‘ This means that the only way to verify an NFT is created by the original creator is to trace it back to the original creator.’ - How do you trace it back to the original creator? What does this trace look like? Is this a natural world trace or a blockchain trace? If blockchain, Is there a unique signature based on the pixel values of the jpeg that is hashed in some way and that hash is associated with the tokenID? If real world, that’s such a tough ask
Interesting question, @IWantToBeAnon. I'm going to be responding to both you and 'Biodun together.
1. There have been events where artists who *refuse* to even participate in the NFT boom find that someone else has copied their work off their portfolio or Instagram, minted it, and sold it for a killing.
2. What they end up doing is publishing a strong note to the internet (on social media, usually) declaring that these minted pieces did not originate from them.
3. Yet, the pieces have been sold, and there's nothing to do. What's on the chain is on the chain.
4. Now we have NFT marketplaces, like Rarible, OpenSea, SuperRare, Foundation, etc, who play middlemen as far as Ethereum NFTs are concerned. These middlemen do *some* (not all) of the work of verifying original creators. On Rarible, to verify that I am the original creator of the NFTs I published, I had to show behind-the-sceen footage of me creating one of my pieces. Obviously, this is not the most rigorous way to prevent stolen crypto art, but it's a thing to do. The idea is that once verified as an NFT artist, you can then report other pieces of art on other accounts that did not originate from you.
On the part of the art buyer, they can ensure that they only buy art from artists with the verified badge, and that they're part of the artist's NFT community (usually held on Discord, where they maintain channels that detect counterfeits and warn about scams).
As you can see, it's all very manual. One would like to see somethig cool, like you suggested (a hashing of the image data, or more specifically a steganographic encoding) but since the art is copied anyway, all of that will be copied and replicated on another NFT.
I know the Cardano NFT project has something called a Policy ID, which is a unique string (separate from the NFT tokenId itself) that belongs to the creator. This way, if you want to buy an NFT, you can check if the policyID is verified and associated with the artist you know to be the original artist.
It mirrors the art market in this regard, where the art purchaser has to do some due diligence verifying the legitimacy of the art they're buying.
If an NFT is re-minted, both exist on the blockchain with different unique IDs and the blockchain's a record, dated (and all of the other meta data), so it's a matter of going through it to find which one was minted first and thus, the original creator / owner. The trace's probably done with etherscan.io
But consider that I, an art thief, can mint your NFT before you do. You may be an artist who doesn't get NFTs today so you're just sharing your art on IG to your fans. I copy your art and mint it, making a killing. Next year, you, the artist, get into NFTs and start minting the art for sale to your fans (art I already minted and sold a year ago). Using the 'earliest date' to verify original creator is a bad idea.
No, what you want to do is figure out a way to verify the original owner. It could be as simple as them making a video in the public space (say, Twitter) and in that video, reading out their Ethereum address (more reasonably, you just have to tweet it).
It gives buyers a way to check: if the art wasn't signed by the wallet address published publicly by the creator, then it's a fake.
Sorry I'm just getting 'round to this, but better late than never.
This is a good question, because a lot of people talk about how blockchains use energy, but never are quite able to explain how/why.
To understrand how minting uses energy, we have to first understand to some degree how the blockchain stays decentralized (actually distributed, but a lot of people treat this distinction as a semantic afterthought these days).
The blockchain is multiple computers connected in a network that each have the entire copy of all the files within the network. Imagine that you and I and several other people connected our laptops via ethernet cables, and we each had local copies of a single, shared 'Documents' folder. If someone wanted to add something to the 'Documents' folder, we'd all need to copy it to our own documents as a result. This means that if there are five computers connected, there are five copies of the 'Harry Potter' novel in the network.
For anyone to be part of 'nodes' of the network, they too must copy the entire documents folder into their own machine, and then join us in making sure any addition to the 'Documents' folder is agreed upon by everyone, after which we'll download it to our respective computers. This is an oversimplification, but it'll do for now.
The above arrangement ensures that no one person can change what's in the 'Documents' folder (since to change anything, everyone else has to agree — example: if someone deletes the Harry Potter novel, we'll all have to agree to delete it from our computers for it to be truly deleted).
Think of this mental model with the scale of the blockchain. When you mint an NFT, you're asking the nodes on the chain to add your NFT to the block. To do so, the nodes within the network have to compete for the right to 'add' that NFT to the block. It's a very complex mathematical equation (it's called 'finding the nonce') that the nodes (computers validating the blockchain and mining blocks, really) have to do.
Imagine hundreds of computers, in parallel, running complex calculations for the right to add your NFT (actually, your NFT in a block of transactions) to the blockchain. It's energy-intensive and a bit redundant. That's why people say it takes a lot of energy to mint NFTs. It's not specific to NFTs, however — it's just the nature of transactions on the blockchain.
I have gone through it. Is there a way nfts can be masked as FT? Basically , creating a currency nft(Naira with different denominations) that can be minted severally? I realise this might just be running in circles of what should be a stable cryptocurrency straight up.
The only reason I thought of it was because of the crytocurrency ban in the country (Nigeria) I saw some fintechs sell vouchers for users to deposit on their on their an app since CBN prevents financial institutions from having any interaction with anything cryptocurrency related
‘ This means that the only way to verify an NFT is created by the original creator is to trace it back to the original creator.’ - How do you trace it back to the original creator? What does this trace look like? Is this a natural world trace or a blockchain trace? If blockchain, Is there a unique signature based on the pixel values of the jpeg that is hashed in some way and that hash is associated with the tokenID? If real world, that’s such a tough ask
Interesting question, @IWantToBeAnon. I'm going to be responding to both you and 'Biodun together.
1. There have been events where artists who *refuse* to even participate in the NFT boom find that someone else has copied their work off their portfolio or Instagram, minted it, and sold it for a killing.
2. What they end up doing is publishing a strong note to the internet (on social media, usually) declaring that these minted pieces did not originate from them.
3. Yet, the pieces have been sold, and there's nothing to do. What's on the chain is on the chain.
4. Now we have NFT marketplaces, like Rarible, OpenSea, SuperRare, Foundation, etc, who play middlemen as far as Ethereum NFTs are concerned. These middlemen do *some* (not all) of the work of verifying original creators. On Rarible, to verify that I am the original creator of the NFTs I published, I had to show behind-the-sceen footage of me creating one of my pieces. Obviously, this is not the most rigorous way to prevent stolen crypto art, but it's a thing to do. The idea is that once verified as an NFT artist, you can then report other pieces of art on other accounts that did not originate from you.
On the part of the art buyer, they can ensure that they only buy art from artists with the verified badge, and that they're part of the artist's NFT community (usually held on Discord, where they maintain channels that detect counterfeits and warn about scams).
As you can see, it's all very manual. One would like to see somethig cool, like you suggested (a hashing of the image data, or more specifically a steganographic encoding) but since the art is copied anyway, all of that will be copied and replicated on another NFT.
I know the Cardano NFT project has something called a Policy ID, which is a unique string (separate from the NFT tokenId itself) that belongs to the creator. This way, if you want to buy an NFT, you can check if the policyID is verified and associated with the artist you know to be the original artist.
It mirrors the art market in this regard, where the art purchaser has to do some due diligence verifying the legitimacy of the art they're buying.
(Okay, let me get this)
If an NFT is re-minted, both exist on the blockchain with different unique IDs and the blockchain's a record, dated (and all of the other meta data), so it's a matter of going through it to find which one was minted first and thus, the original creator / owner. The trace's probably done with etherscan.io
Close.
But consider that I, an art thief, can mint your NFT before you do. You may be an artist who doesn't get NFTs today so you're just sharing your art on IG to your fans. I copy your art and mint it, making a killing. Next year, you, the artist, get into NFTs and start minting the art for sale to your fans (art I already minted and sold a year ago). Using the 'earliest date' to verify original creator is a bad idea.
No, what you want to do is figure out a way to verify the original owner. It could be as simple as them making a video in the public space (say, Twitter) and in that video, reading out their Ethereum address (more reasonably, you just have to tweet it).
It gives buyers a way to check: if the art wasn't signed by the wallet address published publicly by the creator, then it's a fake.
Wow! I thought I understood this NFT stuff before I read this😅... You really did a good job for simplifying it💥.
Thanks for such a heart-warming comment!
Wonderful article! looking forward to more.
How does minting use energy?
Hey 'Thia!
Sorry I'm just getting 'round to this, but better late than never.
This is a good question, because a lot of people talk about how blockchains use energy, but never are quite able to explain how/why.
To understrand how minting uses energy, we have to first understand to some degree how the blockchain stays decentralized (actually distributed, but a lot of people treat this distinction as a semantic afterthought these days).
The blockchain is multiple computers connected in a network that each have the entire copy of all the files within the network. Imagine that you and I and several other people connected our laptops via ethernet cables, and we each had local copies of a single, shared 'Documents' folder. If someone wanted to add something to the 'Documents' folder, we'd all need to copy it to our own documents as a result. This means that if there are five computers connected, there are five copies of the 'Harry Potter' novel in the network.
For anyone to be part of 'nodes' of the network, they too must copy the entire documents folder into their own machine, and then join us in making sure any addition to the 'Documents' folder is agreed upon by everyone, after which we'll download it to our respective computers. This is an oversimplification, but it'll do for now.
The above arrangement ensures that no one person can change what's in the 'Documents' folder (since to change anything, everyone else has to agree — example: if someone deletes the Harry Potter novel, we'll all have to agree to delete it from our computers for it to be truly deleted).
Think of this mental model with the scale of the blockchain. When you mint an NFT, you're asking the nodes on the chain to add your NFT to the block. To do so, the nodes within the network have to compete for the right to 'add' that NFT to the block. It's a very complex mathematical equation (it's called 'finding the nonce') that the nodes (computers validating the blockchain and mining blocks, really) have to do.
Imagine hundreds of computers, in parallel, running complex calculations for the right to add your NFT (actually, your NFT in a block of transactions) to the blockchain. It's energy-intensive and a bit redundant. That's why people say it takes a lot of energy to mint NFTs. It's not specific to NFTs, however — it's just the nature of transactions on the blockchain.
Did you just pawn off the money laundering ish to the decentralized community who spend an awful lot of time pawning it off to the dollar?
It's turtles all the way down, yo.
Absolutely insightful. Thanks for writing
"There are things in the real world that we are unique by design". We know mogwai doesn't make mistakes. Who are you?!
I have gone through it. Is there a way nfts can be masked as FT? Basically , creating a currency nft(Naira with different denominations) that can be minted severally? I realise this might just be running in circles of what should be a stable cryptocurrency straight up.
The only reason I thought of it was because of the crytocurrency ban in the country (Nigeria) I saw some fintechs sell vouchers for users to deposit on their on their an app since CBN prevents financial institutions from having any interaction with anything cryptocurrency related
Lovely, thanks for making my fatigued brain and body work harder.
🤔