stekern

Non-fungible tokens (NFT) have been in the wind lately, and a lot of money is being pumped into this at a rate which seems irrational and unjustified. The current bull run surrounds the entire blockchain and cryptocurrency sphere with money, hype and positive sentiment, and it's increasingly difficult to discuss and judge solutions based on technical merits rather than jumping on the bandwagon.

We've seen many cases of various companies utilizing blockchain and cryptocurrencies to tackle an issue even though many of these issues are already solved by more traditional approaches in cheaper, more efficient and scalable ways. These companies come and go, and while most of them seem like attempts to simply cash in on hype, some of the problems they try to solve and the solutions they come up with seem to, conceptually, have more merit than others.

To me it seems like an NFT marketplace solves some interesting issues. I can see value in a standardized, general trading platform for digital artifacts that cover tamper-free proof-of-ownership for art, music, tickets, game items, etc., without vendor lock-in. Such a marketplace seems better suited to stand the test of time compared to centralized and specialized solutions (e.g., Ticketmaster, websites for CS:GO skins, ++).

So in the the context of digital artifacts and NFT marketplaces, are there any "traditional" approaches that solve the same issues and have mechanisms in place for:

1) zero-trust

2) proof-of-ownership

3) anti-tampering