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NFT: non-fungible token. Unity and NFTs

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by AlanMattano, Mar 9, 2021.

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  1. AlanMattano

    AlanMattano

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  2. andyz

    andyz

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    NFTs: energy wasting, copyright busting, arguably valueless tokens
    lets not connect to Unity
     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2021
  3. sxa

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    Sod that, lets integrate NFT's with lootboxes and microtransactions, tied to the cost of gamestop shares.

    Or have EA already patented that?
     
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  4. JohnnyA

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    How does an NFT waste energy? It's generally not something that has a proof of work requirement? Minting will typically take much less computational power than what you just spent looking at this website. In a modern protocol like Immutable X the work to confirm ownership is exceedingly small and it doesn't need to be done all the time (in gaming typically when you start a gaming session). I suppose technically it takes more cycles than writing to a DB, but in the scope of everything else going on in a game this is very small.

    NFTs are arguably valueless, for sure, but so is a set of pokemon cards (its just paper), or a rich high-level character in an MMO. Yet people still pay for these things.

    In gaming NFTs give players a way to own things outside of the control of the games publisher. The primary benefit is that they can trade it however they like, including for real world money. Players (at least the small but growing subset familiar with crypto) seem to like this.

    Even if the game dies its possible that these tokens will live on, that could simply be as a tradable much like a baseball card, but the richer possibilities open up when others build games using the same token. If a popular but no longer profitable game dies, it is entirely possible that a new studio or a collective of the players could ressurect a version of the game (private server), a clone of the game, or a different but similar game, where players would have all the same items they had in the original game.

    Finally if you are building games, like presumably the majority of people here, the crypto market is a huge potential source of funding and NFTs are the most logical/natural way to add crypto in to a game. There's a bunch of cashed up young people looking for things to do with their ETH, as well as a large set of insutional investors looking to find the next big thing. So lets connect it to Unity as much as we can!

    ---

    @AlanMattano thanks for the video, nice work!
     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2021
  5. Murgilod

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    I'm sure this crypto money laundering/pyramid scheme hybrid will be different from all the others.
     
  6. ippdev

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    That makes it different from a federal reserve dollar in what manner? Money tokens have always properly been an exchange of energy expended. In this regards Bitcoin is a more fungible commodity than a FRN as it takes the same energy to create a one dollar denomination as a 100 dollar denominated FRN. The FRN is a definite pyramid scheme and this is well documented. If you make the claim Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme you should have to back that with citations. Note...snark will not qualify as a citation.
     
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  7. Murgilod

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    NFTs have been, near exclusively, used to shift money around specifically because of their ability to have a valued token exchanged with no practical means of tracking. There are already numerous examples of this happening to artists who are hopping on the NFT art train and we're even seeing people tokenize existing pieces to control distribution even if they don't own it. All of these are things that need to be addressed with NFTs and there's no real approach to that being done at all.

    Then there are the environmental issues, because NFT really doesn't work unless it's attached to a currency, and that means that you're bound to currencies people use (all currently proof of work with proof of stake "coming soon" for the last several years), or you're going to use an obscure currency (leaving your market open to easy manipulation), or you're going to have to do an ICO (at which point you are better off using a centralized service), or you're going to have to use an entire controlled market for the underlying NFT system (at which point you, in fact, have a centralized system).

    NFTs are a solution to an invented problem being sold by the people who stand to benefit the most off the idea and tech heads are jumping on board because it's a shiny new tech and it's like everyone just found a new API that looks neat but has no practical application.
     
  8. ippdev

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    I also share many of the ideas behind your premises. The trade in crap modern art worse than the worst programmers art for millions is obviously token exchange for a drug deal or human trafficking pay down. However..in a digital medium where many incredibly beautiful artworks solely exist having that NFT alongside the digital work as granted to THE CREATOR of that work gives it provenance much as an Escher print from the original copperplate is worth more than a printing of an Escher print. So there is that side to it in that one of the digitally creative geniuses can release work, folks can have it as a desktop etc. but the original digital certificate for the non replicated - prior to the first replication - is attached to a specific originating set of bits and bytes. That becomes worth what the market will bear and whatever privileges that can provide.

    Environmental issues? pfftt. Do you have any idea how many ergs it takes to print a palette of FRN's..or keep PornHub or Twitter running for 24 hours...a rhetorical aside. I live in the woods. If you don't beat it back daily it will swallow the roads and house in months.
     
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  9. JohnnyA

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    The ability to assert ownership without relying on a central authority is useful. If you don't agree then there's no further conversation to be had.

    Here's an example to ponder, imagine for example the domain name system, except instead of relying on a central authority you rely on an NFT. It exhibits all of the same behaviours without requiring a controlling body. If thats not a move to a more free internet then I don't know what is.
     
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  10. MikeUpchat

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    Been looking into the idea of adding NFT to my game but I can't get over the feeling from what I have read that on the whole it is seen as a some what iffy and shadey thing. Are there any positive articles out there to read about this? Does Unity have any ideas on the subject?
     
  11. MadeFromPolygons

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    I never really understand the point, like, you can mint as many NFTs against the same object as you like - sort of removes the point in my opinion.
     
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  12. Murgilod

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    You can't assert anything, that has been one of the exact problems. Not only that, but there is no "free internet" in this situation, and blockchain has conceptually proven itself to be a poor solution to any of this because of its god awful performance to the point it is part of the environmental concern.
     
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  13. ippdev

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    I imagine since it is a representation of work and value of the work involved as dictated by the marketplace that as with any representational currency that points at a fixed quantity commodity that it would water the value down. The environmental concerns are broached by the same clowns that control the fiat printing presses and processing said tree, mineral and hydrocarbon based notes of debt. Go figure.
     
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  14. Murgilod

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    Yeah, so obviously the best option is to add more systems where a single transaction has the same environmental impact as idling a car for 40 years.
     
  15. Joe-Censored

    Joe-Censored

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    Crypto mining is the most cost effective method to heat your home ever created though.... :p
     
  16. ippdev

    ippdev

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    Prove it. For example, an 8 cylinder, 4 cylinder, rotary engine, it's displacement and idle speed, year, make and model, diesel, gas or electric? How much does your development card use in watt-hours per year?
     
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  17. JohnnyA

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    In a gaming context you can't. Minting a new token has no value if the game doesn't honor it.

    Go have a look at Gods Unchained if you want to see the idea in a released game: https://godsunchained.com/
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2021
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  18. JohnnyA

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    Layer 2 solutions such as Immutable X have comparable computing costs to traditional solutions such as writing to a database, have zero gas cost for most frequent operations, and are provably as secure and decentralised as the underlying chain (etherium in their case).

    As to asserting ownership you can assert ownership of a token. There are no problems with that. You seem to be focusing on the idea of ownership of a digital image, where provenance is the ony thing that matters, and it can get pretty tricky, but aren't we are talking here about using NFTs for games?

    The game client/server absolutely can assert that an NFT was minted by itself and is now owned by some other wallet attached to a player account.
     
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2021
  19. JohnnyA

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    This whole argument that X was used for something bad being justification that X is inherently bad is kind of silly. Its new technology, it has issues to work through, it may not revolutionize anything.

    But lets be pragmatic, right now, it is an extremely good way to get funding for, and build a community for, your game.

    From an idea in October, to an internal POC in November (I did the POC in Unity ... but we have now moved to Unreal) to a private fund raising round in Feb we raised 5 million dollars and now have 10000 people on our discord channel. Our public sales is expected to raise a lot more.

    If using NFTs instead of a DB for your stats/items can get you here, isn't it worth a shot?
     
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  20. JohnnyA

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    https://www.forbes.com/sites/abramb...ming-most-expensive-nft-ever/?sh=3e7d1b052448

    The only thing that this NFT gets you is provenance, which is effectively the ability to say that you own the original.

    But is this any different to owning the Mona Lisa? It's not like you can't create a recreation that is indiscernible from the original painting (at least to the naked eye), albeit with a little more effort than copying a digital image.

    To be clear, personally I don't think there is much utility in the art space... but some people like to be able to know/say they own the original...

    --

    PS Excuse multiple posts, in my defence they were on different topics, but I will stop now!
     
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2021
  21. Ryiah

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    Everyone keeps commenting in my direction that mining is bad for the environment when I bring up the topic and mention that I have been mining off and on to help subsidize the cost of my hardware. I don't have numbers for what you're asking for but I was able to find some interesting numbers.

    According to the following article Bitcoin has an economic cost of 37 million metric tons of carbon emissions. My main complaint with articles like this one is that they don't provide any real comparisions. I don't want to know it's comparable to New Zealand. I want comparisons to alternative activities.

    https://www.mic.com/p/bitcoin-minin...onment-heres-what-we-can-do-about-it-59671249

    Speaking of which we're provided with a number but not provided any context to whether it's a large number or a small number. A quick search came up with the following article which says that the average passenger vehicle emits 4.6 metric tons of carbon emissions per year. So mining is the equivalent of 8 million cars.

    https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle

    Gaming is my main alternative here because it utilizes the same hardware that mining would and I found the following article on it which mentions total carbon emissions as well as carbon emissions of specific games.

    Gaming is not a 24/7 activity unlike mining yet it's estimated to be equivalent to 5 million cars per year.

    https://www.saveonenergy.com/uk/environmental-impact-of-video-games/
     
  22. grobonom

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    OMG !!!!!

    I feel old ! :O

    WTF with those modern things that offer money for nothing ?
    an ugly duck, a S***ty fox, and a 10 faces PL logo, sold ( and logically generate money ? )

    Am sorry, i simply do not understand !

    Money is basically NOTHING BUT human life time. Some speculate to make more money but do nothing else than stealing real humans life time....

    how can this be ?
    Or maybe eth is worth nothing more than few bit on a server ?

    It's now a bit more than 2 years i work daily on this on unity and blender:
    https://blenderartists.org/t/carcassonne-medieval-city/1114754/330

    should i become billionaire ? i guess not ^^

    Is this a dumb ppl magnet ?

    I really feel too old for understanding anything about this but i know 1 thing:
    money is easy for only stealers ^^

    Happy unitying !
     
  23. angrypenguin

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    I suspect because there are many times more people doing it. They may use the same hardware, but they're not really comparable use cases. But also, measurement of this stuff is notoriously inconsistent, because there are a heck of a lot of variables and no standardisation of how that should be handled.

    The thing I don't understand about NFTs is how they solve anything practical. I'm not saying they don't, I'm saying I don't know either way. I get that if I'm playing a game and a random drop gives me The Unique Sword of Uniqueness that it can also make an NFT which shows that I'm the One True Owner of that Unique Sword of Uniqueness. That same NFT can be represented in a blockchain or similar, with one or the other being updated every time ownership transfers from one entity to another.

    What doesn't make sense to me is why anyone cares. I mean, sure, we can update the NFT whenever I pass the sword along to someone else to show philosophical providence of that particular instance of the sword. But if this is in a decentralised system that in no way stops someone else from making another instance of the sword with its own NFT. Sure it's not the "original" but does that really change anything? The nature of digital goods surely rules out the value people see in having something "original"?

    And if it's not in a decentralised system then we already have tools which can do all of this trivially easily. So I can imagine an NFT being used to, say, represent ownership of a plot of land on a Minecraft server or whatnot. But if that plot of land is a persistent thing then by necessity there's already a server which could be tracking that if it's a thing people wanted to design in.
     
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  24. Antypodish

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    Yeah, it is really easier more optimal and cheaper, to use classic data base approach, where the uniqueness of owned thing, is just an ID. No need for chains or anything.

    I am pretty sure Second Life is not using any chains tech, to specify uniqueness of bought items. Same with Amazon, or other other retailers.
    But for most, buying copy of monalisa painting, at fraction of the price, is equally satisfactory than having original (probably?) costing millions. Question is, who really smart is here. At the end of the day, many creates duplicates and sells them. No other person will be able to identify its origin and uniqueness by just lloking at it. Unless looking at creator info.

    So that chain uniqness solves really little to nothing here, in terms of copyable digital goods. So many and relatively easy ways, to duplicate assets. For example I don't need factory to build copy of a real car. I doubt chains would at all affect asset flips and resolving steeling assets or part / whole games.

    For original item owner like cars and paintings, it is mostly for tax avoidance and converting cash into assets and back. Some sure may be true collectors, then it is a bit different story.
     
    Last edited: Mar 14, 2021
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  25. ippdev

    ippdev

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    I find it amusing that folks insist the only use is in gaming, make up a useless scenario to contrive said opinion out of and become smugly self satisfied the have demolished the NFT. News is that an NFT was sold at Christies as provenance to an original digital work for 63+ million bucks. The notion that it is somehow a factory stamp is wrong as it's use case is precisely the opposite. To represent the unique digital copy as the authentic one. As well as the notion you could replace the functionality via standard tie to the game data base. If that database does not exist in 50 years the NFT will still exist on the blockchain and authenticated.
     
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  26. ippdev

    ippdev

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    You would not create the NFT provenance for the Sword of Uniqueness. It would be given with the sword by the game owners. If someone else popped up in your MMO with a Sword of Uniqueness they could instantly be cognized as a bogus claimer. If someone down the road tried to auction off the digital asset from that hit game 50 years back that lots of wealthy folks are nostalgic about and had the NFT for it the buyer could be certain that the ephemeral connection they wished for in the collectors item is there. Tom Brady's rookie card was auctioned for 1.3 million in the last few weeks. It is a proven scarce item with many people wanting to own it.
     
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  27. Antypodish

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    And who suppose to store that?
    See there is major difference between currency in block chain and the digital asset.
    In case of currency, you hold the value of transaction and some related details.
    In case of the assets, you would need store whole asset in the chain, to validate it.
    Means storing chain of textures, images, photos, meshes, animations, videos, games and other digital assets.

    BTC block chain already is weighted in GBs, 120GB+ in 2017. Probably TB by now (haven't checked). For wallet owners, you could download it, ot let dedicated data center to handle it.

    For digital goods, if you want to save it on the clients devices, you need store assets as well inside the chain. Having just a signature of the asset makes no use for block chain. So the question is, how practical would be storing tons of TB / PB of assets and art in block chains, if not DB centers?

    Could someone potentially decrypt blocks and use for steeling assets too?
     
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  28. angrypenguin

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    Is this referring to my post..?
     
  29. ippdev

    ippdev

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    https://mashable.com/article/nft-explainer-what-are-non-fungible-tokens/

    "In the early days of the space, we saw a blockchain game like CryptoKitties sell virtual cats for tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Recently, music producer 3LAU sold a collection of 33 limited edition NFTs for more than 11 million dollars. The musician Grimes (aka the mother of little X Æ A-Xii) even sold her digital art collection for $7,500 apiece, totaling $6 million in sales. Yes, these things can get very pricey. "

    "NFTs are created on Ethereum's blockchain, which is immutable, meaning it cannot be altered. No one can undo your ownership of an NFT or re-create that exact same one. They're also "permissionless," so anyone can create, buy, or sell an NFT without asking for permission. Finally, every NFT is unique, and can be viewed by anyone.

    So yes — it's like a unique collectible card in a forever-open store window that anyone can admire, but only one person (or cryptocurrency wallet, to be exact) can own at any given time. "
     
  30. MikeUpchat

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    To get those prices there must be an auction so multiple bidders can bid against one another to get the price up, is there a system that allows that on the normal monetary systems, and can ownership of an item be transferred on the same systems?
     
  31. Antypodish

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    Wife of Elon Musk, top reachest person. They fancy crypto. But it is not strong argument here. Is an odd case from general consumer. Sure fans will pay anything for what they touched.

    @ippdev still, how that solves any digital asset problems, that we face today.
    So it looks like, you essentially buy / rent a copy rights, which are on a chain.
    You still need the owner, or producer to be in chain and be the one, who watch for infringing copy rights.

    Once you own it, you can literally copy. Even if it is some trading digital good. I can sell my collectible item and still technically own a duplicate. That duplicate may not be legal in certain cases, but deal is made and I got both cash and the item (duplicate). Who cares what I am going to do with it later. All may be harder to fudge, if there is 3rd party body involved, which holds the control, regarding flow of such assets. I.e. digital cards, rather than photo, music. I.e. digital online galery.

    Sure thing we may make thing harder and implement DRM of some sort. But nothing is uncrackable thiese days.

    "Sure, in some ways, many NFTs are just a digital image that you can easily right-click and save to your computer. But NFTs also reside on the blockchain, which makes it extremely hard to truly copy them in their entirety. The blockchain entry also transparently tells you who created the NFT. If a famous musicians says: "Yes, that's my Ethereum address that created this digital image of a possum." Then that can be verified on the blockchain. "

    Problem with digital goods is, once I can admire such with own eyes, I can copy it. Sure legally I wont be able to sell the copy. As long you know how to chase for the asset owner. In my view, it is not any different than today with classic methods. I am rather skeptical, how that would even help Unity Asset store, as hypothetical change, on how AS operates these days.

    This is interesting in a sense, that you indeed embed cats DNA into a chain. And I see why it works.

    However, storing game items in such chain (or its DNA / properties) is quite risky for game developer. If generated item happens to be buggy somehow, or utterly OP, now you introduce potential issue, treating balance and economy of the game, without an option to fix. Even riskier, if someone find exploit to duplicate items and sell on the market. Potentially irreversible damaging behavior for the game. On other hand, sure such thing could spring massive value to it, but that is very double edge sword for multiplier games.

    For that reason, I am not surprised, why block chains are not implemented on wider scale in multiplier games.

    On the side note, Steam for example has own card trading system. I doubt is using any block chains either for that.


    Sure all that sounds cool and what more.
    But I am really trying to see wider range value, for practical application of block chains in digital goods trading, which solves range of copy right issues that we have today. Yet I am not convinced at this point and time, for a practicability, beyond some gimmick and odd cases.
     
  32. JohnnyA

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    In gaming (at least typically) the minting isn't decentralised, either a server mints the items on demand, or a pool is minted and distributed amongst initial investors, or their is some other mechanism to ensure provenance (i.e. you can't make your own items).

    The difference is that after it is minted the ownership is decentralised. A game company can't decide that the only way to sell an item is in their own currency or through their own auction house. It is also possible for the same tokens to be used in a new game, either by the original publisher, or by a new publisher (think for example a community/indie version of a game taking over when the original game dies). There's nothing the original publisher can do about others using the tokens however they want (I mean they could sue if the game was a private server using the original source of course).

    Corollary to this, if you get banned you don't lose your items. At the very least you can sell your items on the free market for market value. This is unique to an NFT solution, but also comes with some fun challenges around botters, cheaters, and farmers.

    Generally there will also be mechanisms to ensure a certian level of rarity. i.e. only x% of tokens can be item Y, or there can only ever be 1 sword of uniqueness. This rarity is not a statement made by a company but an encoded part of the solidity contract. The publisher can't turn around and print 10 more swords to make a quick buck. This is unique to an NFT solution as far as I am aware (and in theese days of lootboxes and the like a pretty useful thing).

    NFT's don't enable any new gameplay features, but add some 'meta' features around trading and collectibility. Given the huge prices in game items can go for these days, it seems to be quite important to at least some slice of the market.
     
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2021
  33. Voronoi

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    I'm reading this thread for the same reason. I don't completely get what the value of knowing it's "the one" and true .jpg and especially why that value is $69 million.

    I do recall watching a show about the manufacturing of a perfect fake diamond. Supposedly, even experts could not visually distinguish it from a real diamond. I thought if it was in fact identical, what is wrong with giving one of these as an engagement ring instead of the more expensive real thing? My wife said that would be grounds for a divorce, so, yeah, I guess it matters.
     
  34. angrypenguin

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    What practical mechanism prevents this?

    I understand that the NFT representing the original Sword is unique and spoken for. But what's to stop the creation of a separate, identical item with its own NFT and selling those?

    Is there some mechanism which checks a new item against existing items in the chain when creating an NFT which will fail if the instance is non-unique?

    And those features are entirely around building trust in a market to encourage and maintain the high price of certain goods. That makes sense.

    I'm still not getting the thing about enforced rarity. That still comes down to trusting the developer to not print more, right? Because it's the NFTs which are necessarily unique, as opposed to the items they represent.

    For my wife and I there'd be nothing wrong with that. For many people the ring is symbolic of the value of the relationship, a demonstration of what you're willing to sacrifice to make it work. In that context offering a "fake" token in order to reduce the sacrifice made... I don't see things that way, but I understand the perspective.
     
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  35. ippdev

    ippdev

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    Nothing. What about painting an identical copy of the Mona Lisa and selling that! Man..it is so easy to beat the system!!
     
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  36. Antypodish

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    There is significant difference. Not everyone can have copy of Monalisa. It requires intensive manual labor. Even cheap copy, still will cost to manufacture and will require time. Even if it would be automated.
    With digital goods on other hand, you can just copy them with few clicks away. Cost and effort is close to 0.
     
  37. angrypenguin

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    I think that was the point? Despite the effort involved even art fraud is still a thing. Hence, there is nothing to stop it with digital stuff either.
     
  38. JohnnyA

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    You can prove who minted the item. If the original minter wasn't the original contract then the item is meaningless (remember contracts are code that executes on the blockchain). The game server/client (and the market) won't honor it.

    A simple contract might only let the game server mint the tokens (i.e. in our simple cases it could have a hard coded wallet address that is the only wallet allowed to mint).

    No, minting is tied to the contract (which is code, executing on the blockchain, anyone can see the code and verify the results). In a simple sense you can write a rule (code) in the solidity contract to say after an item with attribute X is created no other item with attribute X can be created.

    The game server has to follow the same contract as everyone else because it is the contract that is the source of authority.

    ---

    Obvioulsy this explanation is simplified, if you are interested take a course on Solidity/Smart Contracts. Even if you don't think it has any utility it is really cool just from a technical perspective :)

    ---

    And of course these things can have bugs, and so a huge amount of effort goes in to developing, testing and auditing them.

    I think by now it is reasonable to assume the fundmantal mechanisms are secure (or at least secure enogh to base a business on). Imagine how many millions of dollars and how much time is going in to trying to crack these building blocks: if you broke bitcoin or ethereum you would literally have made billions even trillions of dollars.
     
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2021
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  39. JohnnyA

    JohnnyA

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    Just to be clear of course the game server could just ignore the blockchain that it was purported to use. But one would assume that if you had a playerbase that is using your game, doing this would pretty much instantly kill your game.

    For non-server based games you could theoretically do all of the logic in the contract, but at this stage even with L2 solutions this is much too slow and expensive.

    You could maybe do something like beyblades where some simple rules are used to determine who wins, and then after you lose the contract enforces that your beyblade goes ot the other player. You probably still need an 'Oracle' as a source of random though.

    ---

    PS here's some simply psudeo code for our hypothetical NFT game contract (not at all based on solidity, but for the coders it might make the concept clearer):

    Code (csharp):
    1.  
    2. var GAME_WALLET = 12344;
    3.  
    4. function MintOneOfOneToken(Creater c, Attr x) {
    5.   if (c != GAME_WALLET) return false;
    6.   if (FindTokenWithAttr(x)) return false;
    7.   return CreateToken(m, x);
    8. }
    9.  
    10. function VerifyOwnership(Token t, Owner o) {
    11.   if (t.owner != o) return false;
    12.   if (t.creater != GAME_WALLET) return false;
    13.   return true;
    14. }
    15.  
    16.  
    The game client itelf would call VerifyOwnership before letting the player do stuff with the NFT/item.

    ---

    It is also worth adding that doing this directly on the chain is not at all practical due to speed and gas cost. This is where layer 2 solutions like ImmutableX come in to play. ImmutableX has fast zero gas cost lookups, and relatively cheap minting. The L2 solutions themselves are not directly on the blockchain, and generally use an optimistic approach: basically instead of proving something is valid we have a mechanism to prove something is not valid.

    We offload the processing to these layer 2 solutions which write less frequently to the chain (think of it like a bulk upload). We assume they are acting as they should, but at any time we can incur some gas cost to validate that this assumption is true.

    Again even if you think its useless it is really interesting from a technical perspective.
     
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2021
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  40. Antypodish

    Antypodish

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    I really have hard time understand the point, where chain allows someone prove, if digital good is original or copy.
    You see, krypto currency never leaves the block chain. So it is easy to prove.

    On other hand, by looks of it, digital assets are never stored on the block chain, with probably some exceptions (i.e. kitties DNA). It only exists as a token. So that it is its vulnerability.

    Here is the issue I see. You got original author, who release digital good X in 2021. In 2020, someone else purchase it. The purchaser can prove that owns right to bought digital good via block chain. But then, the same person make a copy of good X, as new X' and releases it as its own. Information of the original minter is lost for that X' good and new minter is put into place instead.

    Now he / she owns the rights to new X' digital good, even tho it is a fraud. No one can take it down. It will exists on the chain forever, luring infinite number of potentially "mislead" buyers. Some will look further, to seek for a source. Maybe report the fraud, if it is on some sort of the market. If is sold / accessible on personal website, or black market, nothing can be done about it. But most buyers, just like on the Asset Store, wont look any further. Or look for cheapest price.

    Again, from my understanding, that would mainly work, if the chain never leaves the server (i.e. game) and digital goods are only generated and handled (not uploaded) on the server side. See earlier discussed Kitties, or ingame i.e. weapons, armor etc.


    Just out of curiosity. How chain would handle ingame items, which are destroyable, or consumable?
    Technically no need for storing such items forever on the chain.
     
  41. JohnnyA

    JohnnyA

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    @Antypodish The short answer is that the NFT stores the owner and the minter on the blockchain. A digital good that wasn't minted by the right owner is not the item. Now for digital art its kind of meaningless, I mean you can still see the image.

    Here it all comes down to provenance I suppose... would you rather own a rolex or a fake rolex that was indistinuishable from the real one?

    ---
    For games however its much simpler, do you buy the world of world craft armour if the creator wasn't Blizzard? No, of course not.

    And the game client or server itself when it checks ownership would ignore items that weren't minted by the game/contract/publisher.

    Of course there are variations and nuances, but this is the core of it.

    I think at this stage speed and gas cost means you have to draw some line about what is an NFT and what is a construct that exists only in the game world. However NFTs can be destroyed, combined, etc. Checkout Axie Infinity for an exmaple of comining NFTs.
     
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  42. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    I'm not informed enough on the matter to have an opinion either way.

    My point is that the developer could still mint them. A second Sword of Uniqueness could still be created, with its own legitimate, different NFT.

    And so "attribute X" would be something like a hash of the item's data?

    Games where this stuff matters mint a heck of a lot of items, many of which are discarded. How is that accounted for when balancing the game? My guess: if something is discarded / "destroyed" / etc. then it just becomes marked as available in case it's ever rolled again?

    All of the consumables in games I'm aware of are fungible, so it doesn't make sense to hook them up to non-fungible tokens in the first place.
     
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  43. JohnnyA

    JohnnyA

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    They can't though, not if the contract has a rule that stops the item being minted. Once it is released the contract is public, executes on the chain, and can't be changed. It is the contract that is the 'minter'.

    If the game devs directly minted an item it wouldn't be created by the contract any more than if JoeBlogs created one.

    Now of course the Game Developers could start honoring their own non-contract minted tokens. But once they did that the whole thing comes down, anyone can easily check that an item wasn't minted by the contract.

    ---

    Again maybe one day a game can run fully in the chain, but I don't think thats practical anytime soon. At this stage for anything non-trivial there is still some trust required, you have to for example trust that a game server plays the game by the rules.

    At Illuvium our results are deterministic when given a specific random seed, but you have to trust that we are generating the random seeds in a fair way. There's some trust, just very little.

    Even this could be verified to some extent as once a game is executed the random seed is stored and available publicly. With this data you can check if our distribution is fair. But still there is some trust.
     
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2021
  44. ippdev

    ippdev

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    And imagine that the original creation of the NFT certified original digital work took as much manual labor as the Mona Lisa...or..The Sistine Chapel. The fact remains regardless of the naysayers. The market has already determined it's viability.. So feel free to stop the ocean's tide coming in. Go copy Grime's work. See if you can get 5 cents for your copy. The owners of the NFT's of his work can get their 7 grand back. Go copy the producers tracks. See if you ca generate a dime on his 11 million worth of NFT's cert-ed tracks. When that happen's then a part of your argument hold's water.
     
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  45. ippdev

    ippdev

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    It is like they do not want to know this so they can continue in the vein of their current argumentation gambit. It ain't that hard to figure. It is like a certificate of provenance such as in numismatics and philately or having a painting certified by a recognized authority, or an antique authenticated as having come from a specific workshop. A knockoff antique may have utility as a table and be worth some bucks but if it ain't produced during such and such a date range with the workshop branded stamp and did not have the particular edge trim it would not be worth 450K USD but only 2K USD.
     
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  46. JohnnyA

    JohnnyA

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    An NFT can have attributes. So imagine a developer says we will produce one sword of ultimate attack, no other weapon crated after this item is minted will ever have more raw attack power than this item.

    The contract might encode this as:
    Code (csharp):
    1.  
    2. function mint(newItem) {
    3.   var sword = getNFTByName("SwordOfUltimatePower");
    4.   if (sword && newItem.GetAttribute("AttackPower") >= sword.GetAttribute("AttackPower")) return false;
    5.   // ... more stuff
    6. }
    7.  

    In other words: once an item with this name exists no other item can be minted with more attack power.

    ---

    Now some of these constructus like getItemByName might be quite expensive so it might not be a very practical example (certianly not going to happen in an L1 protocl) but I think it demonstrates the concept.

    Remember this is in a public contract on the blockchain. And the Game Developer needs to adhere to this contract just like anyone else (as mentioned if they dont then the item/NFT doesn't have the correct provenance).
     
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  47. JohnnyA

    JohnnyA

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    In any case I'm going to bow out, need to get some work done, and I'm far from an expert. If a few people are really interested I'll see if the solidity developers working on Illuvium are willing to write up a paper to talk about what we do and how we guarantee rarity (in our case rarity is a function of total number of widgets minted, we make guarantees for example that no more than 0.1% of the widgets of type X are 'Holographic').
     
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  48. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    But in digital art there is literally no distinction between these things in the first place.

    Physical art is "moved", digital art is only ever "copied". Even on an artists own computer there is no clearly distinguishable "original" set of bits because creating the art involves repeatedly copying it between storage, RAM, CPU, etc. When it is transmitted to someone else that is literally a process of making copy after copy between an arbitrary number of intermediary systems until there is a matching set of bits at both ends. And the only difference between a legitimate copy and a pirated copy is permission.

    I understand the usage of NFTs to represent ownership. That makes sense. And providence for cases where it matters, too. But actual originality? That's philosophical hand waving at best.

    One thing I do kind of like about it is the potential application of things like the old "Like A Book" license. For that "originality" doesn't matter, but ownership and providence do. Of course I prefer that from a consumer perspective, rather than from a developer perspective - where I'd rather every license comes from me.

    Pirated stuff is generally shared for free, by people who want to consume it rather than sell it. They already see no value in non-tangible goods, and digital goods are easily "cracked" or whatever anyway.

    I think you've fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the conversation, and turned it into some "argument" that it isn't.

    Ok, cool. That then leads back into my question about how it's going to work for game balancing, though. Especially if one of the practical reasons to use this over a database is that decentralisation improves longevity.

    And another question pops to mind... if it's about extreme longevity (someone mentioned 50 years) then what's to stop the game from changing around the items? The contract may precent minting an item where attackDamage > maxAttackDamage, but it surely can't stop me from adding someOtherVariable and using that in my game instead or as well as? In other words, instead of changing the items themselves you can change the interpretation of the items.

    I think you've already answered it, which is basically that minting items is centralised, and enough game logic needs to also either be centralised or reach a critical mass to enforce that.
     
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  49. JohnnyA

    JohnnyA

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    Hah can't get away from this conversation, my discipline needs some work :)

    I agree. I was thinking it might be cool to do something like an NFT which lets you unlock the actual art. i.e. during the sale you buy a very low resolution copy, but owning he NFT lets you unlock the high-res version. At that point its up to you to share with the world or not.

    Again you trust that the artist wont give copies to others, but thats no difference to lithographic prints or some such.

    Absolutely nothing, even in the short term.. other than the market reaction. The general approach to balancing is that it is voted on by the community based on coin ownership (i.e. investing and/or playing the game gets you shares in the games fungible currency and this gives you voting rights).

    The idea is if you don't follow your own rules your audience leaves, but this is not system enforced.

    What really interests me is the idea of many games, from many developers, using the same NFTs. Even if one breaks their own rules, people have options to get out (sell up), or move games.

    ---

    A fundamental idea, is that there is some value to more transaprency and more centralised control, even if you can't get to a truly decentralised ideal. For some this might be challenging to accept but I think it has merit.
     
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  50. ippdev

    ippdev

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    Provenance..provenance..provenance. Your question and thrust about game balancing is an issue of the game designer, not a provenance oriented blockchain contract. Consider this as far as an original and copies. If i do an original and it is encoded in 32 bit HDRI I can release store front copies in uncompressed png..but they will never match the HDRI formatting of the file nor have the ability to dial in dynamic range like a 32 bit HDRI does. The file itself will have a created on date so copying it will alter the files date. So, the argument that all copies are the same would not hold up if the original was sandboxed and the storefront display was a png. I would venture to say that the more storefront display copies were distributed the more valuable the original is. There is much more detail in the HDRI image just as one of the early copperplate strikes of a Durer has more detail than a print of a copperplate strike nor later copies of that copperplate's strike. And I would bet the copperplate itself is worth more than any of the prints it made. Why? Because collectors want to own it or museums want to display it. So the market would determine the value. An example of market is the blue winged horse WoW released for 25 bucks. I wouldn't lay out a dime for it. I am not the market for it. But considering it sold a few million bucks worth of them in a few days there is definitively a market for virtual blue winged horses.

    One can say what they want about blockchain and the market but the facts are that major financial firms now have blockchain specialized accounts, bitcoin is over 40K, NFT's have generated millions in revenue for unique artists works they find of value and governments such as Nigeria use blockchain for international payments. I could have leveraged my computer and made dozens of bitcoins 10 years back and am kinda ticked I ignored it thinking it of no value. I am not going to ignore these early days o NFT's and regret it in a decade. I am a collected fine artist with monumental sculptures I built that are designated historical sites so this is of more interest to me as a fine artist than a game developer but i can see it's utility in marking rare virtual goods and creating an out of the game marketplace for such which would have provenance backing any exchanges.
     
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