NFTs: Why Authenticity is Crucial
Authenticity is a biggie. I’ve written about it before, and I just can't let it go, because if there is no authenticity there is no trust. If there is no trust there cannot be commerce. If there is no commerce there cannot be value.
What is authenticity?
Noting the ‘auth-’ prefix, I got thinking about author and authority, googled the etymology of authenticity and found this:
Its Proto-Indo-European root is ‘sene’, meaning ‘to accomplish, achieve’. ‘Sene’ led to ‘hentes’ in Greek, meaning ‘doer, being’ and this was combined with ‘autos’ meaning ‘self’, resulting in ‘authentes’, or ‘acting on one’s own authority’. This produced ‘authentikos’, meaning ‘original, genuine, principal’. It then passed through Medieval Latin and emerged as ‘authentique’ in Old French, with the meaning ‘authentic, canonical’. In today’s Oxford English Dictionary the word ‘authentic’ is defined as ‘known to be real and what somebody claims it is and not a copy.’
To put the evolution of this concept into some kind of context, the Proto-Indo-European language emerged around 4,000 years BC, or some six thousand years before the present.
My conclusion, therefore, is that the concept of ‘authenticity’ emerged THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO because humans needed it. I mean, you don’t go about getting consensus and longevity around concepts because Old Bob woke up with another one of his crazy notions, bless him. You get it because society has chewed it over, found it useful and adopted it.
How do we know if something is authentic?
Basically, we require proof. If we live in a small community this can take the form of a witness, or many witnesses attesting to the truth of something, like, “Two days ago Marcus, Olivia and myself saw Romulus driving his cart to the docks. In the back of the cart were the table and chairs.” As our communities got bigger, we had to abstract this same proof by keeping records, like, “ Here is the Captain’s signature proving the table and chairs were loaded onto a ship at the docks.”
I know this isn’t a perfect example, but it serves the purpose reasonably well. Basically, as society got larger we needed new ways to authenticate stuff. I like to think this need gave rise to writing, but I have no proof. Anyway, to prove authenticity we needed to record things. Records are usually found in ledgers. And so the ledger was invented.
Do you like what I did there? Authenticity > Writing > Records >Ledger > Ledger Technology > Blockchain > Bitcoin > InternetComputer.
Sorry. Nobody likes a smartass, but I cannot help myself. This is what the technology is all about, right?
And yet we have a major problem.
The problem we have is that the world contains well over 6000 years’ worth of stuff (a discussion for another time), and the Internet Computer has only been around for a little over 365 days. Therefore, pretty much EVERYTHING on the planet pre-existed the most powerful cryptographic blockchain based web 3 publishing environment. This disconnect is a very big problem.
There is a solution. A solution, which to my mind, is really quite simple.
We need to include records of authentication in the works published on the Internet Computer. And I am not referring to the act of transferring the visual likeness onto the Internet Computer, nor am I referring to the fantastic work being done by Orygin, but to PRE-BLOCKCHAIN records. The things published on the Internet Computer, which are neatly wrapped up in NFTs, MUST be linked to the legacy ledger system.
Why?
Errr, because the legacy ledgers are where (hold onto your hats) 99.99999999999999% of the planets’ people go for authentication.
As I have stated before, I see the solution appearing in the form of NFT metadata. Why not provide a canonical link, or recognisable reference in the metadata to historical records? Why not provide a field for Copyright? IMO, the only reason these things haven’t been included is because they are absent from the POC NFTs developed on POC blockchains with limited capabilities. The Internet Computer is different.
The only thing we achieve with the absence of these things is the absence of authenticity.
No authenticity. No trust. No Value.