https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/21/arts/design-nft-quantum-lawsuit-dismiss-mccoy.html
Story is behind a paywall, here are the main details:
I am interested in developing a method or system where a contractual ownership token or message can be embedded with a blockchain transaction. This way an artist working digitally can present the work in its native form (on the internet, for instance), yet still have a mechanism to sell it to a collector who would have a verifiable and secure way of showing ownership and transferring ownership to another party.
My idea seems related to Contracts ( https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts ), colored coins ( https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-theory-of-colored-coins-305042 ), and maybe even smartcoin ( https://github.com/jgarzik/smartcoin ), but it is difficult to know where to begin.
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As per the title of this post "First NFT" is in quotations because its a highly debated claim. First of all, are Namecoin assets NFTs? If yes, what happens to the NFT after it expires on the blockchain (a feature unique to Namecoin)? Also, was his really the "first"? That distinction actually belongs to d/bitcoin, which has been continuously registered since April 2011 (never expired).
What McCoy did was indeed a "first" of sorts but d/Quantum expired and was re-registered by someone who goes by the name EarlyNFT on Twitter. EarlyNFT basically claimed that what McCoy sold wasn't the "real Quantum" and then sued him and Sotheby's after it was sold for $1.47 million. To me this is the equivalent of Web3 patent trolling as he was trying to apply his take on how NFT ownership works in a court of law. Of course its an unsettled matter as nobody even referred to Namecoin assets as NFTs until 2021.
I can't paste the art as a GIF b/c the file size is too big, but this is what it looks like:
https://miro.medium.com/freeze/max/360/0*QLQAL9R5JNDIpVNt.gif