Ask HN: What do you think about NFTs?

The good:

Many people already buy worthless digital content like sticker packs, game character art / items, access to things - buying an NFT could be the same thing, but better (and transferrable).

NFTs represent an interesting way for artists to directly connect to their fans.

NFTs allow artists to sell new forms of content vs their existing channels (ie a musician selling a music video or access to something else).

NFTs can provide ongoing "royalties" to the artist, which is potentially a complete game changer wrt the artists income over time.

The bad:

Right now most successful NFTs are basically total shit, content wise. This is a bad look for the industry.

NFTs are too expensive for casual consumption (especially fees).

NFTs are mostly successful as a result of existing followers or marketing, not their own merit (bad discoverability).

NFTs are mostly for bragging rights at this time.

NFTs can be easily stolen in some cases (compared to real world assets).

I believe there to be many interesting future use cases for NFTs. One such example could be transaction receipts between consumers and businesses. Imagine having an irrefutable proof of your transaction that does not face the risk of being lost like a paper copy. Concert or sporting event tickets could be good use cases for NFTs as well. There are many more ideas people will come up with.

I think the tradable digital art use case that we see today is perhaps the dumbest use case for NFTs that we will ever see.

An attempt to impose artificial scarcity on otherwise practically limitless resources.

Doomed to fail unless imposed by the state.

Ownership and traceability of digital assets via storage on a blockchain opens up some interesting new opportunities for creators of those assets to be compensated.

Check out https://tea.xyz where Max Howell (creator of brew) is applying the model to open source software.

It's working to get people on board with the concept of owning digital property which is fundamentally flawed since computers work to copy digital data. It will result in yet another method of enforcing DRM. But this time, it's possible that governments and large platforms will work together to enforce a policy where digital proof is required to upload certain content or digital assets

Here are a couple of interesting posts I came across around the topic of blockchain and DRM:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/digital-rights-management-in-...

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3351542

nft-native brands (ex. bored ape yacht club) will be polarizing brands like supreme or rolex or hermes. many people will think it's dumb. the target audience won't care. mainstream brands will adopt nfts as ways to engage super fans.

nft access passes (ex. proof collective) are online-first country clubs and will disrupt traditional ones.

generative art nfts (ex. fidenza) will be more popular than traditional art for decamillionaire millennials and gen-z.

nft fundraising has already eclipsed kickstarter, patreon, and web2 monetization models (youtube, spotify, tiktok, instagram) for creators.

reddit is wrong. nft ticketing is not going to disrupt ticketmaster anytime soon. nft deeds are not going to disrupt realtors anytime soon. entrenched monopolies aren't going to make changes to their business processes to satisfy some angry powerless online communities.

disclosure- i trade nfts. i own none of the listed nfts but have in the past (bayc) and may again in the future.

Dumb.