Please don’t auto downvote before reading.
A little bit ago some asked a question about why the hate of the blockchain, and that got me thinking if there even was a legitimate use case where the blockchain would be beneficial, but I couldn’t think of one outside maybe some sort of decentralized bank, but before I knew I was thinking it would instantly turn into some crypto scheme and strapped it, because crypto currencies are a scam on every level – and no they aren’t private or secret as some think either.
So I wanted to ask the community. Instead of using the blockchain for crypto, is there a better use where the blockchain could benefit society?
I’d say in theory it could be used something like public records of proof for ownership of immaterial or intellectual property and the transfer thereof. Say the rights to music, writing, digital art and whatnot. Like the essence of NFT without the hyped up crypto bro speculation and pump’n’dump.
The difficulty would be to get it recognized as legally valid and the bigger difficulty that as there is no central authority there is also nobody being able to rectify fraud or user mistakes. If you implement central authority it’s basically just any old list of transactions with some extra crud so then the question would be why even bother.
So in theory it would be terrible to use as proof for ownership.
In theory in a perfect world without scams or mistakes it could be useful but then again why would you need it in a perfect world.
Weirdly enough, despite the hype of NFTs, that’s what they were being used for in the background of the bullshit.
Small artists were and still are using it to sell their work internationally, where they can tailor their own contracts that people, by default, agree to by purchasing.
They were used by people to control and verify their ownership of sensitive digital media as well.
Only the NFTs didn’t do anything of the kind, unless backed up by actual legal contracts in which case the NFT was pointless, and you could just have had the legal contracts
The only reason it had a brief flash in the pan was that it was an attractive grift for speculators betting there were greater fools, and when the fools ran out so did the NFTs
There were scams going on, still are, and it was a fomo bubble that rightfully burst. I mean, any industry has a scummy side to it and crypto, unfortunately, makes it easy to scam.
But NFTs are still being used for their original purpose, I’m not defending them, that’s just a thing that’s happening.
Over the last few years courts in at least a few countries have decided to recognize the contracts as legally binding proof of ownership. England, Singapore and China that I know of. I remember a couple cases coming up in Mexico and the United States but couldn’t find much well-sourced information on the follow up.