Conversation

Replying to
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.
1
6
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.
2
15
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.
1
14
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.
2
6
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.
2
7
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.
2
18
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.
2
22
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"
1
14
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
1
16
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.
happy season 4 GIF
GIF
1
15
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.
Replying to
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")
1
10
While characteristics of the work itself (statistical signatures, measures of composability and chemistry) can provide some sort of valuation of the generative potential.
1
4
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.
1
7
An NFT is (or can be positioned as) something like an unsecured restricted income share agreement (or general value share) anchored on an asset+person. Unlike a generic ISA, it points only to the value induced by “seed” objects
2
12
In fact you could just “NFT yourself” as a simple ISA-like thing. Name a coin after yourself. Done. Null nft with all alpha linked to the minter.
3
10
Sidebar elsewhere on the practical matter of planning for the inevitable crash. I’m not a big believer in predictions, but it’s interesting to lay out the worst case scenario that would still keep you interested. Will you keep tinkering if ether is at $400 for 2y? $200 for 5y?
Quote Tweet
here we go again twitter.com/latimes/status…
Show this thread
2
6
Not ether specifically, but as indicator of crypto overall. If analogies to 2000 are justified, then a 90%+ crash for 5+ y might be what you plan around as worst case. Can you keep tinkering with NFTs, DAOs etc through such a winter? I frankly don’t know my lower limit.
3
9
I’m not talking about the relatively internal boom-bust cycles within crypto that we’re all used to thats been primarily speculative-financial. This time, there’s a non-trivial scenario where it’s a long *tech* slump/winter like 2000. The grown-up general economy version.
Quote Tweet
Replying to @vgr
This has happened in cycles since all of crypto started (bulls in 2010,2013,2017,2021). It's so accepted that people even joke about wanting bear markets because development is nicer. Less grift, nicer people, less anxiety of having to rush development, etc.
1
14
The Web3/ETH scene now seems less like a weird sideshow and more like Amazon in 2000. Web3 today is like “e-commerce” in 2000. Took Amazon ~9y to regain early 2000 peak. 9y in which they proved all skeptics wrong and pioneered cloud, but it was still hard to believe in them.
Image
3
21
Yes, everything good tends to get built in long winters, but large numbers of talented people do tap out at various points along the way simply because they do not have the resources to stay interested. So macro good/micro ??.
Quote Tweet
Replying to @vgr
ERC-721 standard was proposed in Jan 2018. The same month as the first big crash. All of everything *gestures* was all built out in winter. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #BUIDL
1
14
After a burst of enthusiasm in 1997-2000, between 2001 and 2007, I basically did not write online, did not participate in internet culture really, and did not buy tech stocks. Telling though that I did shop more and more at Amazon but still didn’t believe enough to buy stock.
1
14
Partly, life got in the way. I was on a student visa gathering old economy credentials, unsure if I’d stay in the US or ever get back to internet stuff. Placing bets elsewhere. But if I’m being honest, it was also loss of confidence. Lost interest/faith in the internet for ~7y.
1
13
I think some combination of 4 things sustained those who stayed in game 2000-07: 1. Enough $ to sustain belief (delusional or not, think Google vs Yahoo) 2. Belief in non-social-proof trend (eg: YouTube = bet on cheaper bandwidth) 3. Specificity of goal (mobile web, cloud)…
2
16
4. Most important… sunk costs, both financial (imagine holding what would now be millions in Amazon stock at the bottom in 2000 after believing) or psychological (entire identity invested in code you’ve written over a decade).
1
8
None of the 4 applied to me. I had no money, I had no specific trend I believed in, no specific goal that required the internet (I was working on internet-agnostic aerospace tech). I had a few options from the startup I’d worked at 2000-01 but forgot to exercise these in time 🤣
1
5
Can’t recall the details, but I probably lost a few 10s of k due to that carelessness. But it tells you how little I cared about what little stake I had. I was still mildly and peripherally interested in the internet, but it wasn’t my “thing” through that period.
1
7
This time 1 and 4 are somewhat true for me. I’m actively hunting for a thesis on 2 and it looks promising. But I suspect what will keep me hooked through a potentially long winter is hooking into a good goal. I think it’s robotics for me. Web3+robots = I care enough to stay in.
5
14
One of the interesting things about crypto is this possibility of digital destruction that works without taking a physical hammer to a hard drive or something. Not entirely sure how it works. I think you send tokens to a blackhole address or something?
3
6
Edit: I think somewhere up the chain of events, you do need some sort of physical destruction, but once you have an address set up with physically lost private keys, it can serve as an information destruction black hole. Or more precisely, information *control loss* black hole
2
8
"NFT" is a slightly misleading term for Mirror's model. Though the checkbox to mint is labeled "NFT" what it actually does is create 3 "editions" that can be collected 5, 50, or 500 times (at 1E, 0.1E, or 0.01E mins). Maybe these should be called LFTs? Limited fungibility tokens.
3
8
Per my speculations upthread, this one is an attempt to do a "serious" NFT that's more than a pet rock type thing. This maze can obviously be the root of many other projects, which we may or may not pursue. How this LFT does will be a strong factor.
Quote Tweet
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.
Show this thread
1
11
For those interested in the unit economics, in USD right now, minting this cost about $121, which is a sort of variable cost, and setting up and unlocking the split contract for Dan and me, which is kinda like a fixed cost for our future collaborations, cost about $116+$53
Image
Image
Image
1
6
An interesting thing about wallet account histories mostly show $0 actions, since most transactions are zero value contract actions, and only cost gas. You have to click through to the receipts like in the tweet above to see what it actually cost.
Image
2
7
It's like getting shopping receipts for $0 but nonzero taxes. Nice motif for abundance economics with nonzero Coasean transaction costs.
1
8
Made a thread of just my NFTs on the ribbonfarm twitter account. This time, without a polite "mute this if you don't like Web3/nfts" stuff, so that's an experiment in itself. That account has 18,631 followers right now, how many will rage-unfollow? 🧐
Quote Tweet
A thread of ribbonfarm NFTs. You can find the current index here. ribbonfarm.com/nfts/
Show this thread
1
7
Show replies