NFTs are not just bad for the environment but also stupid(Dumber)

 The purpose of an NFT is to establish title to property. The idea is to certify an association between a digital identity (the owner) and an object (the property, most often digital as well), and to use blockchain technology to store and distribute this certificate of ownership.

It starts badly: people who claim to use a blockchain to establish title deeds are lying or have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. This was established in a previous post (which I advise you to read before this one) where I explained that a blockchain cannot serve as a source of truth for anything that is not intrinsically “in” said blockchain. This technology therefore has no advantage over paper, but on the other hand has many disadvantages that paper does not have (energy consumption, impossible centered transactions, etc.).

NFTS are dumbest thing ever 

What NFTs claim to bring is decentralization and the absence of the need for trusted third parties. This in itself is enough to completely discredit the idea of ​​NFTs, since it is a title of ownership on a blockchain and precisely because the use of a blockchain does not actually allow any decentralization or any removal of the need for trust. as demonstrated in the post cited above. But as the title of this post suggests: NFTs are even dumber or stupid.

NFT means “ non-fungible token”, ie “non-fungible token”: it is a non-interchangeable piece of information, as opposed to cryptocurrency units for example. When we have 1 bitcoin, we have 1 bitcoin, they are all equivalent, in the strict sense of having the same value. Each NFT is unique and identifiable. A $10 note is worth the same as any other $10 note (or any set of coins and notes that are worth $10): Dollers  are fungible. On the other hand, if we decide that the $10 banknotes are no longer in circulation but that we keep them and open a market for $10 banknotes where each one is unique and identified by its serial number,

This idea illustrates what is meant by “non-fungibility”. This is why numbering objects in limited quantities increases their value: not only are they rare but they are also now unique since each one has a different number. 

NFTS are a joke or stupid things 

But in the case of NFTs, it's even more stupid : NFTs, absolutely nothing prevents you from creating several (and even as many as you want) for exactly the same object (therefore there can be several certificates of ownership for the same work), and anyone can create it for anything (therefore no guarantee that the person who creates or sells an NFT has rights to the ownership of the associated object). Everything happens as if a same $10 note (in the sense of the physical object, necessarily unique) could have an infinity of serial numbers, and that it is to these serial numbers that value was attributed, and potentially different values ​​to each . 

Yes yes, that makes absolutely no sense.

In fact it's even more stupid: the object associated with an NFT is generally a digital object, the rarity of which therefore does not exist since it is transferable by copy (as opposed to my $10 note which I would necessarily no longer have in my possession when I would have transmitted it to someone else). This means that the object associated with the NFT (and which clearly contributes to its value on the market when we have already seen in the previous paragraph that this does not make sense) can itself be replicated infinitely. It may seem obvious but we have really seen a lot of cases of people having bought an image in NFT to use it as a profile picture on social networks and calling people thieves who would recover this image by a simple right click then “save the image under…”, for example.

All of these criticisms are already valid while still admitting the idea that an NFT would indeed be a title deed, but in reality it's even dumber . In principle, at least from the point of view of the defenders of this technology, having an NFT associated with the object (digital or not) X makes it possible to say “I am the official owner of X, I have a certificate which proves it. ". Except that the notion of property has absolutely nothing natural about it, it only exists as a social construct. Ownership can result from a “raw” power relationship or by common agreement, but in all cases it is a form of violence. 

In the first case, the balance of power must be constantly renewed.

In the second case, it is necessary for some form of external authority to ensure that the agreement is respected by the different parties (with a power of sanction in the event of non-respect, or an absolute power of coercion). 

And in both cases, the notion of ownership only exists and has meaning for the community concerned.

 In short, a title deed has no value in the absolute if there is not a third authority which enforces it, and thereby gives it its value. This is true when the title deed takes the form of a piece of paper, but it is also true when it takes the form of an NFT: by writing in a blockchain that such person is the owner of such object, we has done absolutely nothing more than if we had written this same statement on paper: it has absolutely no value until there is a third party authority which enforces, which makes true , what is written. Exit therefore once again the idea of ​​decentralization or disintermediation…

But hang in there because it's not over: the association of an object to an NFT is generally not done directly on the blockchain for technical reasons (objects are too large for that). Note that even in the very rare cases where the object is registered on the blockchain, everything we have said so far applies perfectly. 

What is stored on the blockchain is actually most often a link to a web page which in turn points to the object associated with the NFT. Which means that we lose all idea of ​​decentralization (which is the raison of this technology - even if this belief is only the fruit of a huge misunderstanding as we have already seen) since a platform centralized is necessary to make the link between the NFT and the associated object. 

It's bad enough but in fact it's even more stupid : because of the centrality of this imposed trusted third party, the NFT itself is subject to the risk of pointing to a dead linkin the best case (for example if the platform site disappears or changes address). But it could be worse: the site could get hacked or simply be replaced later by one that makes fanciful associations, displays ads, tries to infect its visitors with viruses, or simply trolls.

So it's pretty clear that NFT technology is purely and entirely hot air and has no possible serious application (apart from enriching the highest tiers of a Ponzi scheme while accelerating global warming). Let's take a closer look at the non-purely speculative use case that seems to be most often put forward by the defenders of this technology: its use in a metaverse or the field of video games (I'm going to talk about "virtual world ” in general) for “ in-game ” accessory markets.

What makes this idea seem to work is that in the case of a virtual world of which one controls everything, one can effectively decide that the blockchain on which one records the NFTs is a source of truth. 

Technically it works. The virtual world can completely prevent participants who are not identified as owners of an NFT from benefiting from the object associated with it. The company that publishes the game, through the implementation of the virtual world, i.e. the rules written in its source code , has here the role of third-party and centralized authority. 

who has the absolute power to make true what she wants, and therefore among other things what would be written on a blockchain. If the company changes its mind, the truth in the virtual world changes with… And it's even dumber. 

Contrary to what one can regularly read on the subject, this would absolutely not allow objects to be transferred from one virtual world to another if it is not provided for in the code of the virtual worlds in question: if a game did not provide a code to display a red hat on your avatar, you will not be able to display a red hat on your avatar there, even if you are the “owner” of an NFT associated with the idea of ​​a hat red and that the game takes into account the blockchain on which it is otherwise. 

Nor do NFTs allow a market for the resale of objects between players within the same virtual world if this does not provide for the possibility of transfer of ownership (which he could decide to do only 'with a tax for example…). 

In short, anything other than the speculative market of (re)selling bogus title deeds to gullible buyers is entirely up to the will of the entity that controls the virtual world. We are therefore in a fully centralized system, and there is no advantage in using NFTs and therefore a blockchain for that. 

Technically there are even many disadvantages: it will be more costly in resources and less efficient than a simple database to achieve the same result.