{"id":8935,"date":"2022-02-02T13:12:36","date_gmt":"2022-02-02T13:12:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/02\/02\/when-you-buy-nft-art-youre-buying-a-link-to-a-file\/"},"modified":"2022-02-02T13:12:36","modified_gmt":"2022-02-02T13:12:36","slug":"when-you-buy-nft-art-youre-buying-a-link-to-a-file","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/02\/02\/when-you-buy-nft-art-youre-buying-a-link-to-a-file\/","title":{"rendered":"When You Buy NFT Art, You\u2019re Buying a Link to a File"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Roman Sibiryakov\/Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dazzling sales of NFTs have made the news over the past year, but each sale comes with a huge caveat: You\u2019re buying a link to a file on someone\u2019s server, and that link could change. We\u2019ll take a look at why NFTs work this way and how it might come back to haunt NFT owners in the future.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s an NFT Again?<\/h2>\n

NFT stands for \u201cnon-fungible token.\u201d<\/a> Non-fungible basically means one-of-a-kind. An NFT is a unique piece of code on a blockchain<\/a> that you can own, and often that code points to works of art such as illustrations, photographs, or videos.<\/p>\n

NFTs have been in the news<\/a> a lot lately, especially thanks to celebrities showing off their Bored Apes<\/a>, which are a type of digital collectible art. They\u2019ve sold for eye-popping sums<\/a> of money, inviting financial speculation that goes hand-in-hand with the largely unregulated cryptocurrency<\/a> market.<\/p>\n

RELATED:<\/strong> What Is a Bored Ape NFT?<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

NFT Art Isn\u2019t Stored on the Blockchain<\/h2>\n

With all the money being paid for NFTs, it might come as a surprise to learn that the artworks represented by NFTs aren\u2019t stored on the blockchain themselves. Instead, NFTs simply contain a link that points to a digital art file (photo or video) hosted on a conventional web server.<\/p>\n

As pointed out<\/a> by NFT developer Eric Kuhn, the most common NFT standard is defined in EIP-721<\/a>, an \u201cEthereum Improvement Proposal\u201d created in 2018 that spells out how today\u2019s NFTs work. This standard contains the option of using an image as \u201cmetadata\u201d for the NFT, and the standards document describes it this way:<\/p>\n

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A mechanism is provided to associate NFTs with URIs. We expect that many implementations will take advantage of this to provide metadata for each NFT. The image size recommendation is taken from Instagram, they probably know much about image usability. The URI MAY be mutable (i.e. it changes from time to time). We considered an NFT representing ownership of a house, in this case metadata about the house (image, occupants, etc.) can naturally change.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You\u2019ll notice a few things here. A \u201cURI\u201d is a web link<\/a>. The implementers of the NFT standard didn\u2019t intend that the image metadata be the key point of owning an NFT. After all, it\u2019s metadata, which means it is intended to describe other data.<\/a> And it\u2019s also a \u201cmutable\u201d link, which means it can change.<\/p>\n

Instead, the image metadata link was intended to help describe an NFT that would represent the ownership of something more substantial, like a house or maybe a concert ticket. In the case of almost every art NFT, no actual ownership or control of the artwork<\/a> is transferred to you, so when you\u2019re buying an NFT of a piece of artwork, you\u2019re buying nothing but a web link. It\u2019s right there in the standard.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, NFTs don\u2019t even store a hash of the metadata image, which would serve to verify that the NFT is pointed to the right image or video. And why would it? The image link was always intended to be changeable, as we covered in the NFT specification above.\u00a0 In October 2021, a computer security researcher named Moxie Marlinspike toyed with this property of NFTs when he created an NFT<\/a> that could change in content when viewed by different people.<\/p>\n

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mundissima\/Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The reason why art isn\u2019t stored directly on the Ethereum blockchain is because, at the moment, Ethereum (and other blockchains) are extremely slow and inefficient at storing digital data. Every byte is very expensive \u2014 with one 2021 calculation estimating<\/a> $20,000 to store for 500 KB. That makes it impractical to store even small images on the Ethereum blockchain, much less the high-resolution images or videos that NFTs point to.<\/p>\n

Even if you were wildly rich and decided to try to store artwork on the Ethereum blockchain (which the EIP-721 standard does not support, by the way), it would take a very long time to load when you viewed it. If you ask an Ethereum developer when we can expect to store images directly on the blockchain, you might get laughed out of the room<\/a>. Instead, off-chain solutions<\/a> are almost always recommended.<\/p>\n

Broken Link Hijacking May Come to NFTs<\/h2>\n

So what does it all mean? It means NFTs will break. Possibly even most of them, if we go by the history of link rot<\/a> on the internet. And when web links break<\/a>, malicious things can potentially take their place.<\/p>\n

The practice of redirecting dead or broken links for sinister purposes is often called \u201cbroken link hijacking<\/a>,\u201d and it can be used to direct people to advertising, malware, phishing sites, and even vandalism like pornography. In 2021, video pornography became embedded<\/a> on several major news sites because a porn site called \u201c5 Star Porn\u201d purchased a defunct domain called Vidme.com and pointed the web links that used to steam non-porn news videos to porn videos instead.<\/p>\n

Imagine if, in ten years, a major host of NFT images went under, and then someone swooped in and bought the domain name, pointing thousands of NFT links to porn images. It would be very easy to do, and there is nothing the NFT owner can do to stop it. The NFT contains an URL pointing to a server out of the NFT owner\u2019s control.<\/p>\n

NFTs Might Not Enter the Historical Record, Either<\/h2>\n

Even if your NFT links break and no one replaces them, you will still be left with NFTs that 404<\/a> when they try to load their artwork, which means that NFT art is not future-proof at all.<\/p>\n

\"NFTs
Rokas Tenys\/Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For future historians to understand the content of today\u2019s NFTs, we\u2019ll need a service like the Internet Archive\u2019s Wayback Machine<\/a> to mirror the NFT artworks and take the place of the broken links when they inevitably show up. Or we might have to rely on pirates who mass download NFT artwork<\/a> and make it available in massive dumps (pirates have saved the day<\/a> many times before).<\/p>\n

Eventually, the design of NFTs might change to a more robust model where the images are stored on a distributed file system like IPFS<\/a>, but that\u2019s not written in the NFT standard people are using now. At the moment, you\u2019re just buying a very fragile web link.<\/p>\n

Should I Buy NFT Art Anyway?<\/h2>\n

Knowing what you know, whether you still buy an NFT is completely up to you. Right now, the NFT market is completely unregulated, which means it is lacking oversight or quality control standards. As a result, it\u2019s full of scams<\/a>, and purchasing an art NFT with the hope that it will rise in value (or even maintain its value) is extremely risky. So tread carefully, and know that what you\u2019re buying is only an expensive web link that can break at any time. Stay safe out there!<\/p>\n

RELATED:<\/strong> Stop Listening to Celebrity Advice on Crypto (and Everything Else)<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n