What makes a ‘good’ NFT? Exploring the Technology behind Digital Artworks.
Art is subjective, technology isn’t. If defining the artistic qualities of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is a challenge, we can assess the technology behind them, reveal potential security risks, and establish their vulnerability to manipulation. While some NFTs have guarantees of ownership, authenticity, and longevity, a considerable number of them don’t. With this in mind, how can you recognise a ‘good’ NFT?
With NFTs being the center of many artistic debates, due to their growing popularity, the question ‘what makes a good NFT?’ is often asked. People will always have different opinions and tastes when it comes to art and aesthetics. Some believe that the quality of NFTs is based on the content, while others consider that it is the stories behind them that matter. If there is one thing that can universally be judged regarding the quality of NFTs, it’s their technological strength. While some NFTs are completely decentralised, others are subject to manipulation and damage.
Imagine acquiring two paintings, without having the ability to change their locations. One is stored in a museum with an impenetrable security system and the other is in a run-down building that could collapse at any point. Which painting would you consider as the best investment? Many collectors are spending considerable amounts of money acquiring NFTs, without knowing where the assets of the digital artworks are located.
Checking the location is a crucial step prior to acquiring an NFT, as it provides visibility on wherever the artwork will still exist in the near future. NFTs can lose all their value due to tech issues, no matter how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ they are from an artistic point of view. Technological qualities are therefore key to assessing an NFT.
‘Page not found’: the nightmare of NFT owners
While some NFTs are safely stored on the blockchain, there is an important portion of NFT projects that currently use off-chain storage methods. Off-chain storage entails using a centralized provider (like AWS or Google Cloud) to store some of the NFT’s assets — the media and metadata. On a centralized server, the future of the NFT is uncertain at best. If your NFT is stored on a centralized server and the organisation that runs and pays for that server goes bankrupt, or the project does a ‘rug pull’, the artwork will simply vanish. In that case, you would only find a ‘page not found’ message when trying to access it. Having your NFT stored on a centralised provider also means that it can be modified at any time, which creates significant appropriation issues between owners and project teams. If you purchase an NFT and the artwork can disappear or be modified at any time, can it be considered as ‘good’?
The reason why some projects use centralised providers is that some NFTs’ metadata and media are too heavy to be entirely stored on the blockchain. For example, Cryptopunks, Polkamon, and the Sandbox store both the metadata and media of their NFTs on centralised servers. Only the smart contracts of these 3 projects’ NFTs are directly located on the blockchain.
While not a silver bullet, IPFS — an alternative technology to HTTP, focused on speed and security — is a much more ‘reliable’ alternative for data storage than any centralised server. Unfortunately, a significant number of NFT projects prefer storing their NFTs’ assets on the latter. Every NFT project should take measures to guarantee the ownership and longevity of the artwork they produce. This necessarily entails storing most of the metadata and media on the blockchain. If an NFT cannot be entirely stored on the blockchain, the minimum that a project team should do is to hash all the images and store the metadata and media that are too heavy for the blockchain on IPFS (just like Hashmasks).
So.. how ‘good’ is this NFT I’m currently contemplating?
The degree of decentralisation is the best measure to assess if an NFT is ‘good’ or not, as it addresses the issues of ownership and longevity. To estimate it, you need to look at where the assets are stored: the more decentralised the better. If the assets are not located on the blockchain, they then need to be safely stored on IPFS. Having an NFT’s assets entirely stored on the blockchain is the only guarantee that the artwork will neither disappear nor be altered.
There are a few NFT projects that actually achieve complete decentralisation. For example, Avastars and Artblock both store all their NFT’s assets on the blockchain, leaving no room for manipulation.
The very idea behind NFTs is that they cannot become controlled by any other authority than its owner’s.
A ‘good’ NFT should therefore be safe from damage and tampering; as a collector should not have to worry about the future of his artwork.
Further Readings about the tech behind NFTs
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