> Nfts may or may not be the blockchain's killer app (I think they are)

How is a bit of data on a blockchain pointing to a URI a breakthrough? It's utterly ineffective at proving ownership of anything, since the data at the uri can be changed, or more likely - the entire server will disappear at some point in time. And then what about uris on the blockchain pointing to illegal material (things that are actually copyrighted by someone through the legal system, CP, etc)?

Obviously storing actual data on-chain is too costly as well (both financially on the large chains, and practically/environmentally on any of them).

Everyone I know who's into NFTs and crypto was a con artist before blockchain and they'll be con artists after. Wait until I tell you about the drug addict scammers I know that started a crypto coin of their own and got a friend who knows literally nothing about crypto to write their whitepaper.

I'd argue the exponential growth curves for Gmail, Maps, and Facebook (with no financial reward for the user) suggests there was a good appreciation of the utility. When will get an equivalent Web3 app that isn't predominantly driven by price speculation? What will this look like?

That’s not here yet but dapps do have millions of users already.

Which stand the best chance of going mainstream, with those who don't care about the underlying technology or price speculation?

NFTs. Gaming seems to be it.

But do digital goods in games really justify the Web2 -> Web3 iteration? Compared to Web2 bringing us Gmail, Maps, Facebook etc, feels a little anemic so far.

Yeah it’s pretty terrible so far I agree.

My hunch is that crypto is focusing on the wrong things. I suspect we’ll never have land registers in blockchain (dumb idea anyway).

In NFTs crypto kind of stumbled upon something important, because digital art didn’t have a way to be authenticated by artists themselves, they had to use galleries, it was a mess. Now a digital artist can just drop his stuff onto the world and authenticate it. This was a Real Problem, if you make physical art you can just go to the local arts and crafts or Etsy and charge money for it. But digital art was really hard to monetise. So crypto came in a bit sideways and solved a Real Problem People Had.

Curiously they seem to really focus on “real world” problems, like banks or land registry or whatever, when I’m starting to think this is the entirely wrong way to see crypto. I think it needs to focus on problems that exist in the digital arena Only IE data ownership, data portability.

But the obsessions of the original conceptions around crypto are hard to kill, and I feel like right now there’s a lot of resistance to leaving the Nick Szabo idea of “smart contracts will replace lawyers”, same as it was before with a lot of Nakamoto’s ideas. But I think the “crypto will replace lawyers” and “crypto will replace banks” folks will be sorely disappointed. I see a very low percent chance crypto will change that much about banking just due to the security issues.

> But digital art was really hard to monetise.

Is it though? Honest question since I'm not an artist. But looking from the outside: For ongoing support, Patreon/Flattr/etc. are a common solution. For specific work, you can commission a piece and pay for it through whatever channel, even with cash.

It just didn’t work for individual digital art. Patreon doesn’t pay you for making art, that’s incidental. At least the way I’ve seen it used. It also creates no secondary market, there’s no resale, royalties. The possibility of making a single art piece worth 10,000$ That is impossible in patreon. Patreon was more of a decentralised art school at its best, where you could pay for individual tutors.

I also know the average income I saw being generated from Patreon was low. Not high enough to quit your day job, more of a second job type thing. NFT income is incomparable, I know of cases of people who are now millionaires.

NFTs are essentially just a way to sell digital art in a way that approximates physical art auctions, and in that regard they are an overwhelming sucess.