Magic Beans

Creative works are social objects in the fullest sense — they exist in a nexus of social, cultural, and legal links to other people and things, and they are only valuable to the extent they can fully participate in their whole context. Rights regimes restrict known rights, but also create rights if they are well designed, driving generativity.

So the parsimonious mental model of an NFT based on what we’ve discussed so far is that it is a promiscuous and vacuous digital social object. A thing that contains no substance itself, not even reliable pointing properties, but has an identity and can be traded, transferred, mixed and matched indiscriminately with other things in a social context.

They are technically complex, but socially promiscuous in a way only much simpler digital things, such as plain text files or JPEGs, have been so far. As we’ve discussed, they’re also kinda content-free. They bear no necessary payloads, pointers, programmed affordances, or rights. All those things are optional extras. The NFT itself is just a token... See more

An NFT represents an access pass to an unspecified, generative possible future associated with an object. It is a key to a possible world. A key that is distinguishable from other keys. A key to a world that may or may not open up. A key that carries some hints of the kinds of locks it might unlock. A key that, unlike fungible tokens (or stock), al... See more

NFTs clearly belong in that tradition. They are digital social objects. Except they are a lot wilder. They don’t live within particular platforms or walled gardens, and aren’t attached to a particular company’s technology or even a specific open standard.

That’s 3 classes of mental models for NFTs, which I summarize as follows: 1. Signifier-value mental models 2. Agency-value mental models 3. Right-to-future-rights mental models Or in other words, the right to represent a thing, the right to do things with a thing, and the right to expect certain things in speculative environment... See more