The Pokemon Company has drawn the ire and attention of many, with a new job posting that is actively seeking employees with experience in uncharted territory for the Pokemon franchise. The hiring page shows that The Pokemon Company International wants to hire staff that has "deep knowledge and understanding of Web 3, [...] blockchain technologies, NFT, and/or metaverse. They also appear to be looking for someone who can "connect the relevance of potential partners or technologies with Pokemon's existing assets", which has fans dramatically split between unease and excitement for what this might mean for the future.

The Pokemon Company isn't the first, and definitely won't be the last, in terms of businesses trying to incorporate elements of the blockchain into the video game industry. Despite harsh criticism in the past, Square Enix is still committed to pushing the idea of NFT games. Regardless, outside of the hiring page, nothing involving NFTs has been announced from The Pokemon Company, for now.

Pokémon company posted a job opening that encompasses Blockchain, NFT’s and Web3 technologies.

Oh no, please no 😨 pic.twitter.com/p0XrH0Eat3

— Pory (@pory_leeks) March 12, 2023

 

[trillspector]

What body is controlling it now? You’re just asking silly questions at this point. I hope it won’t come as a surprise to you that governments worldwide are *very* interested in digitising currency - CBDC is actively discussed as we speak. That’s step one - other assets will follow suit, physical or digital. Most of our money’s already digital as it is - it’s a number on an account in an endless spiral of quantitive easing, we’re all using fiat currency, we just happen to also issue a physical representation of money that is in no way representative of actual money supply.

I have my deed on the Solana blockchain, another rogue party also mints my deed on the Ethereum blockchain. Who has the final say in which blockchain we are using to determine the ownership of the house? If it is the government why wouldnt they create a privately stored encrypted database to handle these transactions securely to ensure that nobody is forging information or writing to it when they shouldn't. If the government says it is on the Solana blockchain whats stopping the next party elected saying now all deeds are validated on Ethereum and oops looks like I don't own my house anymore. Surely you must see this is way more complicated then just using paper deeds and trusting that they are legitimate and disputing in court for the infinitesimally small times they are inauthentic.

This is precisely why I said that I won’t be able to change your mind no matter what I say - you’ve made your mind up before we even started talking.

Im not trying to change your mind or have my mind changed, I'm talking here purely for the benefit for the quiet 90% of people who are online, who are lurkers, to make sure there is a crtitical voice in this debate, and that they dont fall for ponzi economics because some mod on a forum gave them legitimacy by making up arguments on why blockchains are super duper cool with no basis in reality. Blockchain technology has been a thing for 14 years and there still isn't a concrete use case for them except for buying illicit substance & ransomware. The internet didn't take that long to find utility, people immediately saw what it actually could do right then and there and said "wow this changes everything." No one had to make up "well hypothetically this will be good if we ignore the law, economics and game design" arguments about it. Its a solution looking for a problem.

 

[RunePhantom]

It’s the same as every other shiny out there. There’s nothing unique or special that differentiates it from the pack. That could be changed, but likely won’t because that’d take work, and work is unfamiliar to the Pokémon company.
Read your example and figure out why it’s silly. You’re just a dude on the Internet and *you* know those NFT’s are not authentic. If you approached me at a convention stall and I offered you a convincing enough physical discography of just about anyone, you’d have no clue. Guess who’d be minting official Pokémon, making them (very easily) verifiable? This is a rhetorical question, you don’t have to answer. It’s almost as if this tech was literally invented to create unfalsifiable certificates of authenticity. The issue you’re touching upon here is that of copyright, which is wholly irrelevant to the conversation. I can mint Pokémon-themed NFT’s right now, but there’s only *one* (theoretical) official pool, and no force in heaven or earth can change or modify it in any way. Once they’re minted, they’re minted.

Again, as a pokemon player, I personally don't give a shit about it being unique from the pack. Just don't care.

Referring to my example, someone still made a shit ton of money off of someone else's work. I knew it was fake, but only because the artist himself found out. On accident. Clearly the person who bought the false NFT didn't know it was fake either.

So I'll ask again, because I did actually want an answer to this: how is authenticity guaranteed? I'm assuming you're significantly educated on this topic, and I'll trust your answer before I trust Google.

 

[Foxi4]

I have my deed on the Solana blockchain, another rogue party also mints my deed on the Ethereum blockchain. Who has the final say in which blockchain we are using to determine the ownership of the house? If it is the government why wouldnt they create a privately stored encrypted database to handle these transactions securely to ensure that nobody is forging information or writing to it when they shouldn't. If the government says it is on the Solana blockchain whats stopping the next party elected saying now all deeds are validated on Ethereum and oops looks like I don't own my house anymore. Surely you must see this is way more complicated then just using paper deeds and trusting that they are legitimate and disputing in court for the infinitesimally small times they are inauthentic.

Because you’d have to contact them each time there’s a change of ownership, for starters. It’s also objectively less secure. There’s nothing “complicated” about this - you’re the one making it complicated for yourself, for some undisclosed reason. You can’t duplicate a non-fungible token - it’s not fungible. You can make a new pool, sure, but everybody and their dog will immediately know it’s illegitimate. There’s also the advantage of being able to trace the chain of custody - that’s a big thing as far as certificates of ownership are concerned.

Im not trying to change your mind, I'm talking here purely for the benefit for the quiet 90% of people who are online, who are lurkers, to make sure there is a crtitical voice in this debate, and that they dont fall for ponzi economics because some mod on a forum started making up arguments on why blockchains are super duper cool with no basis in reality. Blockchain technology has been a thing for 14 years and there still isn't a concrete use case for them except for buying illicit substance & ransomware. The internet didn't take that long to find utility, people immediately saw what it actually could do right then and there and said "wow this changes everything." No one had to make up "well hypothetically this will be good if we ignore the law economics and game design" arguments about it. Its a solution looking for a problem.

The quiet 90%? Oh please, people actively shit on NFT’s online 24/7 without knowing anything about the technology, how it works and what it’s intended for. To the average person the term “NFT” is indistinguishable from a JPEG of a monkey - that’s what people think when they hear it, hence the “hurr durr screenshot” jokes. If anything, I’m speaking on behalf of the silent 10% who do see the benefit of a standardised, digital ledger of ownership of just about anything that would require/could benefit from holding such records. There’s a stigma associated with this technology, for the reasons you’ve listed and then some, and that overshadows legitimate use and actual, real-life benefits in online discussions. Full disclosure - I don’t own *any* NFT’s, however I am fully aware that digital ownership certificates are absolutely something we’ll see in the future, not just as an oddity but as the de facto proof of ownership. Out of all the technologies out there the blockchain has proven to be the most effective way of achieving that goal - there’s not one “fake Bitcoin”, and there never will be. Sadly, we’re still in the “Wild West” stage of Web3, but that won’t last forever. I remember when the Internet as a whole was the (mostly unregulated) wild west - now you can’t fully operate in society without it. The Internet *was* widely used for illicit substance distribution, and far worse things - remember Silk Road? It’s like eBay, but for organs! Times changer. It’s coming, and silly pictures of monkeys are a mere test drive (one that I’m not particularly interested in, mind - so many better uses than that).

Again, as a pokemon player, I personally don't give a shit about it being unique from the pack. Just don't care.

Referring to my example, someone still made a shit ton of money off of someone else's work. I knew it was fake, but only because the artist himself found out. On accident. Clearly the person who bought the false NFT didn't know it was fake either.

So I'll ask again, because I did actually want an answer to this: how is authenticity guaranteed? I'm assuming you're significantly educated on this topic, and I'll trust your answer before I trust Google.

First of all, you don’t have to care and that’s fine. Nobody’s forcing you to participate. Second, I already answered this question. If there’s only one official pool then nobody besides Nintendo could add anything to it, as is the case with any other NFT. What you’re talking about is copyright infringement - someone taking an asset that they don’t own and minting it. That’s both a known quantity and it’s completely irrelevant to the discussion since the theoretical official Pokémon could only exist in the official pool. I can “mint” some Pokémon right now, that doesn’t make them official in any way, it’s just some NFT’s I made. They’re easily distinguishable from an actual, official release.

 

[raxadian]

Wow is like they are trying to self destruct.

 

[DarthDub]

Why are they trying so hard to make Pokémon into Digimon? /s

 

[trillspector]

Because you’d have to contact them each time there’s a change of ownership, for starters. It’s also objectively less secure. There’s nothing “complicated” about this - you’re the one making it complicated for yourself, for some undisclosed reason. You can’t duplicate a non-fungible token - it’s not fungible. You can make a new pool, sure, but everybody and their dog will immediately know it’s illegitimate. There’s also the advantage of being able to trace the chain of custody - that’s a big thing as far as certificates of ownership are concerned.

You literally aren't addressing my point. How do we all come to a consensus that we use X blockchain for deeds, and only rubes buy deeds on blockchain Y. You keep claiming that NFT's are for "unfalsifiable" certificates but thats simply not true, they create unique identifiers but what real world thing those certificates are tied to is not stored on the blockchain at all. The most common way they are stored is with IPFS, which is a very malleable protocol, but even still that confers no rights since those are handled in the real world in court, just as they are in the analog world. There is literally no mechanism now, nor proposed, that can interface token ownership with real world ownership.

There’s a stigma associated with this technology, for the reasons you’ve listed and then some, and that overshadows legitimate use and actual, real-life benefits. Full disclosure - I don’t own *any* NFT’s, however I am fully aware that digital ownership certificates are absolutely something we’ll see in the future, not just as an oddity but as the de facto proof of ownership. Out of all the technologies out there the blockchain has proven to be the most effective way of achieving that goal - there’s not one “fake Bitcoin”, and there never will be. Sadly, we’re still in the “Wild West” stage of Web3, but that won’t last forever. I remember when the Internet as a whole was the (mostly unregulated) wild west - now you can’t fully operate in society without it. It’s coming, and silly pictures of monkeys are a mere test drive (one that I’m not particularly interested in, mind - so many better uses than that).

It rightly should be stigmatized, its a technology that has so far in it's "test drive" been used for stealing money, stealing art, money laundering, and um well nothing else. It should be stigmatized because at best it means you are easily fooled by impossible technology claims and at worst you are a malicious actor trying to take money from the less educated people mentioned prior. Tokens mean nothing at all in terms of real world assets, and the people with the "silly pictures of monkeys" haven't even attempted to file for copyright because they don't want to be the ones to have this litigated and set the obvious precedent that these are unregistered securities and nothing more.

As an aside I find it very amusing you are preaching the value of digital scarcity on a website that was created to turn physically scarce real world things into infinitely copy-able files.

Edit: On the topic of fake bitcoins the existence BTC-SV & BTC-Cash would like a word, you have at multiple times been able to go to bed one night with a single Bitcoin and wake up with two due to disputes among operators. Same with Ethereum & Eth Classic. What a lovely system to store my house ownership on.

 

[Foxi4]

Why are they trying so hard to make Pokémon into Digimon? /s

Nobody expected Bill’s Computer to finally be retired in favour of a more reliable global system of exchange, and yet here we are.

 

[codezer0]

Do you actually think people would commit felony server hacking for cheated pokemon and that this would happen regularly enough that risk of this happening is worth excessive power consumption required to make a decentralized database?

People are already committing all kinds of fraud to steal NFT ownerships. Nevermind the institutions that routinely get compromised for their crypto and blockchain keys, more or less demanding that users invested in such a thing seal off their personal keys offline for the specific purpose of enabling agency over their integrity.

People have been jailbreaking and hacking in pokemon for decades, even before network access was really a thing to factor in.

A pokemon blockchain would get compromised within 7 days; I'd even wager money on it.

 

[trillspector]

People are already committing all kinds of fraud to steal NFT ownerships. Nevermind the institutions that routinely get compromised for their crypto and blockchain keys, more or less demanding that users invested in such a thing seal off their personal keys offline for the specific purpose of enabling agency over their integrity.

People have been jailbreaking and hacking in pokemon for decades, even before network access was really a thing to factor in.

A pokemon blockchain would get compromised within 7 days; I'd even wager money on it.

Not talking a blockchain in regard to felony hacking, just a private server with an append only database run out of Gamefreak HQ. If the blockchain would get hacked, which I also believe it would, then it becomes absolutely useless (which I am under the impression we are in agreement on)

 

[Marc_LFD]

Pokecoins coming right up.

 

[Foxi4]

You literally aren't addressing my point. How do we all come to a consensus that we use X blockchain for deeds, and only rubes buy deeds on blockchain Y. You keep claiming that NFT's are for "unfalsifiable" certificates but thats simply not true, they create unique identifiers but what real world thing those certificates are tied to is not stored on the blockchain at all. The most common way they are stored is with IPFS, which is a very malleable protocol, but even still that confers no rights since those are handled in the real world in court, just as they are in the analog world. There is literally no mechanism now, nor proposed, that can interface token ownership with real world ownership.

The reason why I’m not answering those questions directly is because they’re asinine and I’m giving you a modicum of credit by allowing you to arrive at the conclusion yourself, by way of following the trail of crumbs. I don’t like treating people like they’re idiots when I know full well that they’re smarter than that. It’s pretty obvious that a pool of deeds of an entire country would likely be controlled by the government. As such, only the government could “mint” properties and any digital deed from any other source would be de facto null and void. The reason why you’d want that on the blockchain is precisely because once the asset is on the blockchain, it cannot be altered or removed - it can only change ownership. The government can’t “decide” that your deed no longer exists, there can be no “clerical error” and the possibility of fraud becomes non-existent, unless you choose to hand your digital deed to some unscrupulous third-party yourself (intentionally or through negligence) in which case y’know what? They own the house now, you totes deserve it. In the same way, the only Pokémon that’d actually matter would be the ones from the official Pokémon pool - nobody else could change or alter it in any way, and any other pool would be immediately obvious, not to mention incompatible with the games themselves since they wouldn’t be accessing it now, would they? It’s the most bizarre concern in the context of the blockchain - what you’re arguing is that someone would make a fake pool of deeds and the government would readily accept it as real even though it could verify it as fraudulent in a few clicks of a keyboard, or that people would “get tricked” with fake Pokémon coming from the totally official pool maintained by “Joey3743”, as opposed to Nintendo, and ones that don’t work in the games anyway. Give me a break, we both know *that’s* science fiction.

As there rightly should be, its a technology that has so far in it's "test drive" been used for stealing money, stealing art, money laundering, and um well nothing else. It should be stigmatized because at best it means you are easily fooled by impossible technology claims and at worst you are a malicious actor trying to take money from the less educated people mentioned prior. Tokens mean nothing at all in terms of real world assets, and the people with the "silly pictures of monkeys" haven't even attempted to file for copyright because they don't want to be the ones to have this litigated and set the obvious precedent that these are unregistered securities and nothing more.

As an aside I find it very amusing you are preaching the value of digital scarcity on a website that was created to turn physically scarce real world things into infinitely copy-able files.

A pirated copy of a game is a pirated copy of a game, not the real deal. When I was a wee lad and couldn’t afford games, I pirated plenty. Since then, I bought large swathes of them (including ones I’ve previously pirated), solely for the purpose of putting them on a shelf. In fact, there are games I own digital copies of that I *also* bought physically with the intention of putting them on the shelf and probably never touching them again (or at least not until the digital copy is no longer available through some collapse of a storefront). Ownership of software aside (you don’t own your games, really, and you never have), there’s something to be said about owning “the real thing”. There is no substitute (unlike in Pokémon, where there is Substitute, provided you haven’t wasted your PP).

A pokemon blockchain would get compromised within 7 days; I'd even wager money on it.

Well, if we’re relying on Nintendo’s technology to run it then yes, it will be compromised if you sneeze at it. Kind of why you’d want that kind of solution to be outsourced.

 

[trillspector]

The reason why I’m not answering those questions directly is because they’re asinine and I’m giving you a modicum of credit by allowing you to arrive at the conclusion yourself, by way of following the trail of crumbs. I don’t like treating people like they’re idiots when I know full well that they’re smarter than that. It’s pretty obvious that a pool of deeds of an entire country would likely be controlled by the government. As such, only the government could “mint” properties and any digital deed from any other source would be de facto null and void. The reason why you’d want that on the blockchain is precisely because once the asset is on the blockchain, it cannot be altered or removed - it can only change ownership. The government can’t “decide” that your deed no longer exists

So if only one party can mint to it, and its handled by a government, why do we need a blockchain exactly? Again the concept you are describing is called an Append Only Database, not a blockchain and they have existed for decades. Thinking this is a new radical technology makes me skeptical to your tech literacy, since you should learn about this in any class on how to handle large data in the tech sphere. The only thing a blockchain adds is a vulnerability surface.

It’s the most bizarre concern in the context of the blockchain - what you’re arguing is that someone would make a fake pool of deeds .

Yes, people make fraudulent things on the internet all the time! Its a 4.2 Billion cost in America yearly with a total cost of 10.5 Trillion dollars and people are finding exploits in the current blockchains all the time. EDIT: Look into the history of the first DAO if you want a particularly hilarious example of blockchains failing in every regard

A pirated copy of a game is a pirated copy of a game, not the real deal.

What exactly makes it not the real deal, it plays the game just fine and thats the literal only utility a game serves. If you are talking about resale or display yes, but that is not a feature of the game, its a feature of the commodity form the game is on.

 

[Foxi4]

So if only one party can mint to it, and its handled by a government, why do we need a blockchain exactly? Again the concept you are describing is called an Append Only Database, not a blockchain and they have existed for decades. Thinking this is a new radical technology makes me skeptical to your tech literacy, since you should learn about this in any class on how to handle large data in the tech sphere. The only thing a blockchain adds is a vulnerability surface.

For the reason that I’ve literally just stated. Cannot be modified, cannot be removed, cannot transfer without consent and exists wholly in isolation from the government. No need for a notary, no need for endless red tape - just two people who agree to a trade, and the entire world is immediately notified and aware of the fact that a trade took place. There’s a record of it, one that cannot be fudged or altered.

Yes, people make fraudulent things on the internet all the time! Its a 10.5 Trillion dollar market and people are finding exploits in all current blockchains all the time.

A verified transaction on the blockchain is de facto real and legitimate. You’re talking about fraud - that exists regardless of whether we’re talking about the blockchain or the IRL market. Don’t worry - there are plenty of grandpas and grannies already getting tricked into giving someone their deed, you don’t need the blockchain for that, it’s already happening. The blockchain merely removes obfuscation and makes verification easier.

What exactly makes it not the real deal, it plays the game just fine and thats the literal only utility a game serves. If you are talking about resale yes, but that is not a feature of the game, its a feature of the commodity form the game is on.

Again, this is another thing you should be able to figure out based on the pre-existing content of this conversation. There are some things that are achievable with a database, others cannot. Once a theoretical minted Pokémon has an owner, it can be traded independently of Nintendo. It doesn’t matter if Nintendo’s server has a bad day, it doesn’t matter if the game is in active service or not, for all intents and purposes it doesn’t even matter if Nintendo’s even still around. The Pokémon that exists on the chain exists in perpetuity, it cannot be falsified, it cannot be destroyed, it can only change owners, and you only need two people to achieve that - the sender and the recipient. You do make an interesting point about commodity however - NFT’s have graduated rarity, so I can imagine trading two or three Slowpokes for a Snorlax.

 

[RunePhantom]

I don’t like treating people like they’re idiots when I know full well that they’re smarter than that.

Dude, you're being asked a question rather directly. Both Trill and I are assuming you know this subject better than we do. By not answering these rather direct questions, you're not treating us like we're smart. You're treating us like we're too stupid to even comprehend the answer.

the possibility of fraud becomes non-existent

This is objectively untrue. In our debate, I've found myriad examples of fraud on the blockchain, and much hand-wringing about stopping it, and maybe some meaningful changes have been made to make it harder, but the possibility of fraud is hardly 'non-existent'.

the government would readily accept it as real even though it could verify it as fraudulent in a few clicks of a keyboard

You have yet to clarify how this works. We've already mentioned that fake NFTs are a problem, and it's pretty clear to me that it's a big enough one still that someone would need to worry about purchasing one by accident. The issue is prolific enough that there are guides teaching people what to look out for.

people would “get tricked” with fake Pokémon coming from the totally official pool maintained by “Joey3743”, as opposed to Nintendo, and ones that don’t work in the games anyway. Give me a break, we both know *that’s* science fiction.

Pool implies a limited number to be had in the first place. Unless I'm misunderstanding?

A pirated copy of a game is a pirated copy of a game, not the real deal

A cracked game is as much the real deal as a purchased copy, for all intents and purposes. If I purchase a reproduction cart of a game, I'm still getting the game, and it's indistinguishable from an official copy. The only difference is in perceived value. The 'real' cart is worth more than the 'fake' one.

Well, if we’re relying on Nintendo’s technology to run it then yes, it will be compromised if you sneeze at it. Kind of why you’d want that kind of solution to be outsourced.

You mean like Ronin? Wormhole Bridge? Nomad Bridge? Beanstalk Farms? Wintermute? Those five listed hacks lost nearly $1.5 billion. With a B. It seems like none of the big providers are any more secure than Nintendo.

So come on Foxi. You've got the answers. How is authenticity guaranteed? How are fakes caught? What's being done to prevent hacks? Pretend I'm an idiot, spell it out for me.

 

[trillspector]

For the reason that I’ve literally just stated. Cannot be modified, cannot be removed, cannot transfer without consent and exists wholly in isolation from the government. No need for a notary, no need for endless red tape - just two people who agree to a trade, and the entire world is immediately notified and aware of the fact that a trade took place. There’s a record of it, one that cannot be fudged or altered.

You can do this with a locally stored append only database, a web form & a one time key generated by the government and have it infinitely more secure. You seem to fundamentally misunderstand lots of how databases actually work in the real world and think all of their utility only exists on the blockchain, utility which mind you doesn't actually work on the blockchain like you claim.

A verified transaction on the blockchain is de facto real and legitimate. You’re talking about fraud - that exists regardless of whether we’re talking about the blockchain or the IRL market. Don’t worry - there are plenty of grandpas and grannies already getting tricked into giving someone their deed, you don’t need the blockchain for that, it’s already happening. The blockchain merely removes obfuscation and makes verification easier.

Blockchains physically can not make verification easier because a blockchain cannot check if I own what I claim I own. It only can check if I own a token that is hopefully correlated with the thing I own. In terms of obfuscation it's very easy to figure out who owns what house already with the available databases so I am lost on to what that is fixing. Fraud certainly exists already but I am very skeptical that placing deeds on a system with no proven utility outside of fraud is going to fix that.

Again, this is another thing you should be able to figure out based on the pre-existing content of this conversation. There are some things that are achievable with a database, others cannot. Once a theoretical minted Pokémon has an owner, it can be traded independently of Nintendo. It doesn’t matter if Nintendo’s server has a bad day, it doesn’t matter if the game is in active service or not, for all intents and purposes it doesn’t even matter if Nintendo’s even still around. The Pokémon that exists on the chain exists in perpetuity, it cannot be falsified, it cannot be destroyed, it can only change owners, and you only need two people to achieve that - the sender and the recipient. You do make an interesting point about commodity however - NFT’s have graduated rarity, so I can imagine trading two or three Slowpokes for a Snorlax.

This doesnt address my point on what makes a pirated copy of a game illegitimate at all, did you mean to reply to mean here? Regardless lets say Nintendo is gone and I own a Snorlax on the blockchain, who cares? Nintendo or whatever company owned them still posess the copyright so I can't import it into another game, and the servers that are required to actually make use of the NFT are down since NFT's do not actually have the ability to do anything on their own. There is literally no value in owning that. This is getting back into the science fiction that doesnt understand how game development works of "omg ill be able to bring my pikachu into my call of duty game !!"

 

[Foxi4]

Dude, you're being asked a question rather directly. Both Trill and I are assuming you know this subject better than we do. By not answering these rather direct questions, you're not treating us like we're smart. You're treating us like we're too stupid to even comprehend the answer.

I’ve answered the question multiple times, you’re either unsatisfied with the answer or you didn’t think about it much.

This is objectively untrue. In our debate, I've found myriad examples of fraud on the blockchain, and much hand-wringing about stopping it, and maybe some meaningful changes have been made to make it harder, but the possibility of fraud is hardly 'non-existent'.

There is only one legitimate pool. I don’t know how I can answer this question in any other way. If you buy a pair of sneakers that say “Bodidos” on the side and don’t fit your feet because, actually, they’re gloves, you have a fair indication that the goods might be counterfeit. If there’s only one official Pokémon pool and only one entity that can mint them, the only way for fraud to occur is for you to not know that. A third party can’t roll in and mint Pokémon that would work in the game because the game’s infrastructure wouldn’t be accessing that pool, only the official one (unless you hack it, but then you elect to access a different pool yourself). What’s there to explain?

You have yet to clarify how this works. We've already mentioned that fake NFTs are a problem, and it's pretty clear to me that it's a big enough one still that someone would need to worry about purchasing one by accident. The issue is prolific enough that there are guides teaching people what to look out for.

There’s no such thing as a fake NFT per se - there are only people who take assets they do not own and turn them into their own NFT’s. You can print Pokémon trading cards on your printer right now, but they’re not real Pokémon cards. With some effort you can make legitimate-looking ones and trick someone. You can’t do that with an NFT because you can’t mint one in the official pool of choice - you can only make your own pool. You’ll trick someone who’s not paying attention, but at no point are you adding to the official pool of NFT’s, whereas a counterfeit card can have a long life before it is discovered by someone in the know.

Pool implies a limited number to be had in the first place. Unless I'm misunderstanding?

Limited, yes. Scarce? Not necessarily.

A cracked game is as much the real deal as a purchased copy, for all intents and purposes. If I purchase a reproduction cart of a game, I'm still getting the game, and it's indistinguishable from an official copy. The only difference is in perceived value. The 'real' cart is worth more than the 'fake' one.

We both know it’s not real, though one could argue that’s a sentimental matter

You mean like Ronin? Wormhole Bridge? Nomad Bridge? Beanstalk Farms? Wintermute? Those five listed hacks lost nearly $1.5 billion. With a B. It seems like none of the big providers are any more secure than Nintendo.

Big providers of what? You lost me. Bridges and wallets are not the blockchain, they merely exist on the blockchain.

 

[trillspector]

Big providers of what? You lost me. Bridges and wallets are not the blockchain, they merely exist on the blockchain

Alexa, what is the "Oracle Problem?"

 

[Foxi4]

You can do this with a locally stored append only database, a web form & a one time key generated by the government and have it infinitely more secure. You seem to fundamentally misunderstand lots of how databases actually work in the real world and think all of their utility only exists on the blockchain, utility which mind you doesn't actually work on the blockchain like you claim.

You absolutely cannot. Anyone with sufficient enough level of access can alter anything within a database. Nobody can alter anything on the blockchain. The fundamental misunderstanding is on your part. Imagine a digital asset as a statue - it was chiselled from a rock, you can’t “unchisel” it after the fact. The difference is that you can destroy a statue, but you can’t destroy a token.

Blockchains physically can not make verification easier because a blockchain cannot check if I own what I claim I own. It only can check if I own a token that is hopefully correlated with the thing I own. In terms of obfuscation it's very easy to figure out who owns what house already with the available databases so I am lost on to what that is fixing. Fraud certainly exists already but I am very skeptical that placing deeds on a system with no proven utility outside of fraud is going to fix that.

You are once again confusing matters of copyright with matters of exchanging ownership within the framework of the chain. I don’t know if you’re deliberately obtuse or if there’s some kind of linguistic disconnect going on here. Let’s say I’m artist A, I mint a run of NFT’s. The *only* legitimate NFT’s are the ones I minted. Can someone copy that work and commit fraud? Yes. They can do that anyway by copying my work in any other way imaginable. This is a moot point, has been from the start. The reason why I switched to art here is because a deed refers to a property, and property is situated on a plot of land. Unless you expect the plot of land to be Thanosed out of existence, the token absolutely correlates to a real place, so the argument is just bizarre. You cannot create or destroy matter - a place on a planet will always be a place on a planet, so long as that planet exists. Might be in the ocean one day, I assume it will depreciate then, but I digress.

This doesnt address my point on what makes a pirated copy of a game illegitimate at all, did you mean to reply to mean here? Regardless lets say Nintendo is gone and I own a Snorlax on the blockchain, who cares? Nintendo or whatever company owned them still posess the copyright so I can't import it into another game, and the servers that are required to actually make use of the NFT are down since NFT's do not actually have the ability to do anything on their own. There is literally no value in owning that. This is getting back into the science fiction that doesnt understand how game development works of "omg ill be able to bring my pikachu into my call of duty game !!"

A pirated game is not a legitimate copy of the game. It could be identical down to the bit and it still wouldn’t be a legitimate copy. You and I both know this. Whether it “plays the same” is irrelevant to this conversation. Do you not consider this to be immediately obvious and self-evident?

Alexa, what is the "Oracle Problem?"

You’re the one introducing a third party into the exchange - the facilitator is de facto the weak link. You’re blaming the blockchain for that? Tell you what, you also trust your Uber Eats driver not to steal some of your fries. They’re stealing some of your fries. That’s not a system problem, that’s a problem with the third-party.

 

[trillspector]

You absolutely cannot. Anyone with sufficient enough level of access can alter anything within a database. Nobody can alter anything on the blockchain. The fundamental misunderstanding is on your part.

Explain to me how an RSA-2048 encrypted append-only database is less resilient then a blockchain. Don't deflect, I want to see your math on how one is more hardened against cyber attacks then the other, Ill accept answers in either Megahashes or TFlops of computing power. I get the feeling that you first learned about the concept of trying to store data and not letting it be modified in the past five years since there have been solutions here for at least a decade before blockchain waltz'd in and said you can do it in a terrible trust-less way by burning the rainforest.

You are once again confusing matters of copyright with matters of exchanging ownership within the framework of the chain. I don’t know if you’re deliberately obtuse or if there’s some kind of linguistic disconnect going on here. Let’s say I’m artist A, I mint a run of NFT’s. The *only* legitimate NFT’s are the ones I minted. Can someone copy that work and commit fraud? Yes. They can do that anyway by copying my work in any other way imaginable. This is a moot point, has been from the start.

I am not misunderstanding you, you are utilizing poor logic to offload the responsibility of trust onto a third party and off of the blockchain. "oh the blockchain verifies trust as long as you buy from a trusted vendor on the blockchain" is garbage circular logic and you know it is.

A pirated game is not a legitimate copy of the game. It could be identical down to the bit and it still wouldn’t be a legitimate copy. You and I both know this. Whether it “plays the same” is irrelevant to this conversation. Do you not consider this to be immediately obvious and self-evident?

I am asking why a copy being a legitimate has any value whatsoever to the end user, since i do not believe it does. You seem really bad at answering my questions champ, I would make sure I am being concise and making an attempt to answer the other party before trying to pull out the "linguistic disconnect" card

You’re the one introducing a third party into the exchange - the facilitator is de facto the weak link. You’re blaming the blockchain for that? Tell you what, you also trust your Uber Eats driver not to steal some of your fries. They’re stealing some of your fries. That’s not a system problem, that’s a problem with the third-party.

Is your argument that every single person who owns a house should be able to read the blockchain source code to verify it is legitimate. At a certain point in civilized society we must trust certain parties and the blockchain manages to verify trust by doing absolutely nothing to ensure it and forcing users to utilize third party software to glean any comprehensible data from it, and then when a trust error occurs just blame the third party. Vitalik himself has acknowledged this is a problem!

 

[RunePhantom]

Big providers of what? You lost me. Bridges and wallets are not the blockchain, they merely exist on the blockchain.

Admittedly for this, I looked at the largest hacks that occurred last year. The listed names were blockchain entities that were hacked and lost the money I mentioned. However, that's irrelevant to the point I'm making. The point is that the blockchain is not secure enough to be remotely usable.

there’s only one official Pokémon pool and only one entity that can mint them, the only way for fraud to occur is for you to not know that. [...] You’ll trick someone who’s not paying attention, but at no point are you adding to the official pool of NFT’s, whereas a counterfeit card can have a long life before it is discovered by someone in the know.

While I get what you're saying, some folks are damned good at counterfeiting to the point that their work is indistinguishable from the original. It's surprisingly easy to do that with data. What happens when someone posing as the real guy succeeds and defrauds you? What recourse do you have? Counterfeits are currently a problem with this technology, even with people actively trying to verify their shit. It's very easy to accidentally buy a cert for something that the seller didn't actually own. Again, to the point where there are myriad guides on how to spot them.

I'd like to think that if it was as impenetrable and as easily verifiable as you say, that such guides wouldn't need to exist. If it was as secure as you say, then those hacks that I mentioned from last year wouldn't have happened. At the end of the day, I simply do not see this technology being usable in any real capacity for at least the next few years, if not the foreseeable future.

Which is unfortunate, as I do see the potential upsides! But the downsides are big enough that it's hard to justify the use of blockchain for just about anything.