1w ago

What do you think will the tech bros jump on next?

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The NFT is only unique within the contract address. The whole contract can be trivially copied to another contract address and the whole collection can be cloned. It's why opensea has checkmarks for "verified" collections. There are a unofficial BoredApe collections which are copies of the original one.
- Yes, the URI can point to the same monkey jpg. But a different contract address means it is a different NFT.
  
  Completely agree, but the guy I responding to thinks the monkey jpeg is unique across the whole blockchain, when that isn't true. The monkey jpeg can be copied. There's no uniqueness enforced in a blockchain.
  
  The key point is that the jpeg is not the NFT
  
  Right, it’s a link to the JPEG. Either way, the point still stands, there’s no mechanism in the blockchain to prevent duplicate content or enforce uniqueness of what the NFT points to. The NFT token is unique within its contract, sure, but that doesn’t stop someone from deploying a near-identical contract with the same media and metadata. That’s the issue, the blockchain doesn’t know or care if the same JPEG is being reused in other collections.
  
  The NFT token is unique within its contract and since the contract had a unique address the NFT pointer is unique. Include chainID in the description and the NFT is globally unique.
  
  That’s true, the (chainID, contractAddress, tokenID) can be globally unique. But that doesn’t solve the original concern, it doesn’t prevent content duplication.
  
  The method for unique content is to reference the chainID, Address and token number in the content itself (I.e. in a metadata field). This approach works well for legal documentation, but could equally be applied to monkey pictures (although it usually isn't).
  
  Sure, you can establish a stronger tie between the token and the file by embedding the chain ID, contract address, and token number in the content or metadata, but there’s no way to enforce that tie at the blockchain level. Anyone can still mint a copy with different metadata on a different contract.
  As for legal documents, while storing them on-chain might help with transparency or timestamping, the blockchain itself has no legal jurisdiction. It doesn’t have legal authority, and documents stored this way are not inherently compliant with local laws, so they’re unenforceable unless recognized by a traditional legal system.
  
  Anyone can still mint a copy with different metadata on a different contract.
  That would not be an exact copy, because the data is different. Then traditional copyright laws take over.
  the blockchain itself has no legal jurisdiction. It doesn’t have legal authority, and documents stored this way are not inherently compliant with local laws, so they’re unenforceable unless recognized by a traditional legal system.
  Agreed. The NFT and legal documentation has to be constructed in such a way as to pass local laws. Having a bill of sale on-chain rather than on-paper isn't that big a difference.
  Just transferring an NFT doesn't guarantee that legal ownership has changed.
  But it is possible to create a legal structure that does create a legal bill of sale just by transferring an NFT.
  
  As far as I can tell it isn't possible to create a legal structure on a blockchain. Technical limitations inherent in blockchain prevent this from making it possible.
  Lets say I mint an NFT of Mickey Mouse. I don't own that image since it is protected by copyright. First created doesn't mean ownership or authenticity. To be legally compliant, there would have to be some central authority to take down the offending IP on another contract, but blockchain doesn't offer an ability to do this.
  Or lets say my house deed was on the blockchain and a hacker stole my secret pass phrase and took my deed. He doesn't have legal authority over my house.
  Sure we can mitigate these issues with a central authority which can roll-back transactions on the blockchain, but if we are using a central authority then there isn't any usefulness of blockchain over a traditional database.

533 comments