D&D 5E The Glimmering - NFT Heroes in a Blockchain Campaign?

[EzekielRaiden]

I am not nearly as up on the tech as you and @MoonSong are, so much so that I was thinking of "Blockchain" as a generic, when it's actually a specific bit of software.

I do think there's a use case for decentralized secure data. I can imagine a future where we fight back against deepfakes, for instance, by having the history of those files spelled out for everyone to see. But we're not at that point yet (I don't think industrialized societies yet realize how much of a problem deepfakes are about to be) and I certainly don't trust any of the crypto-bros to be part of any real solutions to problems they didn't invent themselves.

I think the difficulty here is, this would require that the creation process for every single video--no matter who takes it--has to be documented. For that to work, it either requires invasive program control structures that prevent you from creating video in non-standard ways, or it requires that every recording device be online all the time so that it can register the beginning and ending of the recording "live as it happens," so to speak.

It again seems to be an issue of: blockchains ensure "trust-free" verification within the chain, so long as no one can perform a 50%+1 attack or the like. It cannot ensure verification of things entering the chain, but that's the very thing we would need to worry about--doctored footage being passed off as real footage.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I think the difficulty here is, this would require that the creation process for every single video--no matter who takes it--has to be documented. For that to work, it either requires invasive program control structures that prevent you from creating video in non-standard ways, or it requires that every recording device be online all the time so that it can register the beginning and ending of the recording "live as it happens," so to speak.

Basically forensic standard chain of evidence type tracking. Video and photography would loose evidentiary status, except maybe, only if corroborated by eyewitness accounts.

It again seems to be an issue of: blockchains ensure "trust-free" verification within the chain, so long as no one can perform a 50%+1 attack or the like. It cannot ensure verification of things entering the chain, but that's the very thing we would need to worry about--doctored footage being passed off as real footage.

About the only useful application of blockchain I have seen was Charlie Stross's concept of slow money in Neptune's Brood

 

[MoonSong]

It again seems to be an issue of: blockchains ensure "trust-free" verification within the chain, so long as no one can perform a 50%+1 attack or the like. It cannot ensure verification of things entering the chain, but that's the very thing we would need to worry about--doctored footage being passed off as real footage.

And having this public trustless unchanging block chain for video ensures that journalists have to out themselves to authoritarian governments and criminal organizations and that revenge p0rn and CP live on forever. Truth is we don't really want something like that and everyone who wants it hasn't really thought through all of the implications of it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And having this public trustless unchanging block chain for video ensures that journalists have to out themselves to authoritarian governments and criminal organizations and that revenge p0rn and CP live on forever. Truth is we don't really want something like that and everyone who wants it hasn't really thought through all of the implications of it.

Oh yeah. Utterly immutable records have already proven themselves a Serious Problem, and thus far the solution I've heard from crypto types is to fall silent and hope no one remembers. I've very specifically heard that there is CP locked up in some chain or other that now cannot be removed.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

I saw it on the lanyard they gave me when I checked in, which I handed down to my daughter with it making zero impression on me.

Now the button I received from Jim Ward for playing in his game, that I will remember.

 

[robus]

When Nvidia joins the crypto skeptics you know your idea is bad:

Cryptocurrencies add nothing useful to society, says chip-maker Nvidia

Edit: looks like the Nvidia guy reads enworld, he took the words right from my post!

“All this crypto stuff, it needed parallel processing, and [Nvidia] is the best, so people just programmed it to use for this purpose. They bought a lot of stuff, and then eventually it collapsed, because it doesn’t bring anything useful for society. AI does,” Kagan told the Guardian.

 

[robus]

Not sure I agree with this revisionist history by the Guardian:

Originally best known for producing powerful graphics cards for PC gamers to play the latest games, it was almost by chance that Nvidia’s products took their place at the heart of the AI boom.

There‘s been a significant effort over the past decade (or more) to generalize the massive compute power on GPUs. Initially it was to support physics modeling for games, but eventually it became useable for many different compute intensive operations. There was nothing accidental about Nvidia being at the heart of new applications for GPUs, though.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Not sure I agree with this revisionist history by the Guardian:

There‘s been a significant effort over the past decade (or more) to generalize the massive compute power on GPUs. Initially it was to support physics modeling for games, but eventually it became useable for many different compute intensive operations. There was nothing accidental about Nvidia being at the heart of new applications for GPUs, though.

NVidia actually designed cards especially for crypto-mining, didn't they?

 

[robus]

NVidia actually designed cards especially for crypto-mining, didn't they?

Actually according to the article they deliberately hobbled their new cards for that specific use case, so I guess they've been crypto-skeptics for a while.

Nvidia never embraced the crypto community with open arms. In 2021, the company even released software that artificially constrained the ability to use its graphics cards from being used to mine the popular Ethereum cryptocurrency, in an effort to ensure supply went to its preferred customers instead, who include AI researchers and gamers.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

Actually according to the article they deliberately hobbled their new cards for that specific use case, so I guess they've been crypto-skeptics for a while.

Or, at least, they saw all the news about ordinary decent gamers being unable to buy graphics cards because the blockchainbros were buying them up at inflated prices, and thought they'd get good press doing something about it.