the NFT since anyone can copy the artifact 1:1 at
| virtually no cost and no risk. I agree with many that NFTs are
| best suited for digital worlds but that begs the question: what
| happens if the game is centralized? They can still prevent you
| from actually having or using that item, regardless of any
| proof of ownership.
|
| Re: wash trading, that also happens in the art world with shell
| companies.
| lxdesk wrote:
| Use value is easy to assign to an NFT post-facto. That hasn't
| been really _done_ in the current market(which is, of course,
| in the midst of a bubble), but:
|
| * Tokens can become tickets to events
|
| * Tokens can become options on commissioned work
|
| * Tokens can become signs of membership
|
| Because the token is guaranteed to be unique, and you can
| track ownership, there's a fluidity to this that lets you do
| away with contractual mechanisms. You can reuse the same
| tokens many times or announce that it will expire(for your
| use case).
|
| Edit: And platforms can't really own it if it's on a public
| chain, too. You just copy the chain(see: BinancePunks copying
| CryptoPunks). So there's that.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| What prevents people registering a new NFT for the same work?
| Provenance might not be easily justifiable purely by date it
| was created.
| abalaji wrote:
| How is this different from having someone you know help drive
| up an artwork's sale price so you get a higher last auction
| value?
| whatshisface wrote:
| Not that different. The art world is also kind of scammy.
| Most people wouldn't want to put money in to it.
| RhodoGSA wrote:
| Well, kinda. Art is a quirky way to use an NFT for sure. But
| being able to verify scarcity, ownership and interoperability
| of a 'digital asset' is pretty useful in many applications.
| Afterall, everyones been saying everything is going online but
| i don't believe we truly understand what that means yet.
| Igelau wrote:
| I really hate and distrust Medium. You get garbage like this
| gussied up like it's coming from a trustworthy and informed
| source. I'm not sure why it seems that way in a way that, say,
| LiveJournal didn't, but it does.
|
| The "you don't have to understand it, just accept that it exists
| and believe in it" line of nonthinking is a memetic neurotoxin.
| It sucks whether it's applied to blockchain, NFTs, gods,
| homeopathy, or an MLM, and a healthy mind should expel it on
| exposure.
| remram wrote:
| In what way is an NFT token like a stock? A stock is bound to a
| company via dividends and voting power. An NFT only bears a name.
| kobasa wrote:
| Once again the HN community completely missing the point on
| crypto and this time on NFTs. Bunch of unimaginative people who
| think they're smarter than everyone else but have missed out on
| the biggest technological investment opportunity of the past
| decade and continue to remain petty and close minded on something
| they somehow still don't even understand.
|
| I'll throw you guys a little bone. Imagine sports card
| collecting, in the real world the hassle of keeping it in good
| condition, sending it to get it graded, then finding a buyer
| online, sending it again, and then hoping to get paid...all of
| that is full of friction and generally a terrible experience.
| NFTs like NBA Top Shot allow you to bypass all of that and the
| process of opening a pack, finding the price of it, and selling
| it can be done all in seconds. It is legitimately a 10x
| improvement from a logistical standpoint. And that's just
| scratching the surface, it's not only 10x more convenient and
| easier to find liquidity but it's actually programmable so
| there's pretty much infinite stuff that can be built on top of it
| like analytical tools, games that it integrates with and tracking
| ownership and getting athletes involved and displaying in virtual
| spaces and attaching digital custom signatures etc etc.
|
| Even if you personally don't like it or think "its stupid", the
| popularity of some of these products is undeniable. It is legit
| blowing up and has disrupted previous industries that people who
| get it refuse to go back to old ways. Sorry the market has spoken
| and your take is wrong.
| gge wrote:
| Whenever crypto comes up on HN all the comments are either
| copium, Tether, or people saying "I'm not wrong its the market
| thats wrong".
|
| Amazing to see how the tech/SV mainstream completely missed out
| on Defi, and are now missing out on NFTs.
|
| This comment explains HNs relationship with crypto perfectly:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24310174. Good quote from
| @balajis: "Crypto is what comes after Silicon Valley"
| grzm wrote:
| > Once again the HN community completely missing the point
|
| > I'll throw you guys a little bone.
|
| Just leave this out. You're part of the the community you're
| lumping here.
| jds375 wrote:
| I'm extremely skeptical of all cryptocurrencies and most usages
| of blockchain. However this seems like the first interesting and
| potentially practical application I've heard.
|
| It deals with art - something that's value is inherently
| subjective. Plus it gives makers of digital art a
| better/additional way to fund themselves. Further, transactions
| would likely be limited reducing environmental impact. Finally,
| it could provide some competition to company's like Sotheby's.
|
| Obviously there a lot of open questions (couldn't someone else
| just duplicate a work and make their own coin, why not just pay
| an artist directly, money laundering, etc). But I think this at
| least warrants further discussion. It's an interesting way to
| make digital art collectible/tradable
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