Here at Hackaday, we’re always working as hard as we can to bring you the latest and most exciting technologies, and like so many people we’ve become convinced that the possibilities offered by the rise of the Blockchain present unrivaled opportunities for humanity to reinvent itself unfettered by the stifling regulations of a dying system. This is why today we’ve decided to join in with the digital cognoscenti and celebrities embracing Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs, as a new promise of non-corporeal digital investment cryptoasset that’s taking the world by storm.
Crypto Non-Fungible Investment Gains!
An NFT is a digital token representing something in the real world, and coupled to a unique ID held in a secure entry in the Blockchain. It’s non-fungible, which means that it’s unique and not interchangeable in the manner of a traditional old-style cryptoasset such as Bitcoin. As it allows a real-world object to be tokenised in digital form it represents a way to own something that provides an irrefutable connection to it as as a digital cryptoasset.
It’s a complex system that’s maybe too difficult to explain fully in a single article, but think of an NFT as a way to invest in a cryptoasset in digital form with its uniqueness guaranteed by Blockchain security, without having the inconvenience of physically owning it. Instead your NFT is safely held on a server on the Internet, and can’t be physically stolen as it would from a bank vault because it has the Blockchain cryptosecurity baked in.
Non Fungible Blockchain Cryptoassets!
NFTs have so far found a space in the creative markets, where they have provided a revolutionary opportunity for artists to expand their sales in the digital realm by selling NFTs of their work. A struggling artist can now access buyers all over the world, who can in turn now invest with confidence in creative talent to which they would never otherwise be exposed. It’s a win-win situation in which both cryptoinvestor and artist benefit from The Power of the Blockchain.
Hackaday is excited to offer a once-in-a-lifetime chance to acquire a Blockchain-cryptosecured NFT representing one of our own articles; our first ever NFT is the only officially sanctioned digital copy of a Hackaday article presenting a novel method of handling toilet paper shortages. The original article will continue to exist on Hackaday.com with all rights reserved, but we will not make any other NFTs of it. We may also decide to update the original article to let everyone know you are the lucky owner of the only digital copy of this piece of greatness. That’s right, this NFT will let you prove you own a screenshot!
Having today sold you on the incredible cryptoinvestment opportunity offered by NFTs, we’ll be back on another date with a more sober and in-depth technical examination of the technology behind them. Meanwhile should our brief foray into NFTs garner any interest (and we really hope it does not), we will donate proceeds to the excellent Girls Who Code, a truly solid investment with a tangible bright future.
Thanks [Micah Scott] for some NFT consultancy during the making of this piece.
Well, I guess the joke is on us today. If you for some reason wanted to bid on our NFT you may have noticed there is no way to actually do that. We lined up this gem of an article well in advance, but I only tried to put the token on sale last night and was blocked because the wallet had not been “Initialized”. Doing so means running a “free” transaction where all you pay is the gas cost — which is about $145 USD right now, sheesh! While I did mine some ETH a few years ago (who didn’t try that when they bought a new GPU?), it was only valued at about $45. My frantic attempt to buy more ETH worked, but there’s a 10-day hold time before you can transfer the tokens to a different wallet. Our attempt to deliver a joke on the futuristic Blockchain thwarted by an old-fashioned banking hold.
So apologies for that. But to be honest we weren’t really going to sell the NFT anyway. Our plan was to let the bidding proceed, cancel the auction (whose reserve price was 6000 ETH or about $11M USD) and just transfer the token as a gift to the high bidder while making a donation to charity. It’s the best of all worlds, we wouldn’t have to deal with the reporting for profiting from cryptocurrency, and the money changing hands would go to a good cause (and still will as we still plan to make a donation).
I think Jenny did a great job with tongue in cheek on this article and hope you had a good chuckle. Keep an eye out for a follow-up that digs more into the quirky world of NFTs soon.
Ha ha that’s made it even funnier!
Darn, I was already planning out where I was going to display the screenshot once I won it.
As the winner you could have sold the screenshot as an NFT.
Or you could have calculated a NFT of your NFT token, and sell *that* as a NFT!
Selling this comment as an NFT
Will you accept 3 Internet Merits for it?
I could throw in an attaboy if hard pressed.
Heh, *would* have been a good gag. I can’t wait until I can sell a non-fungible representation of someone else’s car!
Oh, and a side note. If you’re going to pull something like that for charity organize it so to nominally worthless asset goes to the charity and is then auctioned off for them, or the proceeds go directly to them through PayPal Giving or similar at the time of sale.
Saves a lot of paperwork.
Do this on WAX. easier cheaper faster.
Someone probably thought that the lightbulb was crazy, once. But this is a gem…! You see, we don’t need the kight bulb… just the light! I have all these illicit screeshots – it would be nice to actually OWN one.
Carry on! Start a Go Fund Me, and get on with the work in doing this!
Running a faux auction could be seen as legitimizing the NFT market. I’m glad you failed. It should not be legitimized in any sense. https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2021/03/30/nfts-non-fungible-tokens-gamestop-dystopia-240346
Well it seems to me that he is $145 richer (at least he didn’t spend that to generate a token that would not have sold…)
Dang. Guys I really wanted to buy it. You guys should do NFT’s of wrenchy and special edition logos. I don’t think articles would trade all that well, because there are a lot of articles and waiting for the one article we really locked onto may take awhile to come up. I’d pay to have an NFT of some classic artwork from HaD’s early days.
why not sell physical post cards of the HaD logo. Then if someone shutdown the website and breaks all the URLs we’ll still have the pictures we bought, unlike with NFT.
Can you imagine all these art collector suckers paying money for originals when you can buy a print for $5? It’s definitely the same thing!6
They’re not even paying for originals, they’re just paying for a digital bragging right.
If they spent thousands buying the same print as everyone else because it came with a certificate calling it the original, they definitely would be suckers, yes.
Feel free to get your own copy of Beeples EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS, the jpg some wanker paid $69 millions for.
Here’s the NFT:
https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmPAg1mjxcEQPPtqsLoEcauVedaeMH81WXDPvPx3VC5zUz
And here’s the jpg.
https://ipfsgateway.makersplace.com/ipfs/QmXkxpwAHCtDXbbZHUwqtFucG1RMS6T87vi1CdvadfL7qA
Ah, NFTs, it the past you could only sell people anything, now you can sell them nothing.
I like the idea of my tokens not having any fungus.
Tokenism is wrong.
Anyone want to buy some QR codes? I burned down a whole forest to make them.
You should have burned the trees selectively, to make a QR readable from the ISS.
I see what you did there. You turned an NFT into Not a Fxxxxing Thing! Very clever, supreme satire, cosmically cerebral, and totally tops.
So, are NFTs nifty?
My understanding is that the asset is not encoded in the blockchain, a pointer to the asset is encoded(?) Some people recently “lost” their NFT’s because of this. It was resolved for some but not for others. The more accurate the description, the better the jape!
Wow, and here I was thinking the NFT was a kind of checksum of an actual file… It’s really even more pointless then :D
If you want to know how crappy your NFT is, try this out. FungyProof.com Yes, I both hate and love NFTs lol.
I have a bridge to sell you.
Somebody should create an NFT representing the Brooklyn Bridge. Actually, that would be even funnier if several people stole that idea and circulated multiple Bridge Backed Tokens representing the same bridge.
I’m one of several people…
Best April 1st ive seen today; worthy of an an unsanitary enthused lick and more. OMG PONIES level.
This is an honest question, please don’t let you head explode: Why does it have to be *girls* who code?
Is there something to be gained by having a fund that serves only half the population?
Yup. The world would be a better place if there were more women programmers. The best way to undo that imbalance is to push harder on the short end of the stick.
Do you have a better idea to achieve rough gender parity in the software industry?
“The world would be a better place if there were more women programmers.”
Agreed!
“The best way to undo that imbalance is to push harder on the short end of the stick.”
Disagree! you just create a pendulum then that will continue to go back and forth. the logical problem in your argument is that you first assume that there must be gender parity is both an attainable goal and that it is simultaneously a good thing. Forcing any sort of parity based on our genders not only kills the ideal of a meritocracy but it also reduces the entire industry to a social argument that will never actually get work done.
The best way to undue balance is to get everyone to stop pushing on the damn stick and encourage everyone to learn some programming regardless of gender, race or any other personal trait that makes no difference to an individuals ability to program. Once you have tied ability to identity traits, you have ruined anything getting done because then everyone is too busy fighting over identity instead of trying to improve ability.
In otherwords, show everyone that they will be judged on their ability to program with absolutly zero regard for their personal identity and you will get a better balance of different identities in the industry. You also shouldnt focus on one identity over another because to counter your “pushing the short end of the stick” one could easily ask “what about people of color” or any other minority and then you have too many directions that the short end of the stick is being pushed and the people pushing the big end of the stick have a much easier time keeping it that way.
The hard choices of modern social sciences: “Gender is just a social construct used for discrimination; it doesn’t matter which bathroom you use.” – “We need gender quotas in computer sciences.”
Or, on another point, since gender has nothing to do with what’s between your legs and you cannot assume one’s gender, how do you actually know what the distribution of genders in programming is?
Oh my, did you just assume all these people’s genders?!
I personally think that people should strive to do what they are passionate about, regardless of what gender they themselves have.
If there is equality when it comes to gender, race, or anything within a specific field is generally not important. The thing of importance is that there is competent people in the field willing and interested to do the job. If they are a man or a women or even a literal dragon shouldn’t matter as far as programming goes.
And I always find it surprising how many people out there in the world seems to value a person’s gender, race or nationality as important aspects to how good they will be at a certain thing, or if they should do the thing at all.
Word
As it happens, yes. We live in a society that actively discourages girls and women from showing an interest in technology subjects. Anything that seeks to change that is no bad thing.
One might conversely say “Is there anything to be gained from excluding half of your brightest minds from one of your most important industries”.
We also live in a society that actively discourages men from interest in healthcare, veterinary science, psychology, etc. Where’s the push for gender parity in schools and hospitals?
I would also ask who exactly is doing the discouraging, it is not the industries themselves as they give special treatment already. So really it’s men/women discouraging themselves/their friends based on what they think is manly/womanly, and on some level you are saying that these men/women shouldn’t like what they like. Do you think that’s right?
Agree 100%.
Especially given that teachers are overwhelmingly female.
You would think they would encourage girls to pursue what they are passionate about.
Why would we shoehorn someone into a career for the purposes of meeting quotas instead of finding people who truly love what they do?
“We also live in a society that actively discourages men from interest in healthcare…”
Oh, like when our parents suggested us becoming doctors, or lawyers?
Remember a lot of this is about money as it is about a career, hence the whole “become a programmer…”, that’s where the success is.
Yes, I took programming classes. Just before most of those jobs were moved off shore.
First off, why are you ask that question that question on a coding/maker forum rather than a healthcare forum? Why should hackaday be responsible for promoting men in healthcare?
Second, by making it easier for girls and women to enter coding/tech areas, and giving them more career choice, you will reduce the amount of women pushed towards “pink collar” work, which will reduce the competition you are facing when you are applying for those jobs.
Wow. Speak for yourself
Mike – skip the article and sell an NFT to your comment explanation! Especially with the as-yet-no-one-commented-on-it pun of “tongue in cheek” with a story related to toilet paper. Brilliantly subtle humor, Mr. Szczys!
If anyone likes this comment from a long time HAD commenter, I’ll be happy to contract Mike and Jenny to set up selling an NFT connected to it!
Ars Technica’s non-fungible guide to NFTs
Is blockchain item authentication a speculative fad or a technological sea change?
Kyle Orland – Mar 29, 2021 11:15 am UTC
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/03/ars-technicas-non-fungible-guide-to-nfts/
Blind technocracy
Nobody ever thought the meme economy would become real.
I don’t think that is a fair.
One of my sisters grew up learning to program (Python, but I loved her anyway), and never had any exterior forces at play suggesting that she shouldn’t show an interest in technological subjects.
She works for IBM as a senior software engineer now.
This could be coincidental, and I realize anecdotal evidence doesn’t count for much.
You are taking a conclusion and ascribing it to one cause.
I think it is far more complicated than that, and I think this is an unfair accusation against the majority of educators and families.
In contrast, I know somebody who signed up for computer programming classes at school, in the end it was decided because of limited space only boys would be allow to take the programming class, girls had to take art instead. I am genuinely happy your sister made it, but sorry for those 100+ girls denied access in that instance.
“You wouldn’t download a car, would you?”