The best technology to authenticate documents is a digital signing and has existed for literally decades.
Only for those documents which confer ownership make sense as an NFT, since the whole purpose of NFTs is that the TRANSFER of the token is authenticated by the blockchain proof-of-work.
Jacko wrote:
Same for aircraft ownership and maintenance. Transfer ownership with a smart contract at the speed of light – no banks, escrow, or rent-seeking NAAs charging registration fees.
As can Nav Data, GPS updates, spare parts (for 3D printing) etc. the opportunities are endless and exciting,
WilliamF wrote:
Will we have any aviation-related NTF’s (Non-Fungible Tokens) springing up?
Solution in search of a problem?
Jacko wrote:
ore usefully, perhaps, aviation documents and certificates can be minted as NFTs. Instantly verifiable by anyone worldwide. No room for doubt or fraud. You either own an airman certificate NFT or you don’t.
Why should “anyone” be able to see which rating I have? Why should it become public information if I do or do not loose my medical? Why would I want to publicly announce if and at which price I sell my plane?
Yes, this can theoretically all be mitigated by using anonymous personas on the blockchain – but this would include giving away all the advantages you just described.
That would leave you without any practical advantage but with the huge disadvantage, that when I steal your computer I own your plane (and no, it is not that I can steal your plane but I legally own it because the whole point about this NFT system is that whoever has the key pair actually owns the asset and there is not outside authority to tell "no, the true owner is somebody else).
LFHNflightstudent wrote:
As can Nav Data, GPS updates, spare parts (for 3D printing) etc. the opportunities are endless and exciting,
Nav-Data and GPS-updates can be very conveniently downloaded today completely without any complexity and the intrinsic energy consumption of blockchain/NFT. What would a NFT solution do better than what Garmin does today?
There are many reasons, why 3d-printing data for spare parts are currently not freely available – the lack of reliable transport mechanism or difficulties in paying the design holder are not amongst them.
when I steal your computer I own your plane
Well, if someone is stupid enough to keep private keys on a PC, or otherwise unprotected against theft, should they really be operating any aircraft?
there is not outside authority to tell "no, the true owner is somebody else“
Yes, I agree that’s a HUGE advantage. The state has no business saying who owns what. The judiciary has a role in enforcing property rights but not in allocating them.
Doesn’t the payee have to accept the currency (bitcoin)? Most surely won’t.
In the digital economy many (most?) already do. Our village shop doesn’t (yet), so they lose up to 3% of turnover to Visa and Mastercard.
For decades my company has accepted and made payments in half a dozen fiat currencies, so accepting a hard currency like Bitcoin is no problem. It saves us having to convert spare fiat cash into non-depreciating assets.
Jacko wrote:
Our village shop doesn’t (yet), so they lose up to 3% of turnover to Visa and Mastercard.
Or they would have lost 12% of their holdings last week.
Jacko wrote:
In the digital economy many (most?) already do
Define “digital economy”. Just looking at the list of biggest company by market cap and which of them would typically qualifying as “digital economy”:
Apple is not (accepting cryptocurrencies), Microsoft is not, Alphabet is not, Amazon is not, Tesla is not, Meta is not, Nvidia is not, TSMC is not, Tencent is not, Alibaba is not, ASML is not, Adobe is not, Salesforce is not, Oracle is not, Cisco is not, Accenture is not …
To cut a long story short: None on the list of the Top Companies of the digital economy are accepting bitcoin – that is quite a different to the “many (most?)” you proclaim
Jacko wrote:
Our village shop doesn’t (yet), so they lose up to 3% of turnover to Visa and Mastercard.
Accepting Crypto-Currencies is much more expensive these days than those 3% (and not only for the hedge you need to buy as with any foreign currency you would accept). You need to pay your bank to exchange it into a currency (because you will have to pay your landlord, your employees, your supplier in real money), you need to pay your accountant to make sure you account the incomes correctly (including the value differences between the time of sale, the time of payment and the time of converting into real money).
Have you ever thought about the question, why your local store does also not accept Cash payments in Turkish Lira or Moroccan Dirham? By accepting this they would also “save” these 3% for Visa or Mastercard and depending on where you live the market for such payments would be order of magnitudes bigger than the market for Bitcoin payments….
Malibuflyer wrote:
There are many reasons, why 3d-printing data for spare parts are currently not freely available – the lack of reliable transport mechanism or difficulties in paying the design holder are not amongst them.
and yet this is exactly what the European Space Agency is working on (distance becomes a bit more of an issue when you’re in space). Satellites will also be equipped with NFT’s in the future. Things like database management (if the NFT is embedded in the chip directly) will help TelCo’s, publishers, retailers to manage access via smart contracts embedded in the hardware. Guaranteed this is equally in Amazon’s pipeline (who’s business is disruption not retail, or transport even though they will be bigger than FedEx or UPS in 2022 in the US).
When manufacturers need to retain spare parts for 7 years on consumables (glasses etc..) in the EU, for product lines that are massively fashion oriented often 2 product lines per year as is the case for sunglasses etc. storing the part (like the specific screw, or branch of a pair of glasses) on an NFT and print it rather than stock it. The supply chain in many of these business (in particular if vaguely related to medical) often works with prescriber who will ’’enforce’’ the repair or replacement of items.
On the ‘’digital economy’’ side of things. None of the companies you quote above will accept crypto (at the moment even though FB is launching their own crypto coin) – however Meta is spending 10Bio next year on the MetaVerse – not possible without blockchain, and overall the FAANG’s are spending 67Bio in 2022 (from their earning calls. Thinking Web 3.0 or the MetaVerse is another fad is making big mistake in my view. There are many advantages to the use of decentralised ledgers (trust no-one vs trust a central entity) Speed being a clear one.
LFHNflightstudent wrote:
When manufacturers need to retain spare parts for 7 years on consumables (glasses etc..) in the EU, for product lines that are massively fashion oriented often 2 product lines per year as is the case for sunglasses etc. storing the part (like the specific screw, or branch of a pair of glasses) on an NFT and print it rather than stock it.
Might well be that for some goods it is easier to store the plans and rebuild them (e.g. with 3D printing) rather than storing the part itself … But what has this to do with NFT?
A plain vanilla database that the manufacturer maintains will do the job and does it already today with a fraction of the cost, complexity and carbon footprint.
This is unfortunately a problem which is common in many blockchain/NFT discussions: A (real existing) problem is presented and then a potential solution involving NFT should act as “proof” that this problem has to be solved by NFT. It is completely ignoring the fact that while the NFT solution might solve the problem as well, there is a much simpler/cheaper/etc. solution that does not use NFT.
Blockchain/NFT is a technology that is helpful in situations or for problems, where you need to orchestrate a multi stakeholder network but nobody in that network can be trusted. Like a network of criminals where everybody believes the other one would rip him off if he had the chance to.
As soon as there is one party in the network than can be trusted or has to be trusted, NFT is never the best/ most efficient solution.
Therefore in all practically relevant cases in which the final result of the transaction is “physical” (so you get real money, get access to an event/venue, etc.) blockchain /NFC is never the best solution as you have to trust the one who is responsible for fulfillment and this one can just run a databank.
I was part of this first hype wave of “smart contract” thingies in the insurance industry: It has been an unbelievable hype and some startups made a fortune from stupid money. It took, however, not more than 18 months until every major insurer realized how bad the idea of smart contract based insurance really is (I think it took AXA exactly that timeframe to shut down its “Fizzy” blockchain insurance against flight delays). In the End economics is simple: Either the smart contract can not guarantee payment or you need tremendous amounts of capital to reserve …
LFHNflightstudent wrote:
however Meta is spending 10Bio next year on the MetaVerse – not possible without blockchain
Why should that be not possible? FB was perfectly fine spending more than 50bn last year on the Metaverse (has not been called that way) without any blockchain. Why would spending 20% of that next year be impossible ?
Another challenge in many such discussions: Practically there are no good examples but the more vague and the more in the future one is looking the more bullish it is claimed that life can only continue with blockchain.
Given that you say that a satellite is “equipped” with an NFT and that NFTs are “embedded” in a chip that does not fill me with confidence that we are talking about the same thing.
The NFT is just a digitally signed document. The Blockchain documents the transfer of the NFT from one owner to the other. The proof-of-work validation of the blockchain by thousands of nodes makes it impossibly hard to transfer the same token twice.
What is new here is only the electronic assignment of an NFT from one owner to another one, and ONLY one, without the involvement of the original issuer; something that cannot be done in classic DRM, which does not include anything that can be assigned or re-sold.
