I got bored the other day and thought it would be funny to make a copy of the most expensive NFT and set that as my Twitter profile picture because they added that silly feature.
So I downloaded MetaMask, got everything set up, and went to one of the NFT marketplaces to try to make one. Uploaded the image and got a big scary warning:
> (paraphrased; I don't have a screenshot) This image was found too many times on the internet. If this image is not yours, this is ILLEGAL AND A VIOLATION OF COPYRIGHT LAW, and may result in your NFT being removed from the marketplace.
How on earth is this decentralized? Like yeah, I get wanting to protect your "asset" from "theft," but what central authority gets to decide what copyright law we abide by- further, what happens when an NFT marketplace removes your NFT? Does it get removed from the blockchain? I legitimately don't know how this works.
The user experience is also TERRIBLE. I am rather technical (hell, I used to do Bitcoin back in like 2015, or whenever it was about $4k/coin) and still don't really know how the hell MetaMask works. I imported the wallet on my phone... maybe? The randomart image it showed initially was different, but apparently the iOS app just defaults to a different kind of randomart.
You also have to use the MetaMask browser on iOS. It sucks.
Also the MetaMask connect buttons barely work across different sites. It had a _really_ hard time telling if I had a wallet. Not sure if this is an implementation issue on the dev end but as a user it was super confusing.
Using crypto to sign transactions to verify my identity is actually a very interesting idea, I like it a lot. Much easier than creating a user/pass for every site- just click Sign and go. That's basically the only good UX of web3 as it stands.
None of it designed to make it easy or to make sense. Because if people realized they are being taken for a ride, no one will show up and empty their wallets. It's what corrupt businesses and dictatorships do. Confuse and conquer.
This is Moxie's point. Web 1.0 is actually decentralized and permissionless. You can actually host that image on your own Web 1.0 without any gatekeepers being involved.
Not strictly speaking true. Your local government can raid your servers for serving content that violates local laws, or in cooperation with a foreign one.
> So I downloaded MetaMask, got everything set up, and went to one of the NFT marketplaces to try to make one. Uploaded the image and got a big scary warning:
One NFT marketplace shows you an error message and therefore the technology is not decentralized? That's a bit of a stretch. That NFT marketplace might have restrictions in place for their own legal reasons, but using that as an excuse to say that the technology isn't decentralized is unjustifiable.
Don’t know if you read moxie’s article linked in root, but OpenSea is actually where almost all sites get their NFT information from (even metamask iirc). That’s not the site where I got the error, granted, but what happens when OpenSea (a central marketplace) removes your NFT?
> Using crypto to sign transactions to verify my identity is actually a very interesting idea, I like it a lot. Much easier than creating a user/pass for every site- just click Sign and go. That's basically the only good UX of web3 as it stands.
We already have this with SSO though - what would be the difference? Decentralization? Though it should be possible to host your own SSO.
Right, and if you don't want a single trackable identity, which lots of people don't, a nice modern phone can also WebAuthn using say a fingerprint reader† and so you can have one step sign in (tap sensor, sign in) that way with the resulting "identity" living only on that one site.
† You might be thinking wait, we don't want to be trackable. WebAuthn doesn't have any way of sending fingerprints to anywhere, the phone is using the biometrics to make this not work for bag snatcher, or for the guy snooping your desk while you go get a coffee.
> Using crypto to sign transactions to verify my identity is actually a very interesting idea, I like it a lot. Much easier than creating a user/pass for every site- just click Sign and go.
I agree. The only thing missing is a way to recover your account (wallet) if you lose or forget your password.
So I downloaded MetaMask, got everything set up, and went to one of the NFT marketplaces to try to make one. Uploaded the image and got a big scary warning:
> (paraphrased; I don't have a screenshot) This image was found too many times on the internet. If this image is not yours, this is ILLEGAL AND A VIOLATION OF COPYRIGHT LAW, and may result in your NFT being removed from the marketplace.
How on earth is this decentralized? Like yeah, I get wanting to protect your "asset" from "theft," but what central authority gets to decide what copyright law we abide by- further, what happens when an NFT marketplace removes your NFT? Does it get removed from the blockchain? I legitimately don't know how this works.
The user experience is also TERRIBLE. I am rather technical (hell, I used to do Bitcoin back in like 2015, or whenever it was about $4k/coin) and still don't really know how the hell MetaMask works. I imported the wallet on my phone... maybe? The randomart image it showed initially was different, but apparently the iOS app just defaults to a different kind of randomart.
You also have to use the MetaMask browser on iOS. It sucks.
Also the MetaMask connect buttons barely work across different sites. It had a _really_ hard time telling if I had a wallet. Not sure if this is an implementation issue on the dev end but as a user it was super confusing.
Using crypto to sign transactions to verify my identity is actually a very interesting idea, I like it a lot. Much easier than creating a user/pass for every site- just click Sign and go. That's basically the only good UX of web3 as it stands.