NFTs and Elite

[Stumpii]

Source?

No, seriously.

I think you can understand where I am coming from when I say I do not give trust to cryptobros, which you are starting to come across as.

You should do your own research, especially on the block chain/NFT tech, not Bitcoin/Etherium use of it. I knew nothing about the subject, so I did some research myself. I am by no means an expert, but think I have a basic understanding of topic.

I am not a cryptobro. I don't care for crypto currencies, don't own any, don't mine. I think crypto currencies are made up to make certain people rich and the affect on the environment and tech is bad (look at GFX card prices).

What does interest me is underlying technology and what uses other than crypto currency it can be put to.

 

[[DOOK] Droogie]

"Do your own research" is the calling card of a cryptobro. Just saying. That, and "you just don't get it".

 

[DrinkyBird]

It could be used as a means for some players to sell their Cobra Mk IV to those who really want one.

Edit: just saw this:

You don't need NFTs to do that though. It is literally more effort for zero gain (and plenty of detriment). Steam has trading and a whole market... without any blockchain or cryptocrap in sight.

 

[Stumpii]

This is my basic understanding, which may help someone. I am not going to provide links that may be construed as biased.

BLOCK CHAIN
Imagine a bank before computers. All transactions are written in a ledger (book with line and columns) using a pen. The ledger and pen are the technology, what is written in the ledger is the use of the tech. The ledger contains every transaction that has occurred in the past. This has the following issues:

1. Availability - you cannot see how much money you have if the bank is closed.
2. Redundancy - if the bank burns down they have no record of how much money you have.
3. Security - someone could break into the bank and adjust one of the previous ledger lines to add a zero, invalidating subsequent lines.

Block chain is the paper ledger and pen, but in the computing realm. So blockchain gets around the above issues by:

1. The blockchain is public, everyone can read it at any time.
2. The blockchain is distributed, there is not only one single copy.
3. Blockchain has "unbreakable" (notice the quotes) encryption. Old records cannot be changed.

So in general, blockchain is a public, distributed and secure ledger containing all historical transactions. This is the technology.

NFTs
So here we start getting in use case of blockchain.
So imagine in the example above, instead of a bank using a ledger record financial transactions, a government uses it to record house addresses for tax purposes with the corresponding owner. Each row in the ledger would contain a transaction of the house (purchase/sale) with the corresponding parties. The ledger would tell you who owns/ lives at every house and you could go back and see every previous owner and how long they were there, etc.
You can see that the same could apply to unique assets in Elite as well. A unique ship in ED could be given an asset number and traded. The trading of the asset (NFT) would be recorded in blockchain.
So NFT is one use case of blockchain. We are using the blockchain to record the transactions of assets.

Cryptocurrencies
So this is one use case of NFT. This is where my knowledge start getting thin(er).
Now the cryptobros are burning up their GFX cards doing some calculation (not actually looked into why) and are getting paid for doing it. Instead of being paid via Paypal in USD/GBP, they are accepting payment in bitcoin. As they receive bitcoin, the transaction is added to the ledger, like in the example above with the old bank. So basically their digital bank balance goes up, recorded in the blockchain. Each fraction of bitcoin is an NFT (an asset), that can be traded to another person and that recorded in the blockchain.
Why do people bother? Bitcoin is a currency not tied to any real value and swings in value. People want to buy low (or mine) and sell high to make free money.

So I find blockchain and NFTs interesting at a tech level. I don't find cryptocurrencies very interesting.
I am sure there are others here that understand this way better than I do. [Edit] And please, if anything is factually wrong, please flag it up. I would be interested in how close I am to reality.

WOW, do I sound like a Cryptobro? First time I have heard the term and as an old man coming up to a half century of age, I do smile as being cast as such!

 

[Ian Doncaster]

So NFT is one use case of blockchain. We are using the blockchain to record the transactions of assets.

Yes - and here's where the problem with the technology comes in.

For anything other than certain specialised scams, we already have a well-established technology which can store distributed tamper-resistant backed-up highly-available data ... it's called "a database". People moved their accounting ledgers, ownership records, etc. to them decades ago. A lot of my ownership of property - bank balances, house, etc. - is not proven because "I'm holding it right now" but because a database says it's mine.

(And sure, someone could change the database to say it wasn't. Someone could beat me up in the street and steal my stuff too. There are social reasons it doesn't normally happen)

(not actually looked into why)

So this is where the "advantage" of a blockchain over a database comes in - in theory.

A database has a centralised set of access control rules. They're variable, but ultimately there is some person or process making manual decision over who gets to read and write.
Normally, this is A Good Thing.

But if you're in a position where you don't want that sort of central control, you need to have a way of making those decisions democratically among all the participants instead. And if you're also wanting it to be anonymous or pseudonymous, you need a way to stop people just creating a million sock-puppets to get extra votes.

So the cryptocurrency solution is (loosely - there are various ways this is achieved) "one vote per graphics card". And for the first year or so of crypto, that basically worked out - the hobbyist participants had a few votes each and had a nice distributed system going. And then some people thought "what if I spent my profits on more graphics cards" and an arms race got started. By now, of course, the whole thing is basically run by a couple of cartels who can afford entire warehouses of graphics cards or other specialised hardware ... and everyone else participating just has to trust them to be honest about it. So it's not even got the advantage in practice because the economies of scale work in favour of centralisation (as they pretty much always do)

So, to go from our original standard ownership database to a distributed crypto one:
- they've had to spend the power of a medium-sized country to stop the other people with graphics cards from being able to outvote them
- they've moved the required trust from a bunch of flawed but at least somewhat regulated banks, civil services, registries and so on which have had centuries of refinement to a bunch of weird technologists and the scammers surrounding them
- they've lost a lot of actually useful features in the process, like being able to reverse a transaction in case of a typo (or scam), or being able to process enough ownership changes at a time to have actual real-world applications

You can take away the graphics card arms-race, and go back to a centrally-controlled permissions model, where a small set of named individuals or organisations have the power to approve writes to the blockchain and no-one else can. But then you've basically just got a weird and somewhat inefficient database, so you might as well just use a proper database for the actual tech, and have a blockchain in a cupboard to show the venture capitalists when you need funding.

A unique ship in ED could be given an asset number and traded. The trading of the asset (NFT) would be recorded in blockchain.

So here's an example. All ships in ED already have a unique entry in a Frontier-run database describing them. It'll have a primary key which is probably an integer, so there's the asset number.

Frontier could allow trading of ships between players in the same way it allows trading of Odyssey materials between players: you press a "trade" button and it changes the owner_id value in the database from your account to mine. No blockchain in sight, because what's the point? There's no need for a public ledger outside of Frontier for who owns which ship - partly because it'd be a data protection nightmare, and partly because it's not like you can fly the ships anywhere except ED so who else needs to know? - and there's certainly no point in decentralising who can edit the ownership database.

If we didn't already have databases, blockchain might be useful, until someone thought "what if we managed this centrally" and invented the database, leading to million-fold improvements in speed, energy use, parallelism and safety measures. Since we already have databases it's a solution looking for a problem.

 

[Kzak]

NFTs?

Not even once. No thanks.

 

[Guyperson]

An NFT is just some unique data you've associated with a specific transaction in a blockchain ledger. Since the transaction is cryptographically signed to your wallet it serves as "proof" that data is yours. The NFT isn't even the actual picture, video or whatever that's being "sold" though, since that much data won't fit in a blockchain transaction. It instead has to be an abstraction that represents the item, like a URL or the MD5 hash of a file.

eg: If you send me 10 bitcoin I'll send you back 0.000000001 bitcoin with the MD5 of my forum avatar attached so you can tell everyone you own it.

If that sounds like snake oil to you it's because it is. The entire ecosystem is unregulated and ownership unenforceable.

 

[Fizzatron]

You don't need NFTs to do that though. It is literally more effort for zero gain (and plenty of detriment). Steam has trading and a whole market... without any blockchain or cryptocrap in sight.

Wouldn't the Steam Market be something similar to NFTs though? I don't know that they're using any block chain mechanics but effectively Steam is acting as the central bank and facilitating the trades, though of course in a closed system.

 

[Jmanis]

Yes - and here's where the problem with the technology comes in.

For anything other than certain specialised scams, we already have a well-established technology which can store distributed tamper-resistant backed-up highly-available data ... it's called "a database". People moved their accounting ledgers, ownership records, etc. to them decades ago. A lot of my ownership of property - bank balances, house, etc. - is not proven because "I'm holding it right now" but because a database says it's mine.

(And sure, someone could change the database to say it wasn't. Someone could beat me up in the street and steal my stuff too. There are social reasons it doesn't normally happen)


So this is where the "advantage" of a blockchain over a database comes in - in theory.

A database has a centralised set of access control rules. They're variable, but ultimately there is some person or process making manual decision over who gets to read and write.
Normally, this is A Good Thing.

But if you're in a position where you don't want that sort of central control, you need to have a way of making those decisions democratically among all the participants instead. And if you're also wanting it to be anonymous or pseudonymous, you need a way to stop people just creating a million sock-puppets to get extra votes.

So the cryptocurrency solution is (loosely - there are various ways this is achieved) "one vote per graphics card". And for the first year or so of crypto, that basically worked out - the hobbyist participants had a few votes each and had a nice distributed system going. And then some people thought "what if I spent my profits on more graphics cards" and an arms race got started. By now, of course, the whole thing is basically run by a couple of cartels who can afford entire warehouses of graphics cards or other specialised hardware ... and everyone else participating just has to trust them to be honest about it. So it's not even got the advantage in practice because the economies of scale work in favour of centralisation (as they pretty much always do)

So, to go from our original standard ownership database to a distributed crypto one:
- they've had to spend the power of a medium-sized country to stop the other people with graphics cards from being able to outvote them
- they've moved the required trust from a bunch of flawed but at least somewhat regulated banks, civil services, registries and so on which have had centuries of refinement to a bunch of weird technologists and the scammers surrounding them
- they've lost a lot of actually useful features in the process, like being able to reverse a transaction in case of a typo (or scam), or being able to process enough ownership changes at a time to have actual real-world applications

You can take away the graphics card arms-race, and go back to a centrally-controlled permissions model, where a small set of named individuals or organisations have the power to approve writes to the blockchain and no-one else can. But then you've basically just got a weird and somewhat inefficient database, so you might as well just use a proper database for the actual tech, and have a blockchain in a cupboard to show the venture capitalists when you need funding.


So here's an example. All ships in ED already have a unique entry in a Frontier-run database describing them. It'll have a primary key which is probably an integer, so there's the asset number.

Frontier could allow trading of ships between players in the same way it allows trading of Odyssey materials between players: you press a "trade" button and it changes the owner_id value in the database from your account to mine. No blockchain in sight, because what's the point? There's no need for a public ledger outside of Frontier for who owns which ship - partly because it'd be a data protection nightmare, and partly because it's not like you can fly the ships anywhere except ED so who else needs to know? - and there's certainly no point in decentralising who can edit the ownership database.

If we didn't already have databases, blockchain might be useful, until someone thought "what if we managed this centrally" and invented the database, leading to million-fold improvements in speed, energy use, parallelism and safety measures. Since we already have databases it's a solution looking for a problem.

Yeah, it's definitely a solution in search of a problem which isn't already filled by more straightforward technologies that replace exponential cost with trusting a couple people.

 

[Cohen the Worrior]

So NFTs coming soon to Star Citizen then...

Oh for sure.

 

[hems303]

NFTs remind me of this:

Source: https://youtu.be/sehmmzbi3UI?t=1463

Thanks for sharing video... I've always thought Rob should have more exposure (with his main messages), it was a shame he declined a spot on the BBC's Question Time.. it would have 'upset' a few authority 'nobs' (had to edit description)... probably wouldn't have been broadcasted as not live (even tho BBC say it is!)

 

[Morbad]

Correct, and until they change this problem with emissions, anyone who is into crypto/NFTs is a terrible person not worth the air they breath.

When the emissions are not a problem, I'll shut up.

This is profoundly ignorant and more than a little hypocritical.

What do you spend energy on and what makes it more justifiable than what I spend my energy on?

For the record, most of my greenhouse gas emissions come from my gas stove (which despite being modern still leaks methane as all gas stoves do), which is currently impractical for me to replace. I don't own a car. I haven't flown on an aircraft in almost fifteen years. My electricity, of which I've pretty continually used about ten megawatt-hours a year for mining for the last decade or so, has generally been hydroelectric or nuclear. Also, when I shut down my miners to play a game on one of my systems, their power consumption doubles, because I run a moderate OC to game (in search of maximum performance) and a massive underclock to mine (because the algorithms involved are solely memory dependent and do not need much actual GPU power).

Source?

The fundamental implications of the difference between proof-of-work and proof-of-stake.

NFTs are predominantly exchanged on about half a dozen different blockchains. Of those, only one (which is admittedly the largest by a wide margin, in terms of NFT transactions) is proof-of-work and is in the middle of a transition to proof-of-stake. The rest have never been proof-of-work and have never featured mining.

So the cryptocurrency solution is (loosely - there are various ways this is achieved) "one vote per graphics card". And for the first year or so of crypto, that basically worked out - the hobbyist participants had a few votes each and had a nice distributed system going. And then some people thought "what if I spent my profits on more graphics cards" and an arms race got started. By now, of course, the whole thing is basically run by a couple of cartels who can afford entire warehouses of graphics cards or other specialised hardware ... and everyone else participating just has to trust them to be honest about it. So it's not even got the advantage in practice because the economies of scale work in favour of centralisation (as they pretty much always do)

There was already an arms race before graphics cards could even be used to mine BTC (the first and by far largest crypto blockchain), and indeed such an arms race is (as you note) part of what makes it difficult to attack large proof-of-work blockchains. It was always an inevitable, intentional, feature of a fixed issuance and a dynamic difficulty. What was evidently not forseen by BTCs original creators is that consumer hardware would be quickly replaced with specialized hardware that forced centralization due to economies of scale.

BTC became large enough to justify the use of SHA-256 specific FPGAs and then ASICs almost a decade ago. No one has (profitably) mined BTC on a video card since. Ethereum is still mined on GPUs, however. Both are significantly centralized, but this is far less true for Ethereum due to multi-function consumer hardware still being profitable.

You are mistaken about the trust component, however. A very fundamental aspect of a functional distributed blockchain network is that the consensus needs to be trustless. Unless more than half of the network voting power falls into the hands of one entity, this can be assured, and it's every participants best interest to prevent such concentrations of hashing power (any realistic doubt about network security destroys the value of the network and everything using it), unless one is deliberately trying to destroy it. Most large blockchains are also transparent, so it's easy to see where validators are, and would be extremely difficult to hide the sort of collusion required to perform a majority attack on any large blockchain network. The only component that requires significant trust is the algorithm and implementation of the blockchain itself, not it's participants. Major blockchains are entirely public and constantly scoured for signs of issues that would jeopordize the assets of those that have invested in them (which are increasingly the same banks and institutions that regulate more conventional markets).

You can take away the graphics card arms-race, and go back to a centrally-controlled permissions model, where a small set of named individuals or organisations have the power to approve writes to the blockchain and no-one else can.

Proof-of-stake doesn't suggest or mandate a reversion to the sort of centralization you imply here. Some centralization is inevitable irrespective almost irrespective of consensus mechanism, and has to be in order to incentivize node operators, but the systems work as long as no one can control a majority.

Yeah, it's definitely a solution in search of a problem which isn't already filled by more straightforward technologies that replace exponential cost with trusting a couple people.

I think you're underestimating both the cost of those conventional systems and the value of trustlessness.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Imagine you’re married to a beautiful woman, but she’s always sleeping around.

Your marriage certificate is the NFT.

for that to work would you not need to be the pimp and getting paid whilst she sleeps around (now this is something I never thought I was say on here )

I do think crypto gets a bad rap, or more accurately I think there are a lot of double standards..... ie gold uses far more resources to mine than crypto.
I mine crypto, but due to my solar and my house batteries in summer I use very little electricity (and what I do use is overnight when it is cleanest) and in winter I need to heat my home office anyway so my 3090 gaming pc is essentially a very expensive 400w heater which also makes me money.

back to gold..... other than the small amount used in electronics, gold only has value because people say it does. why not just wear wooden jewelry ..... anyone who chastises bitcoin miners for needlessly harming the environment whilst buying their partner a gold weeding ring or a diamond necklace are surely being hypocrites no?

soon it won't be so much of an issue as crypto moves to proof of stake rather than proof of work but in a way once this happens it does lose it major advantage

crypto changes the balance of power of who controls the wealth and that scares old money institutions like banks.

and as for crypto allowing bad people to launder money...... last I looked money laundering is quite rife with normal currency too..... didn't barclays bank have some serious slapped wrists over dodgy dealings?.

as for NFTs and games in general I am worried. just like I was worried about lootboxes and microtransactions and sadly that came to pass. what started as a way to get things quickly but was still doable in game later became in-game stuff being earned in game being removed and only purchasable and even worse golden ammo etc.
that could easily happen with crypto in game.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Unless more than half of the network voting power falls into the hands of one entity, this can be assured, and it's every participants best interest to prevent such concentrations of hashing power (any realistic doubt about network security destroys the value of the network and everything using it), unless one is deliberately trying to destroy it.

Then that's not really "trustless" in any meaningful sense, is it - or to the extent that it is, it doesn't differ from conventional banking.

The top three or four mining cartels in Bitcoin could between them easily command >50% of the voting power, and are run by people who (like the top players in any industry!) know each other. Obviously they take great pains to say that while they could do that, and make arbitrary changes, they won't. Because if they did, it would ... destroy the trust in the network. Similarly my bank could just choose to change the number in my account to an arbitrarily different one. But if they did, that would again destroy trust.

Similarly, in a purely technical sense, I could create a fork of Bitcoin tomorrow that had slightly different rules, maybe fixed some technical issues. But no-one would use it, because the trust in the system wouldn't be there. (Of course, when Ethereum changed not the blockchain itself but the software interpreting it to reverse the DAO hack, that did cause a longer-lasting split. But the people who'd taken unilateral action via the interpreting software rather than the cryptographically-secured data ended up "trusted" to continue to be in charge of the system in practice - the fork where that change wasn't made is far less popular)

If you've got a system which relies on - if not trust in individuals, trust that the generality of powerful players will behave broadly to preserve trust in the system - that's not actually any different to what we already have far more cheaply and efficiently with banking and governments. (And sure, I don't trust them either, but at least the surrounding institutions have a few centuries of debugging to remove some issues)

 

[xzanfr]

Shove off with NFTs.

I don't give a damn about the money.

But the emissions they put out is ridiculous.

Last I checked there is a real need to be cutting emissions, but as soon as people see a chance to make a quick buck? That goes out the window.

Remember: Money is worthless if nobody is alive.

I design buildings for a living, adding in methods to reduce the carbon footprint, reduce emissions and procure from sustainable sources only to find them all cut to save money.
It's heartbreaking.

When it comes to money the environment always loses, and it's the same with crypto.
Ultimately let the miners spend there pretend money in a destroyed world, they'll never be able to buy back the environment.

 

[Morbad]

I do think crypto gets a bad rap, or more accurately I think there are a lot of double standards..... ie gold uses far more resources to mine than crypto.
I mine crypto, but due to my solar and my house batteries in summer I use very little electricity (and what I do use is overnight when it is cleanest) and in winter I need to heat my home office anyway so my 3090 gaming pc is essentially a very expensive 400w heater which also makes me money.

back to gold..... other than the small amount used in electronics, gold only has value because people say it does. why not just wear wooden jewelry ..... anyone who chastises bitcoin miners for needlessly harming the environment whilst buying their partner a gold weeding ring or a diamond necklace are surely being hypocrites no?

Most people with severe and specific aversion to crypto don't know how money, of any kind, works.

soon it won't be so much of an issue as crypto moves to proof of stake rather than proof of work but in a way once this happens it does lose it major advantage

As strong as the trend toward proof-of-stake is, proof-of-work isn't going to vanish, both because of entrenched interests and because it actually has certain advantages.

crypto changes the balance of power of who controls the wealth and that scares old money institutions like banks.

Eh, I used to be of the crypto anarchist persuasion and got into crypto due to my issues with the fundamentally inegalatarian realities of centralized monetary systems, but cryptocurrency never really lived up to it's potential here, and rather than upending 'old money institutions', was largely co-opted by them. Which makes the criticisms of crypto even more hypocritical for those that are accepting of the status quo.

While there are still some progressive niches where crypto proves useful, I'm mostly use it as a very mundane part of my investment portfolios at this point.

and as for crypto allowing bad people to launder money...... last I looked money laundering is quite rife with normal currency too..... didn't barclays bank have some serious slapped wrists over dodgy dealings?

These concerns are a flimsy strawman and scapegoat. It was certainly a boon for ransomware, but beyond that, almost any illicit activity is no easier to do via crypto. Indeed, one of my biggest criticisms of the major blockchains is how poor their levels of anonymity and privacy are.

If you've got a system which relies on - if not trust in individuals, trust that the generality of powerful players will behave broadly to preserve trust in the system - that's not actually any different to what we already have far more cheaply and efficiently with banking and governments. (And sure, I don't trust them either, but at least the surrounding institutions have a few centuries of debugging to remove some issues)

There is nothing more trustworthy than people's self-serving natures. Very few entities able to amass significant wealth, power, or influence got where they are by being willing to cast those things aside on a whim.

The big distinction between a cryptocurrency built on a public blockchain and a traditional bank is that the former relies on a bunch of self-serving competitive entities, that have to publicly demonstrate they play by the same rules as everyone else, but the latter, who are equally self-serving, can more freely collude, misrepresent, and act with bias, due to a naturally more opaque system. A public blockchain only works if the entire ledger that constitutes it is freely available. Banks can and do have secrets, and extracting the truth from them is far more work than interpreting even a very large blockchain.

I'm also doubtful of the claim of greater efficiency of conventional banking, which relies upon printing, transporting, and securing vast sums of physical notes, then enforcing a variety of monopolies (the prime of which is taxation) to ensure that money is both broadly accepted and not overdrawn to the extent it would turn the fractional reserve systems they use into an unstable house of cards. Claims of superior efficiency has to be more specific to be falsifiable--focusing on something like transaction costs, for example--but even then that misses much of the big picture of how these blockchains are actually used (BTC and ETH, for example, aren't predominantly used as 'digital cash', and the transaction fees aren't detrimental to the niches they've adopted).

 

[Morbad]

I design buildings for a living, adding in methods to reduce the carbon footprint, reduce emissions and procure from sustainable sources only to find them all cut to save money.
It's heartbreaking.

When it comes to money the environment always loses, and it's the same with crypto.
Ultimately let the miners spend there pretend money in a destroyed world, they'll never be able to buy back the environment.

As long as sustainable energy is appreciably more costly, it's going to be hard to get people and communities to favor it. Likewise, if your efficient buildings cost more, that's a good way to ensure they don't get built as designed. The solution is to make harming the environment more expensive than preserving it, and not just for those looking forward to tomorrow, but for the shortsighted who only care about today.

Regardless, crypto has generally favored clean energy and has become a lot cleaner in general since China banned mining and the US and Canada became the primary destinations for miners. Indeed, the majority of BTC and ETH hashrate at this point is using sustainable energy...because it's cheap in the areas that are now the overall most economical hosts for them.

On a more personal level, without my modest profits from mining, my environmental impact would be far more negative than it currently is. I might need to get a real job that could even mandate a commute. I'd certainly have less surplus income and be less able to prioritize sustainability.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Ultimately let the miners spend there pretend money in a destroyed world, they'll never be able to buy back the environment.

you paint with quite a wide brush. it's like prats who claim they think miners don't deserve to live like some loons on this forum have said.....

I mine.... but I use my gaming pc to do it, I don't expect to make billions but it covers my gaming hobby .... but I have solar and a home battery. in summer I am still a net producer of electricity and in winter I need the only waste which comes from mining .... heat ..anyway...
I am certain some of the holier than tho people happy to say they don't think I am worth the air that I breathe have at least as large a carbon footprint that I have. possibly bigger.

regarding houses. as a country we are pretty good on renewable energy but our houses are really poorly insulated. I get it for old buildings but there really is no excuse for new builds. this needs government intervention to force the issues. houses CAN be built carbon neutral,.arguably even carbon negative. I don't understand why all new houses do not have to have solar and a home battery. going forward it will make an excellent use for old electric car batteries.

if solar was built into new houses it would not cost much and would even mean fewer tiles needed if done properly

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

SO...I'm not that educated on NFTs and Cryptocurrency and Blockchains and such. I've seen some of our youtube creators talk about NFTs, read the news with the likes of Ubisoft and such, and saw a few jokes here and there about Elite and NFTs.

I've got a question and forgive me if it seems foolish. It is in fact ignorant - in that I don't know - which is why I'm asking:
How would NFTs be incorporated into Elite?

I'm not asking if they should be. I understand that can lead to very heated discussion. I'm just interested in the 'how'. How does it work? What does it do for me, the player, and for FDev, the developer/owner of the game? Feel free to describe other games, too, but I'm mostly curious how it might work in this sort of gaming space. To my knowledge, FDev has made no announcement regarding incorporating NFTs so this really is just my curiosity. I'm assuming a game like Elite wouldn't necessarily be the ideal target, anyways, but I dunno?

I sort-of understand the economic possibilities in games with player-created assets, such as Minecraft, Roblox, or even shooter games (trading skins and such)...but I want to emphasize sort-of understand. So, for the experts on how all this newfangled stuff works...please fill me in! I'd be delighted to be pointed to resources, too (wiki articles and the like) if that would be easier than explaining here. Thanks for the assist, commanders!

Just to let you know what NFTs actually are;-

To be honest, all it does is create rarity amongst DLC (Skins, in-cockpit cosmetics, etc) and if the user can't sell the DLC and NFT together, then it's useless.

 

[Frankymole]

So NFTs (and the entire crypto space, really, unless you count funding ransomware gangs) are entirely smoke and mirrors and to the extent that they do something, other technologies already do it considerably better. Its very difficult to explain what they actually are, because any actual explanation runs into the "but that makes no sense" barrier.

The point is for them to make no sense, because that means only the truly gullible buy them, and they're the best marks.

As far as what they do:
- imagine you had a piece of paper which said "the Mona Lisa is in the Louvre" on it.
- imagine the piece of paper also had a unique serial number on it.
- congratulations, you now have a low-tech NFT of the Mona Lisa.
- now set fire to a rainforest and steal all the graphics cards from gamers to get the proper high-tech effect.
- if you can get someone to buy your bit of paper for actual money (just the paper, nothing to do with the Mona Lisa itself) you win
- you might have to hype up the whole concept and claim that your piece of paper is the Mona Lisa before someone takes the bait

Now, a sensible person would ask "why would someone buy that paper for any amount of money at all?" and "couldn't I just make my own piece of paper with the words Mona Lisa on if I wanted one of those?". Great - we don't want sensible buyers, we want people who are sure that pieces of paper with the names and locations of artwork are the next big thing and will give us lots of actual money for them. (While I'm here, does anyone want to buy a bit of paper with the words Mona Lisa on for £10,000? I'll throw in free postage!)

Not quite the right analogy, but close. The Mona Lisa is publicly viewable to anyone who visits the Louvre in opening hours, whereas the dodgy piece of artwork/artefact/whatever would be more akin to something hidden in a vault that no-one could ever see unless the "owner" lets them.