-40 upvotes, 10 direct replies (showing 10)
View submission: Introducing Collectible Avatars
Our primary goal with these Collectible Avatars was to find a way to allow redditors to showcase their art and earn money for their creations directly from the Reddit community. We also want to allow purchasers to have ownership over their purchase that they could use and transfer or sell to others.
If we didn’t make these blockchain-based, creators wouldn’t be able to earn additional revenue if Collectible Avatars were resold, and we wanted to make it easier for creators to earn money on both initial sales and secondary sales of Collectible Avatars, which isn’t easy to achieve without using a public blockchain.
But, we also realize there is a lot of speculation in the NFT market, so, in collaboration with creators, we set the prices for Collectible Avatars at reasonable, accessible prices.
Comment by shiruken at 07/07/2022 at 16:34 UTC*
71 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Our primary goal with these Collectible Avatars was to find a way to allow redditors to showcase their art and earn money for their creations directly from the Reddit community.
This is good.
We also want to allow purchasers to have ownership over their purchase that they could use and transfer or sell to others.
How do purchasers have ownership? These are only accessible using the Reddit app vault and can only be traded and used on Reddit. The same functionality could have been achieved using a normal database without the overhead of integrating with a blockchain. This is basically the same problem raised when Ubisoft introduced NFTs to Ghost Recon: You can't actually access or use them anywhere else except the original platform.
If we didn’t make these blockchain-based, creators wouldn’t be able to earn additional revenue if Collectible Avatars were resold, and we wanted to make it easier for creators to earn money on both initial sales and secondary sales of Collectible Avatars, which isn’t easy to achieve without using a public blockchain.
Again, it's good that you're thinking about the creators. Except this functionality could easily be coded into the centralized exchange system on Reddit using normal databases. There's nothing special about a public blockchain when it comes to enabling royalty payments.
But, we also realize there is a lot of speculation in the NFT market, so, in collaboration with creators, we set the prices for Collectible Avatars at reasonable, accessible prices.
For the initial mint, yes. But that completely ignores the speculation that will take place on secondary sales.
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Further thoughts specifically related to "ownership" and the Reddit Vault
Comment by [deleted] at 07/07/2022 at 17:01 UTC
53 upvotes, 2 direct replies
[deleted]
Comment by DocPop at 07/07/2022 at 17:20 UTC
31 upvotes, 0 direct replies
If we didn’t make these blockchain-based, creators wouldn’t be able to earn additional revenue if Collectible Avatars were resold
That's simply not true. This is something Reddit could easily integrate into their own marketplace without needing the blockchain. In fact, relying on the blockchain to collect secondary royalties adds more room for exploitation[1].
1: https://venturebeat.com/2022/04/29/nfts-have-a-royalty-problem-heres-the-answer/
Smart contracts are not standardized across NFT marketplaces. So it's trivial for someone to buy an NFT on Reddit, then use some other marketplace to avoid paying those artist royalties. This isn't hypothetical, we see people do this to avoid paying royalties on PFP projects all the time. Here's a marketplace[2] set up just to let BAYC NFT holders avoid paying royalties. If Reddit skipped the blockchain aspect, they could efficiently ensure that artists got paid the upfront fees and secondary royalties. Setting up your own non-blockchain market would also be better for consumers, who frequently lose their NFTs in wallet hacks and have no chance of recovery.
2: https://twitter.com/ApeMarketplace
Comment by chaos750 at 07/07/2022 at 19:04 UTC
10 upvotes, 0 direct replies
If we didn’t make these blockchain-based, creators wouldn’t be able to earn additional revenue if Collectible Avatars were resold, and we wanted to make it easier for creators to earn money on both initial sales and secondary sales of Collectible Avatars, which isn’t easy to achieve without using a public blockchain.
This would only be true if no one could be trusted to just keep a centralized database and do normal payment processing. Can we not trust, you know, *Reddit* to just handle all that?
Comment by bluesatin at 07/07/2022 at 20:23 UTC*
8 upvotes, 0 direct replies
We also want to allow purchasers to have ownership over their purchase that they could use and transfer or sell to others.
Seems a bit backwards to want to use NFTs then, why choose NFTs if ownership isn't something that blockchains care about, keep a track of, or just handle in general?
Blockchains only deal with validating possession, or access after all.
Hence why they had to fork the entire Ethereum blockchain after a thief stole a bunch of coins, the blockchain didn't care about the fact that the thief that was now in possession of those coins wasn't the owner of them, because blockchains only care about possession, they don't deal with ownership.
Comment by Zaorish9 at 08/07/2022 at 12:44 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
You don't need any wasteful crypto or block chain stuff to pay royalties to artists. That is why nfts are a scam that is always used to steal and dupe people.
Comment by [deleted] at 08/07/2022 at 20:51 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
If we didn’t make these blockchain-based, creators wouldn’t be able to earn additional revenue if Collectible Avatars were resold
Why are reddit's software developers so bad at their job that they can't figure out automatic royalties for resales on a database they maintain?
Comment by NeuronalDiverV2 at 09/07/2022 at 06:56 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
If we didn’t make these blockchain-based, creators wouldn’t be able to earn additional revenue if Collectible Avatars were resold
That’s just false and Steam has already been doing this for a decade now.
Comment by n0ctilucent at 08/07/2022 at 04:05 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
2.5% of resale lol
Comment by FerDefer at 08/07/2022 at 10:58 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
We also want to allow purchasers to have ownership over their purchase that they could use and transfer or sell to others.
but.. they're locked to the reddit ecosystem and reddit has the right to take all of your nfts if you break reddit tos?
That's... not ownership. That's not ownership at all. That's just exchanging tokens tied to *reddit accounts* and presumably reddit takes a cut of every transaction.