this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2025
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I have never heard of one realistic and useful plan for NFTs. And I like to be contrarian whenever possible, since I'm kind of a smug prick. Hit me with 'em!
At the very basic level NFTs programatically enact contract law in a perfectly transparent way that cannot be faked
The use cases for this aren't normally apparent to the average consumer because of habit more than anything. I will give some use cases
A limited access club can mint NFTs for membership, allowing the holders to personally trade their access in a transparent way and provides an encrypted method functionally equivalent to a One Time Pad (One of the most, if not the MOST secure encryption method in existence) so building access can be transferred instantly between rights holders, as well as providing a secure inherent messaging between members
This can also be generalized for apartment access. Need a place to stay? You can purchase the tenant NFT from the current renter, and have access to the property securely within seconds
I use these examples because they are human friendly but the BEST use of NFTs is programatic resource management for automated purchasing systems (which are going to be a FUCKING HUGE THING now that LLMs have got access to the big money), for example:
Lets say a LLM is tasked with constantly sourcing the cheapest source of tin for industrial processes, and that all the tin producers set lots of raw material as NFTs. (In this case it isn't an ideal use as the lots are not unique, but the underlying programatic contract execution doesn't care and treats them as unique) so the LLM calculates shipping and price and automatically buys lots of NFTs to match the need, which ship out from a port halfway around the world that afternoon
Now 2 days into the 12 day shipping time, the LLM notices that there is a sudden need for tin closer to the current ship location than the initial destination and contacts the LLM of the company that posted the tin need, and offers the lots of NFTs on the ship, the other LLM agrees and the contract is made, the ownership of those lots are altered, the shipping manifest of the cargo vessel is updated and the shipping route may or may not be altered based on the judgment of the LLM handling the cargo ship. All of this happens in a matter of seconds. Once the transaction is complete, the original LLM now goes and searches for another source of tin
The biggest benefit of NFTs is reducing the friction of complex logistic changes allowing companies to find advantages that pass too quickly for humans to notice or make best use of in a way that can be legally as binding as any other signed contract in a court of law.
There are other benefits and use cases, some silly and some abstract but NFTs are so much more than a link to an png on a file server somewhere but that's ALL people like you will ever know them for because scammers ruined the name while real devs were still working on useful products.
You can do this with a database.
You can do this with a PIN code.
You can do this with databases.
In any situation where you might be tempted to call an NFT "legally binding", it's not the NFT that's binding, it's a contract, and the NFT is just a proxy for the contract. The NFT adds no value.
Blockchain is a database. One that everyone automatically can access. The advantage is that you don't need an admin console. There is no complex on-board and control of users.
https://nes-tech.medium.com/argentinian-carrier-flybondi-leads-the-way-with-nft-tickets-92da146db296
I'm just not sure what utility this has for a traveler. You don't need NFTs to implement transferrable plane tickets, though this does seem to try to ensure that the airline(?) gets a cut of any sales between passengers. It's the same pattern every time with NFTs, the only thing they seem to do is complicate matters while attempting to make a market out of thin air and take a cut of any related transactions.
No major US airline allows passengers to transfer tickets, and I don't think it's because they lack the technology to do so and NFTs would fill the void. If they did do this and it was possible to buy and sell plane tickets on an open blockchain based market, couldn't one just buy all of the tickets for popular flights and sell them at a markup?
This is because US airlines are legally allowed to sell more seats than they have on a flight. Talk about overcomplication.
One could, but there would be a risk of not being able to sell them. Airlines would be taking a cut so they don't mind, and they sell all their seats.
You know a guy who first saw the new fangled automobiles once said 'That's all well and good, but where do you attach the horse?'
You don't NEED the internet, or digital transactions, or credit cards, or any of the other dozens of technological advancements in wealth management that have come about since the 50s either but they exist and make everyone's lives easier
Tickets as NFTs are a great idea because it absolutely prevents overbooking. Did you ever even consider that? Can't mint more NFTs than the plane has seats
interesting, around here we do it with numbered seats. if you give each seat a specific number turns out you can match that with numbered tickets. somehow airlines don't make tickets with numbers that don't match with any seats. insane tech.
How magnificently naive if you think that's how it happens nowadays...
https://www.getgoing.com/blog/why-do-airlines-overbook/
way to miss the point. literally everyone knows that they overbook. that's not because they're not using nfts. it's because they want to overbook. you said nfts would prevent overbooking. I say you can just prevent overbooking by not overbooking. it has nothing to do with nfts.
NFTs would prove to the customers that their flight is not being overbooked.
Sure, but this is not a positive argument for your position. This does not mean that everything with doubters is, in fact, good and misunderstood.
You can prevent overbooking without blockchain/NFTs. Airlines overbook because they want to, and presumably they would still want to do so if they adopted NFT tickets. There is nothing about using blockchain that would prevent this, they would just mint more NFTs than there are seats for each flight with the hope/expectation that a few ticket holders would not show up.
So now you're just going to discount the time I spent setting you up several use cases?
And the reason for their overbooking, maximum profit, would be achieved seamlessly with a blockchain based ticketing system as there is no human input lag that causes double booking
You keep arguing that there are other ways of doing the things that the programatic nature of NFT contracts offer but NONE of them provide it all in one ridiculously transparent, unfalsifiable open source way that can be literally implemented on every platform
That's why I used the car and the horse example, you are the one saying: "Yes we already have horses already, why do we need a car? And how would a horse even USE a car you silly billy?"
The really sad thing is I'm waiting for a moment of realization from you that it is blatantly clear you are incapable of achieving. Pretending to be open minded is intellectually dishonest
I didn't thoughtlessly discount anything, I'm just saying that while "some people didn't see how cars could be useful" is true, it does not mean that everything that has doubters is actually a misunderstood wonder. Plenty of things with fervent true believers that have been supposed to change everything were, in fact, duds.
Human input lag is not generally the cause of overbooking. The overbooking is intentional. NFTs have no unique ability to prevent it. This is not a tech problem, and so it cannot be solved by tech. I'm open to the possibility that airline tickets are just a bad example, of course, and it wasn't even an example you presented.
This is all rather vague. The benefits are not obvious, so you need to be more specific.
You might be the one who is saying "the hyperloop will change travel forever!" Everything you're writing seems like vague motivated reasoning presupposing that NFTs are the solution to problems that you don't even seem to understand.
😏
So an airline wants to sell every single possible seat on every plane, but not have too many people on the plane on takeoff because buying off those customers costs money, but plenty of customers cancel last minute so it is inefficient to only hand out just as many tickets as seats. The number is arrived at by sophisticated behavior algorithms that aren't very accurate, but are more accurate than current human estimations
There are also 3rd party sellers that receive segments of ticket and can and do act as brokerages in a grey market that if the idiots in washington understood would be a lot more heavily regulated
What NFTs bring to the game: New classes of tickets: Quantum Tickets. They're not really tickets till you board.
So you have normal seating for the existing classes, 1st to coach that are NFT guaranteed and once you have your ticket you KNOW you will be getting that seat. You can also transfer ownership of this ticket yourself for any reason, automatically and seamlessly through the app
Now we have a pool of quantum travelers that for the savings of a bit on the price, enter a randomized allocation of the remaining unused tickets, late cancellations, and other non-check ins.
ALL seamless, all on the app. From the outside it looks like any other boarding situation but now we have a very good chance every single sold seat will be taken.
Can't do that with existing systems, the methods of transfer are platform locked and even ones that offer API refuse to play with other services.
NFTs make a universal contract language that any business can use to transfer assets automatically and programattically in such a way that CANNOT be falsified
There is literally no other open source, cross platform solution that even comes close to offering 30% of this
I'm not sure the fact that NFTs are used by the third worst airline in the world, which the Argentinian government just fined $300K for excessive cancelations, is actually a plus for NFTs.
None of that is the fault of the NFT ticket system.
The most be something I don’t understand. Why would I buy flight tickets from a third party? Is there a market for this?
The idea is to allow efficient resale of airline seats (and for the airline to take a cut of that secondary market). Also proves to buyers that their flight is nor overbooked.
If you book through a travel agency or website, you are already buying 3rd party
NFTs would prevent 3rd parties from overselling flights (this is a big problem actually and is borderline fraud)