I could be missing something big but to me the principle of nft seems to be to find a greater fool who will buy it, and the crypto part helps sell it to the greater fool.

For an ownership right to be meaningful, it needs to have some legally recognized meaning by your centralized authority. If I have a peice of paper that says I own a house or a car or whatever, it’s only useful because I can show that in a court and the people with guns working for the state will give it to me instead of someone else with a fraudulent claim. And if you have that, then the distributed crypto part is redundant... It gets more complicated with art; especially like the jpeg that was just sold at an auction. What does it mean to own that digital image? What value/ rights does ownership give me? But, fundamentally the ownership being tabulated in a blockchain doesn’t do much a piece of official looking paper doesn’t do, except sound more exciting. I think of it is as notarizing a title to something, but in a new cool way associated with getting rich off Bitcoin.

To the best of my understanding, there is a lot of confusion around what is being sold when an NFT like the Beeple JPG NFT changes hands.

What people think was sold is the JPG. What was actually sold is the right to say you purchased an NFT that represents the JPG. In the case of the NFT sale, ownership of the JPG was not a part of the transaction.

Clarification may be required, and an example will help. If you see a JPG of The Mandalorian on the Web, you can be sure that Disney, Inc. owns that image. Which means that Disney, Inc. can stop others from using it; can charge license fees for including it in other works; can sell the rights to do so to others as it pleases. You cannot download an official Disney Mandalorian image, change a few pixels, and resell it. Disney owns the work. If Disney sells it, the buyer can then charge license fees, etc.

By contrast, the entity that purchased the NFT for the Beeple JPG does not have any rights whatsoever over the JPG or its intellectual property. That entity owns the right to say they are the sole owner of a slot on a blockchain known to be the entity that purchased a given slot on a blockchain (there may be many equivalent slots on that blockchain). They can sell the right to ownership to that slot on the blockchain, but they do not have any claim on future use of the Beeple JPG. If the buyer makes derivative works ("change a pixel or two") for resale, Beeple could sue for damages. In any common understanding of "ownership," the NFT buyer does not own the Beeple JPG.

Going back to the Mandalorian example, Disney could sell an infinite quantity of NFTs around all the images and video clips they currently publish for free on the Internet. (The NBA is currently doing likewise.) Like the Beeple NFT, those wouldn't convey ownership in any real sense, but could pad Disney's margins in a very real fashion.

It largely depends on the party doing the recognition of ownership.

Other chains like Tron or Binance are pseudo-decentralized. They do have multiple miners/nodes, but Tron/Binance controls them all. So if they want to roll back a transaction, they can if they want. In Ethereum, that's not the case anymore. Eth did rollback and do a hard fork a long time ago, when the network was much smaller, but they had to get the buy-in for multiple parties in order to do it. It was be largely inconceivable nowadays.

So if I'm the counter-party that's to recognize your ownership in an NFT, I'm probably going to downgrade in my mind an NFT claim on a Tron or Binance chain, as opposed to Ethereum--because I care a lot that transactions can't be rolled back.

But if I'm a counter-party that doesn't care, because I think the risk of that happening on those chains is low, then maybe I would honor an NFT claim on those chains.

Like money, ownership is largely a social contract. The power of an NFT derives from its power bestowed by those honoring it. And the party honors it because of certain properties of the Ethereum chain, such as immutability--but it depends largely on why they're going to honor an NFT and for what purpose.

NFTs are representing ownership of physical or digital objects.

As far as physical ownership goes, it comes from what ownership record keeping system are you going to trust? For land, we have trusted state provided system so far. This can change with NFT like technology, provided people including the state trust it to manage those records.

For digital items ownership, there is literally nothing that prevents others from getting a copy of your item. You just get to claim the ownership rights to it, which doesn't mean much when everyone can get a copy of it, like you do. It's essentially reduced to bragging rights, claiming you own it, on a record keeping system which people trust. But would people even care to trust a system for ownership when literally anyone can hold a copy of that digital item in their possession? If someone else copies it over to another record keeping system, what difference does it make? Not much. There isn't much value in bragging rights to ownership, as much as it is in possession, which in digital items isn't securely feasible in this manner.

NFT's are a weird thing, it is half scammy (practicality) and half useful (ownership, non-fungibility of the token itself). I am reading up on the NFT standards (ERC721 is the simplest one) [1] and this is the core contract API:

  contract ERC721 {
   // ERC20 compatible functions
   function name() constant returns (string name);
   function symbol() constant returns (string symbol);
   function totalSupply() constant returns (uint256 totalSupply);
   function balanceOf(address _owner) constant returns (uint balance);
   // Functions that define ownership
   function ownerOf(uint256 _tokenId) constant returns (address owner);
   function approve(address _to, uint256 _tokenId);
   function takeOwnership(uint256 _tokenId);
   function transfer(address _to, uint256 _tokenId);
   function tokenOfOwnerByIndex(address _owner, uint256 _index) constant returns (uint tokenId);
   // Token metadata
   function tokenMetadata(uint256 _tokenId) constant returns (string infoUrl);
   // Events
   event Transfer(address indexed _from, address indexed _to, uint256 _tokenId);
   event Approval(address indexed _owner, address indexed _approved, uint256 _tokenId);
  }

It's not hard to understand. This ERC721 NFT token can verify is its owner (ownerOf()), and the actual item of interest (tokenMetaData()). Item of interest is secured either on the blockchain itself or offline using URL reference in the metadata.

All good. But that's all she wrote. Banksy can list his digital artwork on the internet and many people can bid on it. That is actually valuable if you think about it in isolation. The problem is on the auction side, with decentralized bidding - you have no idea if this artwork was pumped up by fake buyers. There is no Sotheby's or Christie's auction house to mediate this.

URL metadata is also weird - now you're passing on the value of the token to whoever owns the Domain Name and the servers responding to the GET request. If the artist decides to sell or forgets to renew the domain name, your NFT is useless unless the data was backed up somewhere. Even then, the next buyer of the NFT would want to access the URL and get their goodies instead of getting it from anywhere else since that's not on the tokenMetadata.

[1] Source: https://medium.com/crypto-currently/the-anatomy-of-erc721-e9...

If I may piggyback on your question: isn’t it only the hash of the digital asset that is unique and that you own as a NFT (e.g. an ERC-721 token wrapping the hash)? So if I change a single pixel or compress the picture with a slightly different setting, I get a new hash and can upload it as a different NFT. At that point you need to compare the NFTs and decide whose claim of true progeny to trust with things like original owner address and timestamps. Or am I missing something?

I suppose one could make the same argument about bitcoin. Why not just make your own cryptocurrency with its separate blockchain? You certainly can and many people have.

But in order for your forked bitcoin to have any value you need to give people some reason to prefer it over the existing bitcoin blockchain. If it really is just a clone of something that already exists, no one will value it very highly.

The same is true of NFTs. If an existing NFT is tied to an established blockchain like Ethereum and you fork it, then you would need to come up with a compelling reason for someone to prefer your forked blockchain over Ethereum.

§§§§§§

Basically many mentioned everyone will know the Monalisa in Louvre is the original one or the starwars characters are owned by Disney.. Well the reason everyone knows that is because all those names built an outstanding brand and that's why everyone know the name "DISNEY who was the first creator of this NFT is a real deal. Same goes for watch market (Rolex, AP, RM &...)

So in the case that I save an image of unknown artist and put it in the blockchain and create a new NFT, considering that the artist behind the art is MR.NOBODY. Then who the hell can find out the real work was NOT done by Me until MR.NOBODY BECOME MR.SOMOBODY and find out about the fraud.

Keep in mind the date the NFT was created can't necessarily be a validation point alone since the date is only obvious when people got to know MR.NOBODY. (in other word, MR.NOBODY built a successful brand and became MR.SOMEBODY).

Any counter arguments which can help me and others to understand the scenario better ?

The whole point of NFTs is that the provenance is 100% traceable. The value is derived from a market created by the artist, not the fact that it exists on the chain. The blockchain simply provides a way to prove that it is authentic and trace its ownership history. So if you copy one to another chain, you've created a new piece of art that will only have value if you can create a market for it. It might be a bit-for-bit copy of the original, but it won't have come from the original artist, and therefore won't have the same value.

Nothing stops you from minting any "art" as an NFT. What it comes down to is whether it is an officially sanctioned NFT by the artist or not, as that is what will give it "value".

NFT only exists inside a specific smart contract operated by someone within some specific rules implemented in the contract. If the smart contract is seriously built, in order to "control" the NFT cloned as an "exact" copy of it, the copier has to control an exact "copy" of the smart contract where the NFT resides. The only way I see to achieve this is to know the private key of the owner of the original smartcontract or of someone who has the power to operate it. It follows that if they control the "exact" copy of the smart contract in an "cloned" blockchain (forked or crafted) they also control the smart contract in the original one. At that point the problem wouldn't be the "copies" but the "original" NFT. If they instead craft a copy without crafting the original smart contract, that would be easily spotted. Your nyan cat besides being unique, has also an "origin", the smart contract, and that can be easily being verified. The same applies if someone creates "another" nyan cat inside the same blockchain. That would reside on some other smart contract and easily spotted as a copy.

NFTs for art are a bet on new titling systems. Duplicating an NFT to different chains, or just different NFT frameworks/systems on the same chain, is akin to filing a Chinese copyright for something already filed in the US. Which one is valid or "real" depends on which system you subscribe to.

The existence of the tokens on a chain means nothing without the social acceptance of their meaning.

Let’s say the Ethereum main chain forks into two over contention over an EIP.

You are now effectively holding two copies on it on different blockchains and can transfer them independently.

Which one is “the real one”? That’s purely subjective. Just like with fungible tokens (“Bitcoin cash is the real bitcoin”)

The same principles apply when just making a copy on the other chain.

It’s data and signatures, the rest is just interpretation.

The entire point of an NFT is to act as a sort of proof/certificate that this is the Real Version of a given piece of media. Someone could create a new NFT on a different blockchain for the nyan cat, but it wouldn't be Your NFT. As a result, it could be said it's not the Real NFT, and thus doesn't have the same value.

An artist selling their art as an NFT would probably say "hey This NFT on this chain is the real NFT for my art, anything else is a fake". A fake would never have this announcement, and there wouldn't be a record of the original artist owning/creating the NFT on the new chain.

So it's not so much that one blockchain is the defacto NFT implementation, but it's up to the creator to specify the blockchain that has the defacto NFT for that piece of media. They could even announce their own signature, and point out the transaction by their signature that created the NFT. Or something along those lines

so, the principle of non-fungability is now rendered invalid. The whole point to a unique token is the trait of uniqueness. Moving it to another chain is just a derivative.

Atm there's little that can be done about it :( If you're interested in learning more about NFTs, highly recommend you check out this tutorial: https://docs.alchemyapi.io/alchemy/tutorials/how-to-write-an...

I can only see "value" for NFTs in context of some digital application which can constrain supply of the thing the NFT represents. e.g A chat application might decide that only the owner of the nyan cat NFT can use the nyan cat emoji. So if there's a different blockchain with another nyan cat, it doesn't really matter, as long as the chat application doesn't use that other blockchain.

I'm sorry if this has been answered elsewhere in this thread, but honest technical question:

Couldn't someone own an NFT within a smart contract, which can itself be fungible and transferrable without paying the author fees? Much like an artwork can be held as property of a shell corporation (well, an actual corporation with a single asset) and the corporation itself traded between collectors.

It is also my understanding that NFT need a central authority defining which chain is the true one to work. This is true for all NFT use-case I think, event tickets, membership, game assets...

This can be fine and still interesting for these use-cases, for example several independent organizations can agree about the validity of a token independently. Personally I don't think NFT for art make sense though.

>rest on the assumption that one blockchain will be the defacto NFT implementation, and the rest won't be taken seriously?

An alternative is that cross chain transfers are respected. For example on one chain your NFT gets deleted and on another chain a duplicate is given to you. The same can happen in reverse to swap back. This does rely on whatever security guarantees the other chain has.

Let me try rephrasing the question into a scenario. Would be great if someone who understands NFT better than me can take a stab at it:

What if a more well known artist copies the art of a barely known artist and puts it back into the chain again? There’s a good chance this “replica” of the original art would sell for greater value until the original one is found?

What happens when someone prints a replica of a Picasso?

Nothing.

In the art world they use the term provenance.

Random web definition: Provenance is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object

Even in the blockchain world anyone can deploy a token with ticker USDT. There is the established understanding that there is one USDT contract that people use and transfer and store value in.

Can someone explain the point of these NFTs to someone who has no real knowledge of them but what they do know makes them seem pretty pointless.

If I have a copy of a digital piece of art I don't care if someone has an NFT, I still have an exact copy right? I don't get it.

If it is on a different blockchain it isn't a copy.

If a given claim means anything, then similar claims that are illegitimate probably won't mean anything.

Given that NFTs so far appear to be pretty much meaningless, attempts to duplicate them will also be meaningless.

NFTs have a signature, that's it. What happens is that the author address changes. No one wants a mona lisa that says "deft" on the bottom corner.

By copying the NFT onto another blockchain you have created a different, new NFT. The original NFT owner still owns it, and can transfer it to a new owner

I spent a long time doing reasonably deep dives into the legal nature of tokens, blockchain-based ownership and so on. Nevertheless, I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.

Most "digital art" NFTs do not confer any particular rights in relation to the artwork in question. Unless you have a written agreement which states otherwise, you do not have any rights at all, except for rights over the NFT. The NFT does not give you the right to make copies of the artwork, to claim royalties from others who make copies, or to issue DMCA takedowns or similar. This is for the simple reason that the copyright in the artwork is retained by the original artist unless agreed otherwise. This is, of course, true of physical art too: I can buy a physical Banksy, but Banksy keeps the copyright and can decide to deny or permit the making of copies.

When I buy the physical artwork, what I'm buying is the fact that the artist personally created it. I could buy a print, but even if it is a perfect reproduction it lacks the direct connection to the artist's physical involvement. Because people value authenticity, my authentic artist-created copy is worth more than a print.

NFTs work by creating a connection to the artist, albeit a fairly minimal one: the artist's digital key was used to sign a record on the blockchain, and now I own that record (loosely speaking). It is, I suppose, more like owning an autographed copy of a print. However, since this is the most authentic connection we _can_ achieve with respect to digital art, it is deemed (in some cases) to have significant value.

In more concise terms: NFTs are not artworks, they are not copies of artworks, they are signed digital records which refer to an artwork, which are valuable because they are (believed to be) signed by the artist.

To the original question, then: what happens when someone copies an NFT on to another blockchain? It's not obvious to me how someone would do this. Of course, anyone can create a "fake" NFT just like anyone can create a fake autograph. But "copying" here is very difficult, because you can't create a duplicate of a transaction that was signed by a particular private key unless you have a copy of the private key yourself. So, either the artist is minting multiple NFTs for the same artwork, or someone has stolen their private key.

If the artist is minting multiple NFTs, a question we need to ask is whether they ever committed to _not_ doing this. If they did not, then it's hard to see what reason anyone has to complain. If they did commit to this, then the owner of the NFT may have some claim against them (again, this is not legal advice). If there is a social norm against minting multiple NFTs, then the artist's reputation may suffer and the value of all of their current and future artworks will decline. Since some NFTs give the artist a cut of all future re-sales, they do have some economic incentive to avoid doing this. If someone has stolen the private key then we have a very interesting conundrum!

The value of that NFT is directionally proportional to people's recognition and trust in that block chain.

For example for someone who has not heard of the chain, the contract is meaningless and worthless.

I hope these two sentences highlights my feeling about this. That said I've been following some of those artists for years and I'm glad they're getting paid. I just feel bad for the other talented 98% who are missing the bus with their jaw on the floor drooling.

2 x 0 = 0

Short answer: no.

Op

a

NFTs, that are based on the ERC-721 standard, are not really transferrable to another blockchain. This is because NFTs have internal state variables that are managed in the Ethereum VM and you cannot trust the execution environment of external blockchains. This makes them stickier to the native chain they are minted on than even ERC-20 tokens.

Of course, in an open source world, there's nothing stopping anyone from forking your work at any time. How many Bitcoin forks have been spawned off? You can copy the BTC source code but you can't make a community follow you. Likewise, if someone were to mint a Nyan cat on another chain, nothing is stopping them, but the Ethereum chain will be given more weight by the community at large because it's the community that spawned the concept in the first place. And the Nyan cat creator publicly announced his NFT sale on Ethereum, so there is provenance.