But there are plenty of stupid, uneducated idiots in this world that are willing to purchase stripped paint, skirting-board ladders, glass hammers, chocolate teapots etc, those customers are just more difficult to find, but if companies try, and push hard enough, they will eventually appear, they always do... There's a market for almost anything, you just have to find the right idiot to sell it to...

You're trusting them to honor/redeem, which is implicitly the same as trusting them at the other end.

Practical use? None.

/thread

None. Blockchain and NFTs are solutions looking for a problem that extant technology can already do in far saner ways.
The only good NFT is a dead NFT.

If cryptonauts were walking the talk they preached, the first step would have been to make an open source mesh network and then start working from there. In the current system, cryptocurrency is still connected to commercial and corporate oversight, meaning any of them can be easily stomped out at the drop of a butterfly's hat.

So instead you just have dumbass libertarians trying to recreate the stock market in record time, with all the problems that comes with that.

I did think that was an "good" use of an NFT. Essentially bring an ownership aspect back into digital goods by giving a way to resell. So If I buy Witcher 4 from Steam or Epic, I get an NFT that confirms that I own a copy of Witcher 4 and can thus download and play the game on the server. Once I get bored and no longer want to own the game, I can sell my NFT to someone else who can then use that NFL to download the game. Meanwhile, since I no longer own the NFT, I cannot download or play Witcher 4 anymore since I dont have the NFT. Since its recorded on the blockchain, it is guaranteed that this other person owns a copy of Witcher 4 and I do not.

I dont know why you would bother with buying gas or movie tickets as NFTs or tokens though when you can just go to the gas station or theater and buy the tickets directly. That seems to just be adding additional components as an excuse to give NFTs some use.

I dont think the first solution really requires NFTs to work though and the second examples are just busy work.

You're still relying on these central, trusted authorities: the game seller/download-site to verify the transaction -- which could be done without NFTs just as easily, as well as the game-maker to respect such transactions (and any verification mechanisms would evoke DRM). Plus, the nature of how it works -- they're public -- you can't actually put the *license itself* on the blockchain, just the transaction receipt. So if there's no actual revocation mechanism [via DRM], nothing actually has that "and I do not" part any stronger than a pinky swear... except as being used as evidence in a future IP infringement court case against the seller if they did not destroy their copy of the license.

I'm sorry you feel bad about a major class of individuals that includes me. But, please, don't lump us in with the dumbass cryptobois, that are very much cross-spectrum fleecers.

Isn't this just called "cash"?

Ignore such stupidity entirely and pretend the shlock does not exist and all is well again. Done.

Practical use of NFTs is to squeeze money out of gullible people. Nothing more, nothing less.

Exactly what my original thought was for a use of it.

If you can somehow manage to sell your games on steam, then yes...

But as steam and other key distributors/sites won't let you transfer rights, that really is the problem at this point...

Unless you go for piracy then the problem goes away i guess.

The 'license' is the token. And who owns it determines who has that license.

As for the contents on the blockchain, it would probably be something like 'publisher: name, game:name, date issued' and a PGP or signed encrypted block with identical information along with a unique token ID.

Though the whole DMCA needs to be updated.

NFT a practical use? like that's like asking if parasites have any use.

guess what? both are the same they worthless and are useless a abfront to nature or technolgy
even a virus have more use then parasites.

Technically all human offspring all function like a parasite, leeching off mom, until born. There's also things like the spider wasp that is a specific type of the parasitic wasp that uses spiders as the hosts for their offspring. Parasites do have their practical and beneficial uses.

So let's not lump parasites with NFTs. :)

NFTs can practically go fuck themselves! Somebody had to say it, plus I solved your conundrum.

I agree is doesnt need to be done by an NFT and unless there is some independent server that is run by so third party that validates all NFT receipts. I was thinking they could incorporate some such DRM on the receipt to convey ownership to the owner of the receipt but if not then it is useless.

I suppose... though i did mention the publisher/distributor digitally signing the data which then would be as good a proof as you'd need that it is valid, which then wouldn't need a central server, instead they just provide the public key, and a quick script (or manually decrypting and at a glance comparison) can be used to verify it is correct.

But why put DRM on a receipt? It doesn't make sense. Certainly you want to verify it is correct but there's no access restrictions otherwise on it, and it holds nothing of real value that you could steal/use.