informative What exactly is an 'NFT' and why is it more than a saveable picture and how I can create them?

[Actual_Criminal]

(NOTE: This thread is intended to be 100% informative. You may or may not agree/disagree with NFTs, their premise etc, but create your own thread for politics. This post is purely about the technology and for people to learn, including myself. I will request any posts not on topic to be removed; @Mods, you have free rein. I want to keep it clean.)

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I have been in the 'Crypto' world for the last 5 years or so. It seems like the new trend is NFT's. Basically images that are supposed to be 1 of 1 or very limited and then bought and sold among users. I have also heard they use blockchain technology to make them unique apparently.

 

Caption: Example NFT's

 

I seen a news article about some 12 year-old kid who created some pictures of whales and they ended up being sold for £290,000. Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58343062

 

So, is anyone on here in the loop and can give me a detailed explanation of:

 

1.) What exactly (technical) is an NFT?

2.) Why do some of them they have drastic value and sell for thousands?

3.) Let's say I go outside and take a picture, or open up Photoshop/Paint etc and create a picture - How do I convert this to an NFT?

4.) Let's say I do the above but someone copies my picture and changes 1 pixel and re-uploads it. Anything I can do in that scenario?

 

Thanks in advance.  - P.S. feel free to PM me also if you are interested in talking about NFTs if you wish. I have a couple of ideas and would be interested to speak to others who are already in the NFT market.

[jaslion]

1) Basically an advanced scam. It's about owning a link to a picture on the internet and trying to sell it off for money to the next sucker. That link can be removed, the image can be removed or changed, you really only "own" that line of text

2) Money laundering and fools investing

3) Go on a nft site or use a nft social media bot and say hey this is my thing and it's now a nft

4) Copyright technically but really nothing to be done about it. You youself can also just do that and it's fine

 

In the end the link you own is unique but that is it a useless link to something that anyone can take, use, delete, change,...

 

There is nothing of value it's a random fad that is now used for money laundering mainly and some people thinking they'll make it big.

 

Also fun fact stealing nft stuff is super common now there are so many bots that steal nft of a nft of a nft of a nft and just make copies.

 

 

So my advice is stay faaaar away from this shitshow :p.

[Master Disaster]

Capitalism at its finest. Its rare and expensive because someone with authority says so, in reality it is just a saved picture and has no tangible value at all.

[ManemeJeff]

Money laundering at it's finest.

NFTs are the biggest joke of the century, I hope they'll teach everyone a good expensive lesson, just like those useless jpegs.

It'll make the dotcom crash look like a small-time-mistake.

 

Don't buy into it, don't read into this non-sense and for once, the entire crypto community actually wants the SEC to jump-in....At least those who actually care aboout the coins, not green charts.

 

This bs, just like those scams, make the entire community look worse than it already is.

[jaslion]

I finally found the image I was looking for:

 

[tikker]

Yeah if you think crypto is shady, then NFT's are 100 times shadier.

11 hours ago, Actual_Criminal said:

1.) What exactly (technical) is an NFT?

It stands for Non-Fungible Token. Fungibility means it's interchangeable. For example, your $1 bill isn't any different from mine. It is simply one dollar, i.e. a dollar is fungible. NFTs are, as per their name, infungible. They are meant to be a way to verifiably store things and proof of ownership on the blockchain. For example, this explanation:

 

It can be used for different things. Art is one of them, items in games another. To expandon the Mona Lisa example: you indeed do not own the original piece. It's best to imagine each NFT being a unique verified copy of it that you own. The key thing here is the digital aspect. It's not 100% comparable to buying the Mona Lisa, because digital artwork "doesn't exist" in the first place. The original stays with the person who mints the NFT. The people who buy it own verified copies; think like a limited edition. This ELI5 answer is a nice summary.

 

Unfortunately just like counterfeit paintings one of the scams here is that people go on <artwebsite of choice>, grab your artwork and then mint and sell NFTs of it. This ties in the second problem with digital art and NFTs: there is no "original". It would be rather hard to make an exact copy of a painting, but a copy of your image is indistinguishable from the original. Yet another problem is the immutability of the blockchain: once it's on there, it's on there. You could take any random picture, tweet, object, whatever and sell it as an NFT. Do I now own what you sold me? Nope. I just have proof that I own / you sold me a "verified" copy of it. I could sell your profile pic as an NFT, that's why artists don't tend to like it. The pseudonymous nature of the blockchain doesn't help with this.

 

So yeah, the idea is neat, but there are indeed also genuine issues with them.

11 hours ago, Actual_Criminal said:

2.) Why do some of them they have drastic value and sell for thousands?

Why does anything have value? Why is BTC worth $50k and ETH worth $3k? People value it for some reason. In the case of NFTs it's often hype around the limitedness of it and scams however. As you can (alledgedly) see with copies of Super Mario Bros. selling vor $2M, as long as you can make people believe it is worth that much, they'll think it is and  buy it.

11 hours ago, Actual_Criminal said:

3.) Let's say I go outside and take a picture, or open up Photoshop/Paint etc and create a picture - How do I convert this to an NFT?

Go to rarible, openseas or another site that lets you mint NFTs. Beware that it's rather expensive to do.

11 hours ago, Actual_Criminal said:

4.) Let's say I do the above but someone copies my picture and changes 1 pixel and re-uploads it. Anything I can do in that scenario?

Nope, only point out that it's not the original because that pixel is different and hope that you left evidence that you are in fact the original artist. This is one of the big problems with NFTs and digital art.

[Actual_Criminal]

1 hour ago, tikker said:

Yeah if you think crypto is shady, then NFT's are 100 times shadier.

It stands for Non-Fungible Token. Fungibility means it's interchangeable. For example, your $1 bill isn't any different from mine. It is simply one dollar. They are meant to be a way to verifiably store things and proof of ownership on the blockchain. For example, this explanation:

 

It can be used for different things. Art is one of them, items in games another. To expandon the Mona Lisa example: you indeed do not own the original piece. It's best to imagine each NFT being a unique verified copy of it that you own. The key thing here is the digital aspect. It's not 100% comparable to buying the Mona Lisa, because digital artwork "doesn't exist" in the first place. The original stays with the person who mints the NFT. The people who buy it own verified copies; think like a limited edition. This ELI5 answer is a nice summary.

 

Unfortunately just like counterfeit paintings one of the scams here is that people go on <artwebsite of choice>, grab your artwork and then mint and sell NFTs of it. This ties in the second problem with digital art and NFTs: there is no "original". It would be rather hard to make an exact copy of a painting, but a copy of your image is indistinguishable from the original. Yet another problem is the immutability of the blockchain: once it's on there, it's on there. You could take any random picture, tweet, object, whatever and sell it as an NFT. Do I now own what you sold me? Nope. I just have proof that I own / you sold me a "verified" copy of it. I could sell your profile pic as an NFT, that's why artists don't tend to like it. The pseudonymous nature of the blockchain doesn't help with this.

 

So yeah, the idea is neat, but there are indeed also genuine issues with them.

Why does anything have value? Why is BTC worth $50k and ETH worth $3k? People value it for some reason. In the case of NFTs it's often hype around the limitedness of it and scams however. As you can (alledgedly) see with copies of Super Mario Bros. selling vor $2M, as long as you can make people believe it is worth that much, they'll think it is and  buy it.

Go to rarible, openseas or another site that lets you mint NFTs. Beware that it's rather expensive to do.

Nope, only point out that it's not the original because that pixel is different and hope that you left evidence that you are in fact the original artist. This is one of the big problems with NFTs and digital art.

Thank you!

 

Someone commenting that actually provided an informative post.

[artuc]

NFTs don't have to be just images. They are also not always just a link, some are on-chain.

 

They can be used as keys or access to specific communities. There can be things like NFT holders get royalties or fees on certain platforms. With gaming and metaverse you will see this sort of thing, NFTs of items, land deeds and so on not just of your character or avatar.

 

In terms of actual finance some more complicated DeFi will start using NFTs as receipts of sorts. So instead of getting an LP, staking or vesting token that may accumulate or rebase, you get an NFT of what assets you have in the protocol. Many such uses for complicated token mechanics