Recently, the NFT and storage concept tracks are still hot, but there is little talk about the relationship between the two. Share an article today, just to focus on this topic, and talk about one aspect of NFT that is neglected: storage.
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He Caitou is surrounded by spectators, and NFT is out of the circle?
Recently, an article about NFT "Some Nonsense about NFT" by the antique-level Internet writer He Caitou has been screened. implied in the text:
Maybe it's too early to imagine the future, maybe the NFT craze will just disappear as soon as all the crazes on the Internet. However, changes in reality always come later than changes in perception. I think NFT can be a little farther away because it is quietly changing people's ideas.
What's interesting is that this popular science article that Uncle Caitou thought was boring and the reading volume would hit a new low, after meeting netizens in the currency circle, the reaction was very interesting: "Even He Caitou is talking about NFT". As described by Caitou, a large number of readers in the currency circle poured in:
Don't leave a message, don't like it, don't pay attention, just run in without saying a word, click on the appreciation to make a sum of money, turn around and leave.
About ten years ago, there was no official account, and even WeChat hadn’t appeared yet. Hecaitou, Lianyue, and Lao Luo's Niubo.com were the places I often hang out in those days. He Caitou's blog is called "The Past by the Trough", and some traces of the past can also be vaguely seen. May it be as Caitou said, may we, readers who still firmly believe in future trends in the currency circle, "faith come true, pass through the narrow gate, and reach the vast land."
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1. NFT and digital ownership
There is a view that NFT is a radical new form of digital ownership, trying to get rid of the control of centralized companies.
For example, in a traditional game, although you bought a lot of cool equipment and props, it seems that you have a lot of digital assets in the game. But it is still subject to the restrictions of the game party, you do not really own the asset. Therefore, after the emergence of NFT, people expect that there will finally be a digital asset that can be truly "owned". As long as there are tokens, you will have the corresponding digital artwork. NFTs represent a new generation of digital asset ownership.
Is that so?
In fact, things are really not that simple.first level title
2. Data storage problem
NFT cannot be separated from storage. Although this issue is not often raised by NFT enthusiasts.
Although NFT decentralized forms exist, most NFT marketplaces, including Nifty Gateway, SuperRare, Rarible, Opensea, etc., have some centralized components just like traditional online stores.
For example, if you buy an NFT, the token itself exists on the blockchain. However, due to the high cost of storing files on the chain, especially large files such as videos, images, videos and other media related to tokens are usually stored off-chain.
That is to say, the data of NFT's own token part is centralized, butOften the media such as pictures corresponding to NFT adopts the method of off-chain storage.Store the Hash value data of these files in the NFT token metadata. The storage method of NFT is determined by the artist or the platform, which means that the corresponding photos, videos and other files in NFT may be stored on a centralized server.
I have to say, for NFT buyers, this will cause trouble:What if the company storing the NFT media file goes out of business? How to ensure that the NFT they bought really still exists? Instead of turning into a bubble?
Recently, a programmer on Twitter wrote an in-depth post on NFT, exploring where the media referenced by NFT actually exists.
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What's wrong with using URLs?
Since HTTP URLs are addressable, linking a file to a specific site with specific data that the owner controls is essentially a centralized storage method. If the NFT relies on the metadata of the HTTP URL, this means that the NFT holder cannot actually own the NFT at all, because the publisher needs to continue to maintain the server in order for these NFTs to make sense.In other words, once the server storing these media is shut down or shut down, these NFTs are just blank.
The recently popular Beeple can serve as an example. The Crossroad NFT created by Beeple is issued on the Nifty Gateway platform. The metadata of the image of the token is an HTTP URL hosted on the Nifty server, which contains the metadata of Crossroad. The metadata text further points to another HTTP URL containing Crossroad's actual visual media, hosted on a cloud-based media service but still served by Nifty's servers, as shown in the image below.
This means that if the Nifty platform goes bankrupt and shuts down its servers, the owner of the Crossroad NFT will only be left with a token pointing to a defunct HTTP URL. Metadata and images attached to NFTs depend on Nifty to be able to run continuously.
Such examples have not happened before.
In early March, musician 3LAU sold an NFT album on NiftyGateway for $11 million, but the NFT is now missing. Although a copy of 3LAU's album can still be found on NiftyGateway, the real NFT asset can no longer be retrieved, because 3LAU's NFT is indexed by HTTP URL and placed on a centralized server.
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3. Decentralized storage solution: IPFS
IPFS, or Interplanetary File System, is a protocol for sharing and storing data around a decentralized peer-to-peer network. This allows for Content Addressable Storage (CAS), which means that the content itself can be hashed (encrypted) and referenced.
The difference between the addressing method of HTTP URL and the content addressing method of IPFS can be understood in this way.
A traditional URL is like telling someone to watch a specific movie at a specific theater (eg: go to iQiyi to see The Godfather), while a content-addressable store is like telling someone to watch only that movie in general (eg : to see The Godfather). The former requires a license from iQiyi; the latter simply requires the film to exist, since anyone watching The Godfather anywhere will see the exact same content.
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4. Explore the details of IPFS
Files hosted through the IPFS protocol must also be stored in a node in the IPFS network.Many major centralized NFT marketplaces, while utilizing IPFS for storage, actually intend to host these files through their own private gateways acting as nodes.
This means that even if the NFT uses a method that directly references media stored on IPFS, the media file may still require the IPFS node operated by a specific centralized NFT market to remain online, otherwise the NFT will be blank.
Beeple's "everyday: The First 5000 Days," for example, was released on MakersPlace and sold for $69 million through Christie's.
Here, the NFT references metadata accessible through a public IPFS gateway, meaning it's likely safe regardless of whether Makeplace continues to operate. In reality, however, the image's index is stored through MakersPlace's private gateway.
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5. Not all NFTs are like this
Of course not all NFTs will encounter such risks. There are also NFTs that have adopted other strategies.
Many high-profile NFT projects, including Avastars and Art Blocks, are designed to run entirely on-chain, which means storage for both metadata and visual media is fully decentralized. In short, NFTs that run entirely on-chain are better able to fulfill their promise: to achieve the purest form of digital "ownership".
Unfortunately,
Unfortunately,In many cases, it is not cost-effective to store all media files on the chain, especially if the media files are too large, the cost will be very high.first level title
6. Off-chain storage solution
Considering the community's concerns about the lack of decentralization of NFTs, Hashmasks announced in a recent blog post "On the Persistence of Hashmasks Artwork" that they added metadata for IPFS addresses and all 16384 Masks on the chain (Hashmasks The explicit characteristics of the constituent elements of ).
Now Hashmasks owners don't need to rely on the Hashmasks website for IPFS image locations, although these links are permanently stored on-chain.
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7. New trends
Arweave is a decentralized data storage system designed to sustain information storage in perpetuity by financially incentivizing users to support and store as much data as possible and by rewarding those who contribute space. In other words, the more data users store on Arweave, the more profits they make.
Arweave also bridges IPFS and provides incentives for IPFS file pinning operations, essentially encouraging users to dual store information via Arweave and IPFS.
Manuel Alzuru, the founder of the upcoming social NFT marketplace DoinGud, believes that Arweave is worth looking forward to as a potential solution for long-term media storage.
In his opinion, most projects in the NFT field start from experiments. In order to facilitate development, they are also limited by tools, so they have to compromise. The consequence of this is that many NFTs will store media files on centralized servers or hosted on IPFS nodes, and incentives must be provided for these nodes so that these media files can be stored continuously.
Alzuru mentioned that DoinGud is exploring different alternatives, such as permaweb, to enable permanent storage of media connected to NFTs and ensure a more flexible and robust infrastructure.
Here is a brief addition to a little knowledge of Arweave.
Arweave is implemented through blockchain, and files are stored in each block. The Arweave data structure is more like a net than a chain. Arweave is committed to changing the way blockchain storage works, creating a unique new method called blockweave that provides permanent, scalable chain storage.
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8. How can NFT be better stored?
Arweave isn't the only startup aiming to maintain long-term storage of data. Filecoin is more famous, allowing users to rent or lease decentralized storage space.
Pinata provides an optimized user experience for anyone who is interested in opening an IPFS node and managing their own data storage. The website does not issue tokens, but pays for users. The NFT platform package is $1,000 /moon. We'll go into a little more detail below.
Another contestant is Aleph.im. This is a second-layer network across blockchains, and a potential NFT storage solution is also being developed.
Aleph CEO Jonathan Schemoul mentioned that they are developing tools that can help users 'save' snapshots of NFT data.
If the current data is on IPFS, fine, we can pin those files and infer new gateways if needed (as long as we have the IPFS hash and path). If not, the platform and its owner/creator/any user can also take snapshots themselves, and we can find witnesses (witnesses) to do the same work and compare them.
Hashmasks utilizes Arweave and IPFS pin incentives, which can theoretically ensure that stored data is more reliable, allowing NFT to continue to exist even if the platform's own server is shut down. But Arweave is a relatively new startup, and the long-term viability of its incentive model has yet to be proven.
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9. Who is responsible for storage?
Who is responsible for keeping the Mona Lisa today? Is it Da Vinci or his descendants? No, it is the responsibility of the Louvre. So who should bear the storage responsibility of NFT?
Among the many IPFS-focused startups, Pinata is unique in that it is aimed at NFT owners who want to keep their art investment forever in their hands. In addition to providing accessible management tools for anyone who wants to host their own node, they also allow users to pay Pinata for the service of continuously pinning the media of NFTs directly on IPFS.
Elpizo Choi, director of engineering at the NFT Marketplace Foundation, expects creators and collectors to take a more active role in storing their NFT-related assets in the future.
"Foundation's NFTs are hosted on IPFS... as long as someone pins the file or pays a fee, the data remains available on the network, Foundation currently takes on this role through Pinata, but as the ecosystem matures, future creation Readers and collectors will do this directly through incentivized networks like Filecoin and Arweave.”
As Pinata co-founder and CEO Kyle Tut puts it:
“At Pinata, we believe that when an NFT is sold, we need to have a clear understanding of where the maintenance responsibilities for the data transmission of the NFT are.”
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10. The future of NFT
For some professional NFT collectors, maintaining their own IPFS nodes may be the best option. For others, this may mean utilizing a service like Pinata to continuously pin (pin) their NFT media files is a more viable option.
However, the premise of doing this is that NFT must be created in a way that allows support for IPFS. If, as those NFTs on Nifty Gateway do, saving files in a centralized server and using HTTP URLs to store metadata on the chain is tantamount to planting a time bomb, and unfortunately this The bomb has gone off.
So for NFTs linked to centralized URLs, a potential solution may be to allow these centralized markets to allow owners of these tokens to use IPFS functions to destroy NFTs and regenerate them, but the actual operation is still difficult.
At present, except for NFT where all assets are completely on the chain, the "centralized" NFT service market may experience growing pains in terms of sustainability and durability. Still, the field is more active than ever and solutions are emerging.
For the centralized NFT market, realize the problem as soon as possible, take countermeasures as soon as possible, and embrace changes as soon as possible. The sooner the better.
In my opinion, with the development of NFT, we will become more and more aware of the importance of storage issues to NFT.
Translated by: Jing Kai
Source: https://thedefiant.io/do-you-really-own-your-nft-chances-are-you-dont/
Disclaimer: This article is the author's independent opinion, does not represent the position of the Blockchain Institute (public account), and does not constitute any investment opinion or suggestion.
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