Opinion: The term "NFT" has too much toxic baggage. A novel Holochain alternative should have a different name

People outside of the cryptosphere associate NFTs with a host of negative things, such as:

  • stealing art from legitamite artists for financial gain
  • wasteful mining and environment harms
  • ugly repetitive jpgs with no artistic value
  • mindless, manic speculation
  • money laundering
  • etc.

IMO, when alternatives to NFTs built on Holochain are created, they should come up with a completely different name to more accurately describe what they are and how they are different, and to avoid the toxic association with the term “NFT.”

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I approve !

‘Non-Fungible Token’ is also technical and no sexy term that don’t help peoples to understand what is it !

‘Unique Token’ is already a better name in my opinion, but we can surely do better !

Unique Proof of Provenance - UPOP

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This is indeed a better term but NFT does not proof originality of a creation, and the provenance is also dubious.
The lack of a standard that proves originality and uniqueness of one or several identical pieces complicates it all.
As soon as Holochain can deliver a minimum viable application we can not wait to develop our project in this ecosystem.
HTTPS://CreaFree.org

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Holochain entries are already themselves “NFTs” in some sense.

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I see NFTs themselves as an almost entirely useless invention in which the only thing it has going for it is the name recognition (of NFTs) and the “mindless, manic speculation”. Most people (though they might say otherwise) have no interest in NFTs beyond the expectation they might make a quick buck. All this to say, if you tried to rebrand NFTs to a different name and remove the list of negatives, most people won’t really care.

While on the subject, I think a major “naming” hurdle is the name holochain itself. It is somewhat telling that whenever I try to evangelize, I immediately have to preface with “it’s not blockchain”, and then jump immediately into the technical reasons why it has “chain” in the name, and how it differs from blockchain. As “Web3” has started to leak out into mainstream, the whole space has been (rightfully, based on the parts of it that have taken the spotlight) tarnished, in a way. I think that holochain needs to lean into its core principle of agent-centricity, and to distance itself from the emerging “Web3” space (and that includes NFTs).

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How about keeping the NFT part but adding H or Holo to the name. For example, H-NFT, HNFT, HoloNFT… or like hApp instead of App, maybe hNFT? Actually, now that I’m typing this, I personally like hNFT best.

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How about naming them, for purpose, as in:

Vehicle registration.
Drivers license.
Property deed.
Trading card.
Club membership certificate…

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Super interesting topic and one I’ve given much thought to. Other than using a different name for a holochain equivalent, (which I would agree with) I also think we have to re-invent the values along how holochain can support artistic labor in a commons-oriented way that does not turn primarily turn digital art into speculative assets but into forms of support for continuous artistic work.

As you mention Unique Proof of Provenance is a good framing, as it would be something like ‘Unique Proof of Support’.

I believe the future of holochain-art-platforms lies in the creation of patronage-platforms and audience-communities where artists can have a close connection with their followers, and where monetary support is seen a a sustenance for the artists.

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You are correct. Fraud is associated with NFTs. It’s not a way to store value. It does let you explore the web3 Metaverses. That’s a good thing until someone steals your NFT and starts corrupting everyone that NFT is associated with or encounters.
If you can prove ownership and how can you claim your cyber rights over that contract or NFT and keep that safe? Currently only with 24 word seed phrase. But that’s not enough because you could accidentally give your rights away, hence stolen. I like apple Face ID as a means to secure passwords. But that isn’t baked into the NFTs. It’s a hard subject besides just the name of it.

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+1 on this idea. My thought is that the name should sound like NFT to make it easy to explain. But to your point, it needs to have a name that makes it obvious that improvements have been made… and not cliche like ‘NFT 2.0’

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Where are we at in the process? Been awhile lol.

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