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Ask HN: Do you know of a use for NFTs that doesn't involve images?

4 points by corobo ↗ HN
I really want to give the tech a chance but I'm aware that my mocking has closed my mind to it

Does anyone have any examples of NFTs or indeed any of the web3 acronyms being used in a cool or useful way that doesn't involve expensive Gravatars?

Is it just a pyramid scheme or can something cool be done here? As opposed to just spinning up a CRUD app and storing in MySQL instead of blockchains would be a bonus too, but I do accept the tech is still super new

Once the transaction fees stop being so nutty I'd love to get into it but I'm a learn-by-deconstruction type and I can't find anything interesting to see how it works

9 comments

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NicoJuicy
I think they hate that question, because in theory it's a proof of digital ownership.

And in practice your are correct, it's only used for memes/avatars. Or even game companies use it as an avatar in their game.

The thing is:

Proof of ownership is not done digitally.

So while it's digital ownership in theory, in practice it doesn't make any sense.

przeor
here we go: https://blog.apy.vision/uniswapnft/

"On Uniswap v3, liquidity provider (LP) positions are represented as NFTs (ERC-721 tokens) as opposed to the fungible ERC-20 tokens on Uniswap V1 and V2. Based on the pool and your parameters selected on the liquidity providing interface a unique NFT will be minted representing your position in that specific pool."

corobo
I think I'm about 20 steps away from understanding anything in that article. I feel like my brain CPUs are at 100% just trying to read it

At least I know where I stand knowledge wise. Step 1; find a web3 dictionary

seattle_spring
Not knowing much about how NTFs work, it seems like a great way for them to be used would be to prevent cheating / duping for online item-based video games like Diablo. If this isn't technically doable, I'd love an explanation as to why :)
NicoJuicy
Cheating has no correlation with avatars.

The issues with marketplaces are rare and game companies won't pay for transactions when they already have virtual currencies ( nope, not based on Blockchain).

olegious
The NFT space is so early in its development that the use cases are still being figured out. I think the fundamental concept to understand is that holding the NFT proves your ownership of the associated asset. This in turn opens up interesting down stream use cases- fractional asset ownership, creates liquidity and price discovery mechanisms in things that were previously hard to price, etc.

If you want to play around without worrying about fees, there are 2 approaches- you can develop on the Ethereum test net, this is obviously free. You can also try out Solana which has extremely low fees and very fast processing times, this would be a separate blockchain but the NFT concepts would be the same (I'm not going into the argument which one is more decentralized, that doesn't really matter to you since you just want to try things out).

NicoJuicy
In the real world, Proof of ownership is not done digitally.

Eg. You think https://opensea.io/DisneyCollectibles is really owned by the nft creator?

What would happen with a copyright infringement? Then it's proven it's not his, but it's still on the Blockchain.

It just doesn't work in practice.