One of the biggest selling points of NFT web3 blah blah tech is the ability to "own" digital assets. Well, if the recent Polygon/Starbucks partnership says anything, it's that normies don't actually care about ownership. (Starbucks Odyssey owners don't even get a Polygon wallet.) And they may be on to something, because 90% of you clowns who think you DO own your NFTs actually don't own shit.
In order for you to really own your NFT, that is, it's there no matter what anyone does and no one can take it from you without your permission, a couple of things have to be in order:
1. The NFT must be on a decentralized host
2. You must be expressly given ownership rights by the creator (or not give a fuck about laws)
What's more, for that ownership to be worth anything,
3. You need the team behind the project to create brand value. Otherwise you basically just paid for a McDonald's franchise license without the benefit of McDonald's commercials, ads, branding, outreach, compliance divisions, training or corporate assistance — you may as well just start your own company).
1.
Decentralization is important. The majority of NFT projects are hosted by Opensea. This means if Opensea goes down for any reason, you lose your NFT.
The decentralized option is IPFS, Interplanetary File System. Unfortunately, using this is much more expensive for founders than letting Opensea or some other marketplace host the file.
How can you tell if your file is hosted by Opensea or not? You need to find the metadata. You can use the command line below:
https://api.opensea.io/api/v1/asset/{asset_contract_address}/{token_id}/
Replace {asset_contract_address} with the actual contract address and {token_id} with the token ID. You can find both of these items on the Opensea page of the NFT under the Details section. Once you go to the URL after putting in the contract and ID, you will see a line in the code that says "permalink." If that URL has Opensea in it, your NFT is owned by Opensea, not you.
Now of course it seems like a stretch to say Opensea will just go down. They have an incentive to stay up, right? Well what if it's not up to them? If a government entity imposes sanctions or disallows certain NFTs, then Opensea will comply. And sucks for you if your NFTs just happen to fall in the gauntlet's way. This is exactly what happened to Tornado Cash, so Opensea isn't bulletproof.
2.
If the project is hosted on a decentralized host, at least you don't have to worry about technically not owning your NFT. But what about legally (if you care about that stuff)?
For instance, BAYC/MAYC owners now enjoy the freedom to create businesses using their apes as part of the brand. This right is not expressly given to NFT owners, but the good people at Yuga Labs just haven't made a big deal about it. So you've got companies from a fast food restaurant to barbecue sauce to metaverses popping up now, and everyone is happy.
But what if Yuga Labs suddenly decides they need a tax from these new companies? What if the VCs that back them decide so? What if the government requires those VCs that back Yuga to impose something? Do you think your little DAO vote is going to counter that? And what exactly are you going to do about it? It was never in writing, and Yuga has billions of dollars from the world's biggest VCs to counter any lawsuit.
So do you really own your NFT or no in this case if your "rights" can be so easily taken away at someone else's whim?
3.
It's also true that companies backing these brands can remove their affiliation from the brand if they feel like it. So yes, you might still own your NFT, but if the company forks itself away from your brand and delegitimizes it, what are you going to do? Ask the Ethereum miners who voted against moving Ethereum to PoS. They didn't really have a choice, just as they didn't have a choice years ago when Ethereum decided to do the same thing and forked away from a hack, creating the now ghost town Ethereum Classic.
So not only do you have to get a project that is decentralized and check the legal paperwork, but you also have to trust the team to continue to work in your interests. This isn't ownership to me, and it's something that you should consider before you start believing all the hype around this "new tech." 95% of it is bullshit.
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