He has some good points but is on the extreme side. When batteries started appearing in cars all the petrol heads had a fit now they both co exist and work together and everyone has moved on. NFT's is the hype right now, some will make millions and others will loose but ultimately I "the smart contract" portion will stay and become part of our daily lives. The one thing that is frightening is how easy it is to raise money with NFTs and a few people are taking advantage while other artists are earning there fare share.
The opponents aren't wrong that the industry wants to monetise all digital actions through smart contracts. Serious optimisations are needed, and at this time it is a money printing machine as long as it is supported by the real-world economy. Smart contracts, aren’t really smart, it still needs to be issued, and the agreement therein still needs to abide by a EULA, other business policies, and the respective laws. It is complicated, and all it serves at this time is a record with or without utility, or some receipt which is legally binding. Nobody owns anything, a smart contract does not represent property, but it does represent use rights.
I read a lot into this, more so into the art world, and I am surprised how many people believe that their imagery, or art, is stored on the blockchain. Oh my… those who want to ensure continuity behind their artwork should host it on a reputable CDN service, and this is also applicable to NFTs in games, the metaverse tokens. What happens when that data is being manipulated? Yes, some NFT marketplaces not only list NFTs, but they also host NFTs, but say they withdraw, the smart contract would need to be reissued since the storage changed... who is paying? To store real art work within a container, the data would need to be miniscule and compressed (which is legally owning a replicate, since it is not the original, unless you are into bad quality original artwork).
How is ownership determined, because the blockchain serves ‘anonymity’, who are the legal persons in the contract? Are we going to use a service like Civic to authorise and approve legal persons? That is two important questions, it was not long ago that Civic made a mistake by greenlighting a scam.
The creators of "Big Daddy Ape Club" NFTs took 9,136 solana from would-be collectors despite being vetted by a verification company, Decrypt reported.
markets.businessinsider.com
The proponents continue to argue that smart contracts have displaced what they call traditional law. There is no traditional law, there are traditional laws contained within law, but law have always evolved. Smart contracts have no mediation, none, and that is why people who have been scammed had to purchase back their own NFTs at their own loss. No restitution and no insurance, you always end up in a worse position.
This muddies how the blockchain and its technologies have been punted, it is still very open to abuse irrespective to what is being promised.
Rug pulling is one thing, but what about NFT pulling? What happens when a NFT is deemed undesirable, what happens when a game ecosystem don't want to continue to support an NFT?
What I do predict in the next two years are many legal disputes between legal parties, either through mediation or in a good old 'traditional' courtroom, where said 'gatekeepers' will make the case and being smart about it.
I can see a business, like MS, create their own contained blockchain ecosystem. It would be controllable, keep business aspects private, and it would centralise a decentralised IP system. MS would know who and where their users are, and where there are some anonymity, MS will learn as much as possible about those users.
As I have pointed out many times. Steam also have smart contracts, but it doesn't reside on the blockchain.
In the meantime, it is the people's choice to gamble, but the gamble part shouldn't be made obscure through hype. Crypto is what it is at the time, speculation.
