NFTs were invented on Bitcoin (👉Colored Coins) to show non-fungibility & digital authenticity can be achieved
But few understand these traits are not enforced on decentralized-in-name-only platforms such as OpenSea 🤫
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Originality in the digital realm is hard to discern but this is exactly what NFTs are supposedly selling - verifiable, immutable, monetizable originality
Cool, but that sales pitch rests on the assumption that NFTs live on a platform that is secure & operationally sound, right?
Without digging deeper, the consumer is taking these guarantees at face value without understanding the infrastructure needed to deliver on the promise of digital scarcity
What is needed, first and foremost, is a protocol that has no points of failure from centralization
However NFT platforms built on protocols such as ETH have multiple points of failure...
...From full nodes that require data centres to host which can lead to downtime...
...To ever-changing protocol rules which undermine the traits meant to reinforce digital scarcity
Digital art and their smart contracts store value in the tech stack it lives on not just in the artwork itself
From VCs to Justin Bieber, misinformed NFT enthusiasts miss the point of what it means to achieve “non-fungibility” and “original verification” in the digital realm
Much easier to regurgitate @cdixon from a podcast for your newsletter than it is to dig a little fuckin deeper!
“bUt iT’s dEcEntRaLiZed”
The fact that OpenSea was "temporarily down" showed it is not decentralized
It is very much centralized to a handful of large servers around the world that are vulnerable to key man risk, political pressures, natural disasters, power outages, etc
“But why can’t more servers host the platform to spread the risk?”
Oh you mean “decentralize” the network?
Protocols such as ETH compromised decentralization for high throughput. They crammed a bunch of “fun projects” on the base layer which is now too big for basic 🖥️ to run
Say you and I take turns buying ☕️
But only I keep tabs of our txn on my 🖥️
I can lie and say you owe me a ☕️
Power centralizes to me & my 🖥️
If you kept tabs on your own 🖥️
You can disagree
If others had kept tabs on their 🖥️ they can confirm
The more individuals keep tabs of txns on their own 🖥️
👉 the less likely I will be able to expend enough energy to manipulate each 🖥️ to lie on my behalf
👉 the less likely I can manipulate the entire system
👉 the less likely you will be scammed
A node (🖥️) gives you a voice because it gives you the ability to verify, i.e. to bring the receipts, bitch.
Some protocols require big 🖥️ the size of a 🏠 to run so you have to handover your right to verify to a third party who can accumulate power to manipulate the system
Centralizing power defeats the point of independent verification and enforcement in the digital realm
All we can do is *trust* 😱
This is the trap ETH has fallen into with its AWS-powered 🖥️
Even worse, our fiat system has only one 🖥️ owned & operated by the Federal Reserve
The only *full* 🖥️ in the 🌏 you can own & run fully with a functional network effect is #Bitcoin
Every 10mins, every 🖥️ agrees on the sequence of events that is needed to verify originality of a txn
When a handful of 🖥️ stop working, 1000s more are running in its place
This is the *fundamentals* of NFTs
The base protocol needs to be *un-manipulatable* by anyone otherwise digital creations are never truly scarce and smart contracts are void
You need to own a 🖥️ to own your digital assets, otherwise they are never truly yours
"But all the art & culture are being built on other protocols!"
Art & culture are protocol agnostic. Creators move to platforms that give them certainty and security over time. You may be paid to build on the intranet in '97 but we all using the internet in '22 👍
As a creator
I want digital scarcity to thrive
I want my supporters to be a part of my creations
I want to express myself on a platform where I can’t be censored
But the promises of NFTs can only be delivered on a truly decentralized foundation ... #Bitcoin
NFTs are just the tip of the iceberg
It’s a by-product of a large tectonic shift in how mankind communicates value and energy across time and space
This is where shit gets real 🤯🧡
Keep going down the rabbit hole of understanding true digital scarcity with @Croesus_BTC and @dergigi
It is easy to create a newer, shinier form of money with ever-changing governance. This has been done in the past. It is near impossible to create money with the immutability and fairness of the most valuable resource on Earth - "Time"
2/The process of Bitcoin resembles the process of time
Time moves the unknown future into a known past through a sense of “now.” Bitcoin moves unknown future transactions into a recorded past on the timechain through the action of timestamping in the present
"One man who stopped lying could bring down a tyranny."
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"Totalitarianism at its essence is an attempt to transform reality into fiction."
Hannah Arendt
Lies have always been used in politics to cover up corruption and hide motives. In Nazi Germy, it was the idea of a superior race. In Soviet Union it was the belief state communism could work. Big lies lead to a stream of endless little lies which forms the pillars of State.