Out of curiosity we dug into how NFT’s actually reference the media you’re “buying” and my eyebrows are now orbiting the moon.
Short version:The NFT token you bought either points to a URL on the internet, or an IPFS hash. In most circumstances it references an IPFS gateway on the internet run by the startup you bought the NFT from.
Oh, and that URL is not the media. That URL is a JSON metadata file
The NFT token is for this JSON file hosted directly on Nifty’s servers:
“But you said some use IPFS!”
That NFT token refers directly to an IPFS hash (ipfs.io). We can take that IPFS hash and fetch the JSON metadata using a public gateway:
This is an IPFS gateway run by makersplace.com, the NFT-minting startup.
Who will go bust one day
Which means when the startup who sold you the NFT goes bust, the files will probably vanish from IPFS too
Will that make them worthless? Hard to say
https://twitter.com/andrew___myname/status/1372182283965321221
This means when the gateway operator goes bust I can buy the domain and start serving cat pictures
Next time I promise to inject the words “most” and “many” in every sentence
~CBNN