The vast majority of NFTs are now worthless, new report shows

Lee Duna@lemmy.nz to Technology@lemmy.ml – 472 points –
The vast majority of NFTs are now worthless, new report shows
theguardian.com
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Was that happening? All I ever heard about was people selling artists art that they didn't own the rights to without permission, and getting away with it

God I am not going to miss every art community being flooded with low effort developer art that had no actual artistic merit.

I mean I do developer art, but I wouldn't try to sell it, let alone sell it as an investment. Fucking rofl

The major nft exchanges paid a portion of each sale to the artists, yes. It was one of the things that NFTs, and blockchain in general, was supposed to help solve for. IMO it’s a good use case for blockchain being used when paired with real world items.

But we don't need blockchain to do any of that, someone still has to be trusted so might as well just use normal database tech.

Don’t need blockchain, no, but blockchain has some advantages since its peer verified and, when implemented well, much harder to fake data than a centralized database might be.

With a normal database we have to trust the one person/entity managing it.

With blockchain, it’s a community that we trust.

Ok, ok, hold on - what's being sold here? A link to a digital asset or something else? If it's a link, I still don't get the point. Does that link (or whatever it is) confer some kind of license? What's the use case for faking this data and why are we defending from this?

My idea is that the art is being sold and the NFT only says who owns it. It doesn’t need to be digital art, it can be just about anything where an original creator should benefit from the item changing hands.

Whenever the NFT changes hands, there are fees associated, which would include a portion of the sale going to the original artist, a royalty. And because the NFT exists on a publicly visible blockchain, back alley sales can’t happen ensuring that the artist gets paid.

This type of thing helps ensure that artists benefit from their art going into demand and increasing in value.

Blockchain mathematically guarantees trust... for info stored on the blockchain. What guarantee do you have that this info matches things that happen in reality?

If you say: we need a social contract to ensure people update the blockchain, then I say: that defeats the purpose of the heavy lifting you need to mathematically guarantee info on the blockchain is genuine. Let's just have a social contact to pay the artist when appropriate.

I don't see what other way could exist to keep the blockchain and reality in sync.

The actual artist? The one that created the art? Not the one that stole the artist's work and turned it into an NFT for a quick buck from something they had no right to?

Yes. The actual artist.

That was one of the things that was working quite well during the NFT hype.

Yes, many artists made a lot of money on NFTs

If you are referring to scam artists, you are 100% right! Also, some actual artists might have got some money out of it, but I suspect the majority of dough that exchanged hands went to the former kind.

I'm sorry you dont have any technically inclined artists in your circle, but I first learned about NFTs from myartists friends.

Colored coins have been around for a very long time, and NFTs have been an income stream for artists long before the financial elite gave them a bad name.

History is important