But it's interesting that one of the things that *doesn't* seem to change from paper to web1 to web2 to web3 is a need for identity verification loops, whether official KYC needs, or soft verification of twitter etc
Conversation
A bit off topic, but I thought this note I just posted on the discord might be of more general interest to Web3 crowd re: post-Discord social coordination tooling. Poses a "mangrove" UX problem to create something that's somewhere between a stream and garden UX.
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Funny and potentially worrying thing, the superficially inclusive wagmi sensibility does not extend as far as claimed. Web3 has a very definite outgroup: all of tradfi, including hybrid things like coinbase that are centralized and have one foot in crypto world, one in fiat.
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I got a bit of shit for delegating my ENS votes to Coinbase. It seems to be viewed by hardcore Web3ers as something between disappointing gaucherie to tribal betrayal. If you think that might want to reflect on the fragility of ‘wagmi’.
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The presence of Coinbase (and all of Gen 1 crypto scene founded 2009-14) is healthy, should be welcome, and a real first test of wagmi claims. If you can’t even tolerate an older sibling, you’re ngmi with the other 7.4999 billion people on the planet and wagmi would be hypocrisy.
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Not to mention kinda clueless since so much of Web3 investment is from VC firms that also drove the first generation of innovation.
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This is partly why I’m not using the lingo except occasionally ironically. And limping avoiding even the ironic use. This thing has a shot at being genuinely open and inclusive and it would be a pity if it didn’t live up to that.
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Of course doesn’t mean the ethos shouldn’t be defended against hostile takeovers/co-option by old empires striking back, etc. But there’s ways to do that that don’t devolve into tribalism or insularity.
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Replying to @vgr
You would do that, wouldn't you.
Good luck on your migration, also. I just cancelled my web hosting account a few months ago and bought a plot on Decentraland. All the way with me
Not sure how long I'll even be on places like these anymore.
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Okay this thing is too heavy for my poor old 2015 dual core MBP, and fan came on loudly, so I'm gonna wait for my powerful new 16" MBP with M1Pro to arrive before doing any metaversy shit. Checked it out and created avatar though.
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Parking a thought here, cf my earlier point about deep play and shallow play. An orthogonal axis is high-roller vs. low-roller. Normally, high-rollers are also deep players, but I suspect there's an inversion of sorts going on here. Big spending != deep playing.
Replying to
Ideas for nonfungible things are nonfungible. Ripoffs with only cosmetic differentiation are low value.
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Another ape ripoff, this one is a part of ApesOfSpace, 10,000 space monkeys that are now largely worthless
opensea.io/collection/ape
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Does transaction volume on ethereum generally go down with price? Ie does gas price go down with price in ether terms (not dollar terms)?
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I've been mulling perhaps the most common first question people ask about NFTs. What rights do you get? The copyright for any artwork associated with the NFT, whether it is a mutable URL or an immutable IPFS object, remain with the original maker. So the NFT grants nothing.
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The scam side potential of this is obvious. Now you *could* assign rights along with the minting, in which case what you're really doing is putting a regular copyright assignment contract on the blockchain, but this seems somehow underwhelming. Just... use a paper contract?
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I also don't like analogies like collectibles, autographs, maing-a-star etc. I think that's selling the concept short. I think what an NFT is, is a "right to future rights."
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Viewed as a verifiable n/m pointer to an object, you now have a way to reference and work with everything derived from the thing being pointed to. Say I create a set of characters and sell as NFTs. Later, I create a game where those characters are live action playables...
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In regular work-for-hire copyright, if derivative works are of value, the maker will, for the agreed compensation, blanket assign *all* rights to the buyer/commissioner, including reproduction, new media, derivatives, blah blah blah. It's a nuclear option.
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But NFTs create a mechanism for fine-grained rights *optionality.* If I make a game with my characters for example, then perhaps the holder of the NFT is suddenly granted airdropped the right to pick game characteristics of the character. You don't have to know ahead of time.
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This is kinda like how land rights evolved. Until there were airplanes, airspace rights above land were meaningless. Buying land doesn't give you limitless rights to pump groundwater, but might grant you *some* rights. Mineral deposit rights may or may not go with the land
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The ability to define and sell pointers to future rights I think is a powerful programming mechanism for rights management. Right now, this is based on trust of the creator, but I think norms will emerge.
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I think answers like "it's an autograph" or my own first metaphor "it's like the scam companies that allow you to name a star but it isn't recognized by astronomers" are... kinda wrong. They don't really exploit the fact that the NFT is a uniquely identifiable pointer to a thing
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Another way to think of it comes from TradFi... the popular (and also perceived-scammy) mechanism of SPACs. You're buying a pointer to a future undefined company when you buy into a SPAC.
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This btw, makes 1/1 NFTs less interesting to me than 1/n. Because limited editions allow you to create undefined *communities* of pointer holders. For eg. the next NFT experiment I'm thinking through relates to this playable maze created by and me.
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Now this thing is more than just a nice graphic. It's also the base map for a 3d maze we tried to create with (project is on backburner). It provides some of the scaffolding for my next book. I've written a whole series of articles exploring the symbolic logic of it.
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There's many places to take this. For eg. if we mint a 500, we could later mark 500 locations on a metaverse-navigable version, and the buyers get naming rights (like "John Doe junction"). If there's a video game, maybe you get an in-world persona in the story etc. etc.
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But all these are speculative *potential* projects. They may or may not happen, so the NFT has to be priced like any option, based in part of likelihood of various interesting things of value happening.
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If the game or navigable virtual world already existed, I would just sell that directly, and charge an undiscounted-for-risk access price. So if it cost 0.01E to collect this map now, perhaps access to the game would be worth much more...if it happens.
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Setting aside goodwill/support/patronage aspects, there's probably a way to price an NFT as a sort of hyperlocal option, based on what you know of the creator. For this map for eg. it would be worth much more if Dan and I had a history and track record of making 3d video games.
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But there’s other valuation signals. For example the Loot project is just lists of gameworld objects. Even knowing nothing about future games that may/may not be created, you know rare items across lists will be worth more. And this is exactly how market priced Loot.
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In the case of the maze, you might guess that prominent locations on the map might be worth more. Even if unassigned initially, chances are we’d do something like allocate more valuable real estate to people who paid for higher levels of tokens or bought in earlier.
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Note… I am NOT promising to do any of this with the map. I might do nothing besides write some more blog posts about it. Video game projects might start and fail, or fail to start. But the information revealed along with the NFT is a pricing signal fir *whatever* happens.
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So when you buy a “serious” NFT… one that’s more than a pet-rock collectible and shows signs of future generative evolution, you buy a stake in the *realized* future.
Of course this doesn’t preclude wysiwyg art valuation, but the generative direction is more interesting.
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So NFTs are fundamentally social. One-offs are less generative than collections (or more generally, meaningfully decomposable things). The non-fungibility creates a locus of value, the collection creates a context of value, and the undefined future is the risk/reward space.
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I haven't looked too much into big hits like bored apes and cryptopunks, but seems they too get priced by the rarity of attributes (like "punks with glasses"), but I think that approach has limited generative potential. It's differentiation but no obvious collection "chemistry"
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The big downside of this is, oddly that it requires too much trust. Ironic for a technology of trustlessness. Maybe there's a no-free-lunch trust theorem here. You have to trust that a) the creator will do something interesting and valuable b) act in good faith in sharing it
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You have no guarantee of either. So this is scam potential. I expect 90% of things done under NFT to be de facto scammy, in that they will hint at future value they have no intention of trying to deliver. Like vaporware startup pitch decks etc. but worse.
GIF
read image description
ALT
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So oddly enough, the test of whether there will be value is the old-fashioned human trust way... if the person seems like they'll want to remain in your milieu indefinitely (maybe they are part of your subculture) your best guarantees come from that. They won't want to lose face.
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I'm kinda curious about creating an NFT valuation formula. The individual's past track record and home milieu stability can predict a future via something like iterated prisoner's dilemma ("this artist's NFT experiment will follow him through his career in the NY art scene")
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While characteristics of the work itself (statistical signatures, measures of composability and chemistry) can provide some sort of valuation of the generative potential.
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And of course, the strongest signal is just the buy-in levels of funding themselves. If a set of graphic assets raises $50m worth of ether, there's a good chance the artist will want to double down and do something with that windfall, like make a game or movie or whatever.
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