Most NFTs Are Stupid: And That's Fine!

Controversial post here, but most NFTs are stupid and the NFT craze is just absurd as of now.

If we're referring to NFTs with function, like for a game like Splinterlands, Alien.Worlds and such, then those NFTs are solid... but creative art NFTs are just stupid and I'll tell you why.

On the other hand, I'll also tell you why it's fine that they are stupid as of now, and why it is even something to be expected, with examples on how most technologies started out to be stupid.

If you aren't still raging at me and you're ready to read why I think about it this way, then read the rest of the post below.

"Save As" Function Argument: That's not the REAL NFT

There are a lot of people who wonder what the fuss is all about since you can just right click the NFT's asset and "save as" to get the .jpg or .png or whatever into your hard drive.

The NFT crowd yells that "That's not the REAL NFT" and while that doesn't bother me in the slightest, I can understand their argument.

It's like printing a work of art, you're just creating a copy.

HOWEVER.

You can go to ETHERSCAN for example, grabbing the ETHER NFTs as a case study, and look at the transaction.

Then, you only need two fields:

• Address

• Token ID

When you have this information, you can query the token on the blockchain, get the token, use an IFPS Gateway or Client and download the asset - the original one with full resolution.

This means you can get access to any creative NFT's original full-resolution art even before the art is sold.

NFTs Are Not Selling the Rights: NFTs Are Not Selling the Image

Another variable to look at is that the NFTs aren't selling the artworks' rights or even the artwork itself.

The artwork, as I said, is available for anyone to see, download and replicate, what you're buying is just the paper saying you paid money for it. (you don't even get the paper though).

Let me go even further.

What is happening, if we're technical, is that what is being bought and sold is the TRANSACTION where you made an NFT, which makes everything even a bit more stupid.

In the majority of cases, the person just bought an URL to the image file being hosted in someone's server.

Yeah, the transaction for the NFT and the URL are stored on the blockchain, but mostly the image asset is stored on private servers.

The 404 Image Not Found Nightmare:

Since what you are buying is the transaction with the URL pointing to the asset, if the asset goes offline or the link breaks...

...congratulations, you have yourself a 404 Page Not Found error on your hands.

That's it.

Look at Beeple's case and how someone paid $69 million for what's now a very expensive broken link.

Taken from this article, here are a few quotes to demonstrate my point even further:

• “ONE HARD DRIVE CRASHING COULD LEAD TO PERMANENT LOSS OF THE ASSETS.”

• "Buyers could end up in one of two situations: in one case, they own an NFT with a broken link, but they and the rest of the world understand what artwork it used to represent"

• "In the other scenario, the image has gone missing, and no one can tell what artwork the NFT was originally tied to."

• “In many cases, NFTs offer very little beyond a bare claim of ownership of the NFT itself”

Plus, in many cases, including in our own blockchain, some NFTs are blatant exploits of copyrighted material and low effort screenshots being sold. Which adds insult to injury.

NFTs Have no Blockchain Benefits: The Files are Centralized, Censorable, the Ownership is Null

To sum everything up, you'll be the owner of a transaction, usually a transaction with a JSON on it.

The core of it is that the asset itself can be accessed in all of its glory and resolution by anyone with a block explorer.

Not only that, the files are hosted on centralized places that are easily censored and can go down, taking your asset with them - if you believe that owning crypto in a centralized exchange isn't owning Crypto, then owning an NFT isn't owning an NFT, if you catch the drift.

Finally, many of the NFTs I scanned are even using the HTTPS link to the IPFS proxy, meaning once it is down, it is down for good.

Artwork NFTs Suck: But Here's Why It's Fine They Are Stupid

They are stupid because they are enjoying their first days... remember how people were using Bitcoin in the beginning and how crypto, in general, could be considered stupid on its first days.

People were doing crazy things with it and the investment was nothing to look at for those unable to see the future of it.

This is why only the visionaries who could see the potential of the technology invested and profited from the huge rise in price - and this is why it is ok for NFTs to be stupid as of now.

Sure, they are stupid, sure they have lots of problems, sure they aren't a sound investment...

...but is the technology great?

Absolutely!

Does it have potential?

Absolutely!

And this is the bottom line of this post.

It's ok for NFTs to be stupid before they become stupidly amazing.

A-Coin, @CryptoBabe , Scott Cunningham- Thank you!