The Entrepreneur Forum | Financial Freedom | Starting a Business | Motivation | Money | Success

Welcome to the only entrepreneur forum dedicated to building life-changing wealth.

Build a Fastlane business. Earn real financial freedom. Join free.

Join over 80,000 entrepreneurs who have rejected the paradigm of mediocrity and said "NO!" to underpaid jobs, ascetic frugality, and suffocating savings rituals— learn how to build a Fastlane business that pays both freedom and lifestyle affluence.

Free registration at the forum removes this block.

So WTF are NFTs all about? Buying JPGs? Why can't you just right-click save? Is this a giant ponzi? Far from it...

AceVentures

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
404%
Apr 16, 2019
846
3,419
1629737212585.png

I've noticed that there is an increasing number of people on this forum that are becoming aware of NFTs and are interested to participate, but rightfully cautious at the moment. After all, it sounds absolute bat-shit crazy to talk about NFTs today. Buy a $300,000 jpg of some pixels? Bound to get ridiculed by way of pointing at ponzis and tulips. In fact, this is how I feel every time I talk about NFTs to somebody that's only known of them from word of mouth with the real value-proposition seemingly lost in translation.

So I'm starting a separate thread outside of the main Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency discussions to bring attention to this next-level abstraction that we as fastlane unscripted F*ck-you entrepreneurs absolutely ought to know about.

I've been digging and digging for the "right" resource but I've only lead myself astray - I do not believe a comprehensive medium exists that encompasses the depth/breadth of what we're talking about.

Instead, I've opted to share with you glimpses of the vision and hope that with the community here we can gather the missing pieces as the story unravels before us.

I'm going to Frankenstein a bunch of different things together so bear with me.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From VISA's latest CryptoPunk purchase (today) comes an article describing NFTs. It mostly brags about VISA and lacks enough depth but it's a good start for people that have no idea wth I'm talking about. Here are some key points and I'll even highlight the bangers.

Let’s start with the basics — how do you explain NFTs?​

Cuy Sheffield: NFTs are a way to represent ownership of a digital good, like an image, video, or piece of text. Since the rise of the Internet, there hasn’t been a way to claim possession of a digital good, since most files can be infinitely copied, pasted, and shared. NFTs are unique tokens that can be used to certify the provenance, authenticity, and ownership of a piece of digital media.

Like cryptocurrencies, NFTs are tracked and exchanged on a public blockchain. But unlike cryptocurrencies, NFTs are unique. One bitcoin is identical to another, but each NFT is one-of-a kind.

What excites you about NFTs?​

Sheffield: NFTs have the potential to become a powerful accelerator for the creator economy and lower the barrier to entry for individual creatives to earn a living through digital commerce. NFTs are starting to usher in a new form of social commerce that empowers both creators and collectors.

NFTs could also fuel small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) in powerful new ways. The rise of ecommerce has made it possible for SMBs to sell online and reach customers around the globe. But they still have to produce and ship physical goods, which can have high upfront costs. NFTs give small businesses an opportunity to harness public blockchains for producing digital goods—which can be delivered instantly to a crypto wallet. We can envision a future in which your crypto address becomes as important as your mailing address.

How are you and your partners at Visa thinking about this space?​

Sheffield: From a commercial perspective, NFTs are gaining momentum as digital-first sports memorabilia. With platforms like NBA Top Shot, fans can collect and display their favorite game “moments.”

We expect a huge range of new cases in the years ahead. The ability to track and leverage a digital asset in multiple environments could mean exciting new opportunities in ticketing, gaming music, art, and beyond.

Imagine discovering a new musician online. You purchase an NFT of their album art, which can simultaneously serve as a piece of art that you can display online, an entry into an exclusive chat group where you get to connect with other superfans, and a backstage pass for an upcoming show. Ownership of the NFT could also unlock exclusive memorabilia, whether “air dropped” into the owner’s wallet or rewarded after certain behavior, like making a purchase at a specific store.

The artist and their fans can now connect directly with each other and build a powerful community that create new experiences for both.

How might Visa play a role?​

Sheffield: NFTs are rapidly gaining traction and we expect continued growth. For example, there has already been $1B in payment volume in August alone up from less than $100M in all of 2020.

Enabling secure commerce is what we do — we’re the network working for everyone — and that extends to new forms of digital commerce that unlock access. So, it’s not surprising that we’re thinking deeply about this space and how we can apply our expertise in enabling seamless and secure digital payments to make NFT-commerce accessible and useable for buyers and sellers.

In the near term, we want to help brands and businesses better understand NFTs and how they might be harnessed for customer and fan engagement. To that end, we published a paper with observations on today’s NFT landscape, as well as actionable guidance on how to evaluate and scale NFT opportunities.

Looking ahead, we’re working on some new concepts and partnerships that support NFT buyers, sellers, and creators. We look forward to sharing more in the months ahead.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now let's talk about imo the most exciting economy that emerges from the NFT abstraction: the MetaVerse.

I wrote the below piece back in February of this year - and it is more relevant today than ever so review it if you want to get a better feel for what the MetaVerse is all about.


A rather long read, but worth it if you're interested in getting a vision for what a digital future can look like with crypto as it's infrastructure.

Below is the TL;DR from the article.
  • Crypto is laying the foundations for a self-sovereign financial system, an open creator economy, and a universal digital representation and ownership layer via NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
  • The Metaverse is coming; trends indicate our direction of travel. Our next great milestone as a networked species awaits us: 7B digital souls with the option to exist almost exclusively online and participate in a virtual economy with societal impact.
  • More time spent online will lead to more value created and consumed digitally.
  • In order to maximize willingness of individuals to allocate serious time and capital to virtual environments, establishing trust in their durability as well as economic robustness is paramount.
  • As education of web 2.0’s shortcomings rises, users will prefer credibly neutral platforms that lack altogether the capacity for arbitrary censorship, undue rent extraction (also in the form of privacy cost), or sudden cessation.
  • All of these threats are only amplified by increasingly immersive, pervasive, and interconnected digital environments.
  • Decentralized networks provide a unique and unmatchable degree of assurance, whilst a universal erosion of trust in institutions is forcing the desire for alternatives.
  • NFTs on top of them enable a standardized universal digital representation and ownership layer for any natively digital “thing” such as game assets, digital art, or domain space.
  • Early breakout successes will drive FOMO as onlookers scramble to understand the new tool sets available. The network effects of these protocols prove difficult to overcome; their open nature compounds permissionless innovation incredibly quickly as each additional creator builds on the shoulders of all who came before.
  • Owning core pieces of these new worlds brings great financial returns to those who believed; many of whom will be from emerging markets who were quick to move on the opportunities available.
  • Beyond wealth, the initial players are granted additional advantages. As pioneers of a variety of new business models and technologies, their accumulated IP and know-how provide a significant moat.
  • In the same way the rise of mobile forced large buyouts and talent acquisition, so too will the rise of crypto across gaming and the creator economy.
  • In hindsight, it will be obvious that crypto’s role in the Metaverse was the most imperative yet least explored by those speculating on its emergence.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There was also a post I read this morning that describe this emerging economy nicely so I will share as well:

On Metaverse "But in the metaverse" is a running joke on cryptotwitter I regret to inform you that it is no joke. What we are playing for is whether our children will be fully free or residents in a digital company universe - with the illusion of free, but not really free.

The Wikipedia definition is OK "The Metaverse is a collective virtual shared space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space, including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality, and the Internet."

In other words, the metaverse is a superset of virtual realities, augmented realities and the internet. NFT Twitter & Discord is a form of proto-metaverse, with its avatars, shared communities and shared 2D/3D spaces (
@opensea, @oncyber, @decentraland), hanging off it.

And this is, of course, a continuation of decades of internet communities from bulletin boards to AOL to modern social networks So what is different now? Why does this feel different? So what is different now? Well, global internet scale for one, but more importantly: - Crypto/NFTs and - UX

Crypto, and in particular NFTs, have converted our online communities for the very first time into an ownership society. Your avatar, your digital art, your in-game items, your gallery template are all NFTs and they are genuinely owned by you

This is very new, very different. You are not a 'user' on the flip side of an EULA, a mere guest on someone's server with effectively no rights whatsoever, but a true sovereign owner of your digital objects. It is BTC, but for everything digital

The scale and breadth of what this can unleash is astounding as you get huge decentralized global communities coordinated with economic incentives. Crypto is like 5x normie speed. NFTs are 2x to 3x crypto speed

What about UX? This is what drives the jokes right now. 3D worlds are still clunky. Interesting, but not ready for consumer prime-time YET. I like Decentraland, but my information flow is 100x better on Twitter

The UX issue is going to be solved in the 2020s [AceVentures here: this is what LUKSO's ERC725 asset class unlocks, seamless UX via blockchain abstraction]. You can expect photorealistic mixed reality (augmented reality, virtual reality and real reality) with minimal lag in non-ridiculous devices this decade. Mixed realty (the Metaverse) will be just your regular life.

Some of the smartest people in tech also know this, including: 1) Mark Zuckerberg 2) Epic Games https://theverge.com/22588022/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-ceo-metaverse-interview

This is both good because they have the money to invest in improving the tech but this is bad because the goal will be walled gardens. You already can't access the best VR hardware in the market without a Facebook account which is, to me, alarming

Unfortunately right now we have few allies: a) China is going walled garden b) US political leadership is not thinking strategically, sees everything through an AML/KYC lens c) EU is determined to learn nothing from the last 30 years of tech failures

So anon fam, for right now, we are on our own. We have to build, build, build now, as fast as possible, to make the default decision for corporations to join the open system, not to try to capture a closed one.

We are all in this together. Don't sweat the differences between punks / BAYC / AB or 1/1s. Right now we need to scale and onboard everyone. If we can get 1M, 10M, 100M, 1B people the experience of owning their digital assets, good luck to the in-game closed store.

The Metaverse will actually happen this decade. If it is open, human innovation will flourish. If it is closed, we are digital serfs of sorts. We 100,000 or so people right now are the front-line in this battle and we have to do it ourselves.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There is much more to this and I will be updating this thread as I get more time. For now - let's just get a conversation started. And y'all please make an effort to keep this thread separate from the BTC/Crypto thread which has an INSANE amount of value contained within. This is not meant to replace the other thread - but instead of all the price talk, I just want us to take a step back here and understand the abstraction, to discuss emerging business models, to talk about the topic of private ownership, and ultimately to leave bread crumbs for the less fortunate amongst us to catch up with this ground-breaking model for future economies.

As a fellow Unscripted member of this forum - I salute you for taking the time to educate yourself on a controversial and technically challenging idea.

Tagging @GPM @Bekit @Ocean Man who had originally asked for some NFT info - just as a reminder that I've decided to take this conversation out of the main BTC/Crypto thread.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

MA81

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
257%
Jan 22, 2013
95
244
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY1EmqTSco8


Just because you mint an NFT for a specific jpeg, in no way allows for your ownership or rights to that picture/asset in the same way being scammed into buying a piece of paper to own part of the Brooklyn bridge does.

The courts and legal system determine who owns what land or other items such as car titles, etc. Not some token that I can create in a few minutes (which I have done) and claiming that gives me rights to something nobody else can. Someone can download the jpeg from CryptoPunk that sold for thousands of dollars off the internet without anyones permission. You're not going to a judge and suing that you own an image thats on the internet because you paid for an NFT that I created out of thin air and tricked you into buying it and claiming you owned it now.

The NFT craze is just a repackaging of crypto kitties for people with too much money and not enough brains.
 

AceVentures

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
404%
Apr 16, 2019
846
3,419
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY1EmqTSco8


Just because you mint an NFT for a specific jpeg, in no way allows for your ownership or rights to that picture/asset in the same way being scammed into buying a piece of paper to own part of the Brooklyn bridge does.

The courts and legal system determine who owns what land or other items such as car titles, etc. Not some token that I can create in a few minutes (which I have done) and claiming that gives me rights to something nobody else can. Someone can download the jpeg from CryptoPunk that sold for thousands of dollars off the internet without anyones permission. You're not going to a judge and suing that you own an image thats on the internet because you paid for an NFT that I created out of thin air and tricked you into buying it and claiming you owned it now.

Wrapping real world assets such as real-estate and car titles are still some ways away - the primary reason being that the problems around digitizing hard-identities are nuanced and have not yet been solved.

Right-click saving a JPG is akin to printing a picture of the Mona Lisa and hanging it on your wall. Sure there's a Mona Lisa on the wall, but it is not THE Mona Lisa. You couldn't sell or do anything with your copy, as it's not the real thing.

Today, we're simply talking about this abstraction layer and the powers it enables. Nobody is encouraging you to ape into JPGs. They just happen to be how people are using that abstraction layer with respect to digital art. More practical use-cases are emerging and have powerful utility. Please re-read the original post to get some insight as to what these use-cases are.

The NFT craze is just a repackaging of crypto kitties for people with too much money and not enough brains.

Thank you for your insult - I'll make sure to evaluate the size of my brain next time I play with NFTs.

For the entrepreneurs on this forum that are capable of thinking for themselves, let's continue to explore how this technology enables us to access new/emerging marketplaces as well as the ability to engage with people directly, cutting out middleware software/companies that tax your interactions across the internet via violation of your privacy, your data, and your sovereignty.

One prime example we can explore is the creator economy that's well an alive today, albeit under the whims of big tech overlords.

Take YouTube for example. Today, more kids want to be YouTube stars than astronauts, doctors, engineers, or any other profession we used to look up to when we were younger. Despite the opportunities that arise from the ability to INFLUENCE via the internet in the form of video, your content does not belong to you. It belongs to YouTube. Should they decide your opinion, or your face, or what you stand for is not in line with their interests, they can effectively steal all of your IP, your influence, and your audience in an instant.

NFTs are an abstraction layer that can ensure the video content you put out is not only uncensorable, but that YOU are ultimately the benefactor of whatever fame/attention/monetization route you pursue with your content.

This is ONE example.

And my apologies I did not watch the video you shared - I simply don't have time to wage ideological wars with people that have closed their minds to innovation. These arguments are akin to people ridiculing the internet when it first emerged, suggesting people can just use the radio for listening to sports, use record players to listen to music, and read the newspaper to keep up with current events. That same mentality is today preventing people from exploring a new world of opportunities due to their own ignorance.
 

Andy Black

Help people. Get paid. Help more people.
Staff member
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
370%
May 20, 2014
18,566
68,698
Ireland

MA81

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
257%
Jan 22, 2013
95
244
And my apologies I did not watch the video you shared - I simply don't have time to wage ideological wars with people that have closed their minds to innovation. These arguments are akin to people ridiculing the internet when it first emerged, suggesting people can just use the radio for listening to sports, use record players to listen to music, and read the newspaper to keep up with current events. That same mentality is today preventing people from exploring a new world of opportunities due to their own ignorance.

Thank you for the wasted response since we're on the same side of this argument. If you want alternatives to youtube as you asked I'd try looking into something like Odysee. Earning crypto, and not having the risk of being censored by Big Tech overlords is part of the platform. But ultimately building new protocols off of bitcoin is the best step since servers can still be taken down.
 

AceVentures

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
404%
Apr 16, 2019
846
3,419
Thank you for the wasted response since we're on the same side of this argument. If you want alternatives to youtube as you asked I'd try looking into something like Odysee. Earning crypto, and not having the risk of being censored by Big Tech overlords is part of the platform. But ultimately building new protocols off of bitcoin is the best step since servers can still be taken down.

Oh, I didn't realize we were on the same page. I confused your reply with the suggestion that NFTs are a scammy money grab similar to selling paper shares of the Brooklyn Bridge.
 

MJ DeMarco

I followed the science; all I found was money.
Staff member
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Rat-Race Escape!
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
445%
Jul 23, 2007
38,082
169,504
Utah
Thanks for the write up, I need to really read this and get up to speed.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

ay47

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
171%
Mar 29, 2018
59
101
How does one invest or participate in this NFT market?

I mean with BTC, I could go to an exchange and get a coin.

Is NFT akin to purchasing art pieces then? You have to have the right “eye” as each NFT is different from the next one?
 

Ing

Gold Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Rat-Race Escape!
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
102%
Jun 8, 2019
1,621
1,651
58
Bavaria
How can an Autor participate on that?
Lets say, I write a book and sell it online. Can I pack it in an NFT each and sell that with copyright protection?
My brain is hard working to understand that all!;)
 

MTF

Never give up
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
455%
May 1, 2011
7,560
34,430
I don't care at all about the silly virtual collectibles and find it hard to believe that they'll be ever valued the same way as physical stuff.

What I find possibly revolutionary is how NFTs can allow authors to get paid each time someone resells their ebook. Via Joanna Penn and Simon-Pierre Marion:

What makes it possible to resell ebooks? And if we have a smart contract in place, can we get a cut of a resale?​


Simon-Pierre: Absolutely. To be able to resell an ebook, you have to make it clear for the royalty owners of the book. So, of course, if you try to resell an ebook and the royalty owners, or the copyright owners of the book do not want the ebook to be resold, of course, you're going to lose in any court.


But for example, in our solution, what we are saying is that we ask the rightful owner of the book if they want their ebook to be resalable or not. And they take the decision if they accept or not, this state of reselling. If they do not accept, then people won't be able to resell it, but if they do accept then the ebook can be resold.


And of course, this is all again stored in the smart contract. So if you accept that a reader resells his books, then you can also set in the smart contract, what are the percentage for the distribution of the resell transaction? So if you say, ‘I will let my readers resell their book, but when they will resell it I want 50% out of it, and I leave them the other 50%.' That's an example.


But the other thing you can put in the smart contract is the notion of time. So you could say, ‘I would like to have that resell option enabled in the blockchain smart contract. But maybe not right now because often my sales are very high the first year and then after that, they go down a little bit.'


So you can say, ‘I will enable the resale after a year.' So you can purchase the book, but you cannot resell it, but a year after the resell option is activated, and then the reader can resell the book. And this could create another sub-market and other revenues for you.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

AceVentures

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
404%
Apr 16, 2019
846
3,419
How does one invest or participate in this NFT market?

I mean with BTC, I could go to an exchange and get a coin.

Is NFT akin to purchasing art pieces then? You have to have the right “eye” as each NFT is different from the next one?

NFTs today are mostly similar to purchasing art pieces. You could participate in that fashion, and yes having the right "eyes" becomes incredibly important. More than having eyes is recognizing if a collection has true uniqueness to it.

For example look at ArtBlocks - they do generative art and it has found love within many Ethereans hearts due to the unique nature by which the art comes to life.

There's also Squiggly, which are literally squiggly lines but again computer generated so many of these CypherPunks turned Ethereans have a deep love for this type of art.

There's also a trend of pfp (profile picture) avatar projects. This is the cryptopunk and bored ape yacht club (BAYC) or LonelyAlienSpaceClub projects. People join the community by buying an Avatar. Typically these collections I've seen have had ~10,000 pieces but they don't need to.

BUT imo all of these are mostly proof of concepts. You see, people are really excited about NFTs today because it's such a powerful abstraction. But in its current format, most NFTs live as ERC20 or ERC721 smart contracts.

These types of contracts are in nature limited - they contain ownership information (public address of owner) As well as a JSON file that has all the relevant information contained within. Now unfortunately at this current stage of the blockchain game, these JSON files are not "composable" by other smart contracts and thus their use across permissionless blockchains is rather limited.

There will be many usecases and many winners, but at this stage I'm more interested in infrastructure design/architecture.

I play with these things every day. After months of heavy use, I've learned a ton about the user experience and what value skews would change the game. Smart contract wallets are one of these game-changing value skews.

Im currently betting on the use of the ERC725 token standard as an emergent asset class. This asset class will be far superior to other smart-contract standards in that there is an executable function inside the contract itself. This execute function can be called from outside the contract and so this contract can become dynamic.

This dynamic element enables you to have a "wallet" like you do in metamask today, but it'll actually just be in a smart contract on chain. This execute functions opens the door for enabling new recovery features. Personalized recovery features. As many and as unique of a recovery that you would like. Remembering your "private keys" will not be something you'd be doing anymore, because this on-chain smart-contract could sync up with other data sources and perform checks against them.

Imagine "signing in" to a contract using a password if you want, or a pin, or whatever you set, and once authorized any dapp you visit you automatically authenticate via this smartcontractwallet, and then from there you can do all your social media, all your banking, and every other tokenizable function can be controlled from this wholly owned contract that lives onchain.

The real beauty in all of this, is in the simplicity of the abstraction. It's not a complex standard, in fact it's a really simple design. It's this execute function that opens up a brand new playing field for the composability of contracts across the crypto stack.

Take a look at this, it's called a universal profile. These are smart contracts on chain. But they're user profiles like on social media. Imagine now if you own the key to this account, there are now functions on the web app for you to do things.

You can create your own universal profile Universal Profile Cloud

What's cool is if you go thru the process, you never sign a tx personally, a relay service creates this account for you! I hope you can begin to see how social applications can be built using these principles.

Long answer I know - but wanted you to know that "investing" in NFTs today can look like lots of things. I believe the real money is in picking the right infrastructure layer.
 
Last edited:

AceVentures

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
404%
Apr 16, 2019
846
3,419
How can an Autor participate on that?
Lets say, I write a book and sell it online. Can I pack it in an NFT each and sell that with copyright protection?
My brain is hard working to understand that all!;)

I don't care at all about the silly virtual collectibles and find it hard to believe that they'll be ever valued the same way as physical stuff.

What I find possibly revolutionary is how NFTs can allow authors to get paid each time someone resells their ebook. Via Joanna Penn and Simon-Pierre Marion:

Yep you guys nailed it - it doesn't have to be about art. It's simply a digital ownership abstraction for ANYTHING you want.

In yalls case as authors - you could be selling your books in NFT format. Perhaps you could offer limited edition versions of your books, each with a unique chapter that the original prints don't have.

You could sell access to your content via an NFT "membership" token. So if the customer owns your membership NFT token, when they surf your web-page they get exclusive privileges on your site. Perhaps they get to chat with you directly, perhaps they get exclusive access to all of your upcoming content, or perhaps they are the ONLY ones that get access to your future content.

As you can imagine there are many many ways to play this game - but the royalties aspect @MTF has mentioned is another critical point.

An interesting marketing scheme today would be to offer your NFTs for practically free - but build a community and a brand as your main effort. The side-effect of this is the community will be selling/trading/exchanging your tokens on the secondary marketplaces and each time your NFT transfers hands, you collect a royalty.

In practice, you create an army of marketers and promoters. They have every incentive to hype your product, because the have a direct economic incentive to resell at a higher price.
 
Last edited:

dgr

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
271%
Feb 20, 2016
143
387
39
Spain
Great heads up @AceVentures

NFTs are here to stay.

Not so far (just a couple of months ago) I was mocking them. Now I believe they will disrupt several industries (and of course I've spent a lot of money on those damned JPEGs).

Some opportunities I see:

- NFTs are a great way to crowdfund a project. You're giving value upfront (the NFT), which can have voting rights, access permission, or just be a store of value. It's already happening, one example is catzmeow, that is trying to fund the animated series with the characters (made by a member of the bowtied jungle on Twitter). Other projects are trying to fund a game. But for now, most projects are just NFTs with an item in their roadmap to "make a game". Instead of the other way around: We're making a game, let's use NFT to fund it.

- Play to earn: This is happening with AXS and others. They distribute their earnings to their players. Some people in Asia have outsourced the gaming LOL. How is this related to NFTs? They serve as property/identity/commerce inside the game/metaverse. (In Axie Infinity you need to buy first at least 3 Axies to access the game)

- Royalties: NFTs and crypto will allow for transparent royalties management. Imagine that every 8h, for every minute watched of a movie on Netflix, a smart contract distributes the royalties to all the participants. You, as a secondary actor, receive 0,00001 X-TOKEN for minute watched; the cinematographer gets 0,00008, etc. The same with other platforms, music, etc. Total transparency and automatization.

- Fractional art: right now it's expensive to buy a Cryptopunk or ArtBlock if you're not crypto-rich. But fractional art will allow you to buy a fraction of that NFT (like you buy a fraction of a BTC, but less liquid I guess).

...

This is in constant evolution. Right now there are avatar profile picture projects, generative art, music, access tokens...

Some NFTs are quite fun and innovative, even if they are just jpgs. For example, this.
(disclaimer: I own one of these, sorry for the shill - I don't recommend you to ape into this if you don't have some experience first)

TBH I'm very new still into the NFT world. But if some of you are interested, I can write the few things I know about how to find them and try to value them. (Any advice you have is well received since I'm still a newbie)

Lastly, let me tell you: 95% of them will go to zero. This summer has been crazy, with 8-10 projects launching every day.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

mjbarlow

Contributor
Read Rat-Race Escape!
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
145%
Aug 17, 2021
33
48
UK
Yeah, this is going to be huge. The digital book example is great.

An author could release their book as NFT's, giving you access to the base book itself. But each book could have a different digital foreword. Like a signed copy but with a different message from the author on each NFT.

It's gonna mean companies will have infinite ways to differentiate and price their digital products.

That being said, the market feels a lot like the ico days. So much hype and speculation, anyone that can upload a jpg to open sea is now calling themselves an nft artist. People gonna lose a lot of money on buying junk nfts.

Seems like a reasonable risk / reward to speculate on the protocol that going to be used and not the tokens themselves.

Thanks for this info!
 

dgr

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
271%
Feb 20, 2016
143
387
39
Spain
New responses come while I was writing mine, and I've realized that you wanted to keep it more in the big picture/potential, sorry if my previous post wasn't aligned with that.

There's also a trend of pfp (profile picture) avatar projects. This is the cryptopunk and bored ape yacht club (BAYC) or LonelyAlienSpaceClub projects. People join the community by buying an Avatar. Typically these collections I've seen have had ~10,000 pieces but they don't need to.
Community is a key component here (in pfp). But even for other use cases, like the ones you mention about the book marketing strategies, I think it's a key role. It's what makes or breaks a project. It's kind of the same in the traditional sense of an audience, but as you say, they advocate for your product.

You could sell access to your content via an NFT "membership" token. So if the customer owns your membership NFT token, when they surf your web-page they get exclusive privileges on your site. Perhaps they get to chat with you directly, perhaps they get exclusive access to all of your upcoming content, or perhaps they are the ONLY ones that get access to your future content.
I think that the "membership" route will work great with this kind of content. For some kind of authors (fantasy for example) could work creating an NFT with illustrations of the characters or inhabitants of its world - randomly generated)

In practice, you create an army of marketers and promoters. They have every incentive to hype your product, because the have a direct economic incentive to resell at a higher price.
This. Magic.
 

AceVentures

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
404%
Apr 16, 2019
846
3,419
New responses come while I was writing mine, and I've realized that you wanted to keep it more in the big picture/potential, sorry if my previous post wasn't aligned with that.

Oh no don't feel that way your breakdown of different opportunities was very insightful - the only thing I wanted was to steer from price talk/speculation which we haven't been doing.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

c4n

Full throttle
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
265%
May 30, 2017
379
1,004
What I am having a problem grasping with these "universal profile" and "membership tokens" examples is how is this different than a regular user account with an email address? How is it any different than having a Google account and logging in to all the 3rd party websites that support it?

Isn't the biggest problem for an author distribution (getting in front of enough people)? I don't see NTF solving this?

From what I've read in this thread only the royalties example is something I could see having potential and is an interesting concept to me.

Granted, I've been wrong many times before and I admit I am ignorant of the technology, but willing to learn - so thank you for this thread :)
 

AceVentures

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
404%
Apr 16, 2019
846
3,419
What I am having a problem grasping with these "universal profile" and "membership tokens" examples is how is this different than a regular user account with an email address? How is it any different than having a Google account and logging in to all the 3rd party websites that support it?

It's similar. Except the "profile" is a smart contract on the blockchain. This makes it possible for any blockchain that supports the ERC standard to read and interpret it. This means that as these platforms build - everything you own and do continue to be compatible with every other lego piece that gets built in this space.

And because smart-contract blockchains allow for programmable functions - there can be permissionless and automated behaviors.

You also never need to "log-in" anywhere because web3 apps automatically look for and detect private cryptographic keypairs. So you go on any web3 app and you're automatically authorized based on the tokens you own in your wallet.

There's also the aspect of pure ownership. Google owns your data. They own your account. They own everything you do using their services.

Using blockchains and NFTs - YOU own your data, your profile, your assets, and how you choose to reveal information about yourself.

There's also the permanency aspect. Google can get hacked, or their centralized servers can be controlled/manipulated. On blockchains, every node in a network would need to collude together simultaneously to change the order of things. So long as the network is live and has honest validators, your "data" is preserved forever, without the ability for any one party to manipulate the past or the future.

Consider in web2 today: every new website you want to access requires you to create a profile. Each platform thus gets access to all kinds of information about you - your full name, address, phone number, date of birth, etc. Why should you reveal all of this sensitive information about yourself just to listen to some songs for example?

Managing 100s of accounts, hundreds of passwords, leads to hundreds of possible attack vectors against your information.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

c4n

Full throttle
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
265%
May 30, 2017
379
1,004
You also never need to "log-in" anywhere because web3 apps automatically look for and detect private cryptographic keypairs. So you go on any web3 app and you're automatically authorized based on the tokens you own in your wallet.

So similar to Oauth? Where/how do they look for the private keys/token? You surely need to be logged into somewhere?
 

AceVentures

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
404%
Apr 16, 2019
846
3,419
So similar to Oauth? Where/how do they look for the private keys/token? You surely need to be logged into somewhere?

Your private keys are owned by you - and using modern browser extensions like MetaMask, you can store these keys. So the dapps you access look for the MetaMask extension, fetch your public account key, and then automatically fetch the corresponding information about that public account key.
 

ay47

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
171%
Mar 29, 2018
59
101
Hmm so NFTs as a way to monetise escapism? I do agree that escapism and distraction is going to be in demand. I’m still scratching my head on how to put money in this NFT trend. Like if I want to put money on property, I’ll just buy property. Same with stocks, crypto, buying a business. The best the internet could give me was investing in Cloudflare.

Maybe I’ll just go buy a bunch of Axies.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Ocean Man

Life-long learner.
Read Rat-Race Escape!
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
222%
Sep 26, 2018
902
1,998
United States
Thanks for taking the time to write this up, @AceVentures. I'll definitely be digging into this a bit more when I have the time. But I'm looking forward to your updates to this thread!

One thing I just thought about is NFT certifications.

In order to receive my bachelor's my course requires that I earn several IT certifications. Maybe we can see NFTs coming into play when it comes to certifications?

However, if certificates were distributed using NFTs, I'm not sure how NFTs would go about certification expiration/renewal expiration. Many certifications these days need to be renewed within 3 - 5 years after obtaining them.

I wonder if expiration/renewal would present a problem to NFTs.
 

MitchC

Legendary Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Rat-Race Escape!
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
283%
Mar 8, 2014
1,966
5,554
Australia
I don’t understand NFTs, but thought this was interesting:

I opened this thread to post this.

Gary is super excited about NFTs and right into them, he has some awesome practical examples of where they could be used even just as vanity like the jpgs.

One I liked in particular was concert/sports tickets where you have them displayed in your public wallet and people can see oh this guy went here. A way of saying this is who I am and what I'm about, this is where I've been and what I've done, and having it be verified by an NFT. Think like if someone opened the link on your social media to your wallet and you had a verified token that said you went to say Woodstock for example.

Another was having a smart contract on something where you earn royalties in perpetuity. The example given was buying Michael Jordans house for 12m, selling it for 9m but keeping a 1% royalty on any income that house generates forever.
 

AceVentures

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
404%
Apr 16, 2019
846
3,419
However, if certificates were distributed using NFTs, I'm not sure how NFTs would go about certification expiration/renewal expiration. Many certifications these days need to be renewed within 3 - 5 years after obtaining them.

I wonder if expiration/renewal would present a problem to NFTs.

One of the fundamental aspects of Solidity programming: nothing will happen until a transaction triggers it. You can design the transfer function to check whether the address is allowed to keep holding its token, or you can create a reclaim function which gets the token back, but neither of those strategies "automatically" work at the timeout mark.

Scheduling future events for a specific time is inherently impossible within a Solidity contract because your code only runs when a transaction or call triggers it.

However, I think this is something that can be done at a protocol level.

I know that there was a protocol called an Ethereum Alarm Clock that had this timeout function at it's core, but I don't see their GitHub updated for over 3 years now so idk where it's at today. What it does tell me though, is that this function is in theory possible.

from EAC documentation:

The Ethereum Alarm Clock is a smart contract protocol for scheduling Ethereum transactions to be executed in the future. It allows any address to set the parameters of a transaction and allow executors (known as TimeNodes) to call these transactions during the desired window. The EAC is agnostic to callers so can be used by both human users and other smart contracts. Since all of the scheduling logic is contained in smart contracts, transactions can be scheduled from solidity, and developers can rely on it as a core piece of their smart contract of decentralized application.

Additionally the EAC faciliates the execution of this pool of scheduled transactions through the TimeNode. The EAC TimeNode continuously runs and watches for transactions which are scheduled to be executed soon then claims and later executes them. For the EAC to be successful it depends on users to run TimeNodes. There are a few ways incentives for running these TimeNodes are baked in to the protocol itself via the claiming mechanism and the bounty payout.


Another way to go about this - to make it simpler imo, is to have the agent wishing to authenticate the certificate check with an oracle or even fetch the contract's transaction date/time/blocknumber from the public ledger and enable/disable functionality based on their own criteria. So perhaps you still own the NFT certificate, but the agent you authorize with can use the time the smart-contract was minted to discriminate for authenticity.

Will report back if I find a more concrete and modern solution.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

AceVentures

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
404%
Apr 16, 2019
846
3,419
Found some more gems on the NFT business model! Will quote and highlight the bangers as usual.

How companies can use NFTs for marketing and community building:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Businesses spent the last decade dialing in their online strategy—relying on digital ads, content creation, and influencers. But old models are facing increasing cost pressures and competition. Brands are struggling to own and retain their audiences. To be authentic.

Meanwhile, creators figured out how to turn audiences into communities, giving them space and *incentive* to interact: financial and social capital, education, and a place where they belong. Reddit communities are moving markets. Discord communities are creating their own.

Increasingly, these communities have discovered ways to decentralize and monetize through the technology offered by NFTs. The result is engagement unlike anything we’ve seen before. Unlocking this level of devotion is the envy of every brand.

Brands that aim to activate these networks into economies have two options:
1) partnering directly with the communities, or
2) creating their own.

Both require leveraging NFT technology. Here’s how.

Commercial licensing + partnerships:
Many projects grant commercial rights to NFT holders. Recently, Arizona announced it aped into the Bored Ape Yacht Club. Unfortunately, they ruffled feathers by bypassing the community with the announcement. Right idea, but underleveraged.

1629904380954.png

But envision limited edition products and marketing campaigns that truly partner—strategically—with NFT communities. Cryptopunks + Spotify? Bored Apes + Farfetch? Sure, if the communities are offered adequate incentive. These are lucrative and high signal opportunities.

Buying visible assets:
Yesterday, VISA bought a cryptopunk for $150k. Their market cap has since shot up more than $5B. This is marketing at its most efficient, at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising. Sometimes, it’s the association that counts.

1629904402656.png

Tokenizing communities:
Imagine Nike or Glossier creating communities with special privileges for NFT holders. They could hold events and educational forums, create financial and social incentives, and seed real relationships amongst participants—inspiring fierce brand love.

Tokenizing access:
If ESPN hosted conversations between star athletes and NFT holders, imagine how much sports fans would drive up the price of those tokens to join. Or if famous Twitter accounts had weekly office hours for holders. Token value thrives on access.

Tokenizing product and content:
Allowing access to exclusive products and content reinforces loyalty and can catalyze the holder’s networks to join as well. Customers become VIPs and a brand’s most loyal advocates, creating organic growth flywheels and feedback loops.

Collectible brand mints:
Imagine if Disney leveraged their IP to mint 10k unique NFTs. It would compete with the largest projects on day one, or blow them right out of the water. Brands with smaller followings? Partner with influencers, artists, and community members.

Rewards + giveaways:
Bonusing collectible trophy NFTs to customers can get them over the finish line when it comes to making that purchase. It also supports retention, especially if there is access on the other end of the token. Want to gamify? Make it a lottery.

Voting + governance:
Democratizing decision-making amongst token holders moves the needle from “I love this business” to “I am a participant in this business.” From product development to partner selection, businesses have potential to collect invaluable data.

These models represent the socialization of brand development and marketing, with promising rewards and ownership for communities. Processes that previously happened behind closed doors will come increasingly come into the light—and that transparency is good for business.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

stantechie

It’s never too late to hit the fast lane!
Read Rat-Race Escape!
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
159%
Feb 6, 2020
22
35
Vancouver
While I've read through this thread a few times and still don't quite get the value here of owning an NFT, I stumbled across an article that dumbfounded me. It appears the pet rock is alive and well in 2021:

 

AceVentures

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
404%
Apr 16, 2019
846
3,419
While I've read through this thread a few times and still don't quite get the value here of owning an NFT, I stumbled across an article that dumbfounded me. It appears the pet rock is alive and well in 2021:


If that isn't enough for you - consider that people have begun fractionalizing the Rock NFTs into Pebbles. So people that can't afford the rock can buy pebble shares of the rock :rofl:
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

stantechie

It’s never too late to hit the fast lane!
Read Rat-Race Escape!
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
159%
Feb 6, 2020
22
35
Vancouver
If that isn't enough for you - consider that people have begun fractionalizing the Rock NFTs into Pebbles. So people that can't afford the rock can buy pebble shares of the rock :rofl:
That's hilarious...and you're probably right. That would be a good idea for a company, allowing multiple "investors" to buy bits of an NFT.

I was reading another article about someone buying a $500 or so NFT and it disappeared after. It sounded like there may have been copyright as the main issue, but also the purchase was only to a link to the JPEG rather than the actual file. So as soon as the file is taken down, it now points to only a 404 page.
 

AceVentures

Platinum Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
404%
Apr 16, 2019
846
3,419
That's hilarious...and you're probably right. That would be a good idea for a company, allowing multiple "investors" to buy bits of an NFT.

I was reading another article about someone buying a $500 or so NFT and it disappeared after. It sounded like there may have been copyright as the main issue, but also the purchase was only to a link to the JPEG rather than the actual file. So as soon as the file is taken down, it now points to only a 404 page.

Yep most ERC721 contracts contain the ownership info (public/private keypair) + JSON file that has links to the files. The best go-around rn is to store these files on IPFS or other decentralized datastorage solutions, so the link is always live.

The ideal solution *as I see it* is the emerging ERC725 contract which can contain these files directly on-chain.
 

Post New Topic

Please SEARCH before posting.
Please select the BEST category.

Post new topic

Guest post submissions offered HERE.

Latest Posts

New Topics

Fastlane Insiders

View the forum AD FREE.
Private, unindexed content
Detailed process/execution threads
Ideas needing execution, more!

Join Fastlane Insiders.

Top