[yata69420]

The JPEG-flipping profile picture culture may be dead, but the technology works.

NFTs are great if you need cryptographic proof of ownership. I believe this actually has a ton of unexplored utility, even though people now associate "NFT" with pictures of monkeys.

The only NFTs I currently use are from Uniswap, but I think it's likely I'll use them for all sorts of ownership in the future.

NFTs can also make things like subscription services and club memberships transferable by allowing secondary marketplaces where they otherwise would not exist, which should be good for both businesses and customers. POAPs are pretty interesting too.

[dragontamer]

> NFTs are great if you need cryptographic proof of ownership.

You can get that with a cheap smart-token that we all call a "chip-enabled credit card", which provides cryptographic proof of ownership each time you use the chip or NFT reader.

There are also cryptographic proofs of ownership with every cell-phone enabled application, as well as HTTPS client certificates (rarely used on the public internet, I find them in use in private intranets, SSH keys, and the like).

You know, "cryptography", the kinds of which we've been using since 1980. Not the "new fangled crypto" that forgets about older solutions that still work today.

[yata69420]

I use all those types of cryptography too, but NFTs provide additional features.

The special thing about NFTs is that they're securely transferable on a public ledger, which isn't really the case with client certificates or ssh keys.

Let's say I buy a ticket to a show as an NFT and I want to give it to you. I can simply send it to your wallet address, and now you own it and can prove you do at admission time.

If I resell the ticket to you at a premium, perhaps the performer gets an additional cut to help them capture some of the resale value and reduce scalping.

I'm not sure how you'd do this with SSH keys or private certificates, but I think you would end up needing some kind of registration/directory/ledger service, and then you've just invented cryptocurrency again.

[__MatrixMan__]

I think ownership-like-property will end up being a rather small part of the NFT's future role because you need everybody's cooperation re: agreeing that such-and-such blockchain pointer corresponds with something actually valuable. The incentives are backwards: if you're the one claiming to have power because you command this fleet of abstractions, then the people you claim to have power over have an incentive to disengage with those abstractions.

Ownership-like-responsibility, on the other hand, is a place I can see NFT's sticking. Like: the calls get routed to whoever has the on-call token. If the token is for something that most people don't want, then everybody except the holder has an incentive to buy in.

Also, shaming (e.g. for the purpose of directing sabotage). If you want to oppose something, it's no good to just pick a fight with whatever you see that happens to resemble that thing, you ought to go find the strongest example of whatever you want to oppose, and go interfere with that. NFT's could help us have consensus about such things so that we can collectively create incentives to not be the most prominent example of a problematic practice.

[lisasays]

I believe this actually has a ton of unexplored utility,

Like what specifically?