---
title: NFTs are becoming lost media
image:
  src: https://img.sebin-nyshkim.net/i/f48cf018-687d-4fc1-99f2-e1f53bebf454
  alt: Ornate picture frame on a noisy background with a broken image icon in the middle
  credit: Made with GIMP, picture frame by cgordon8527 on Pixabay
tags: ["I told you so"]
---

NFTs arrived on the scene with big promises. They were pitched as the future of digital ownership. Using the blockchain as their basis, they were supposed to last forever. With an NFT one was supposed to prove beyond any doubt a digital asset was unique and truly owned. Fast forward only a couple years and the only thing that got owned were the people who blew their live savings on JPEGs of ugly-ass apes and having nothing to show for it.

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Why is this happening? For the exact reason people with a functioning brain and knowledge of how things actually work have been calling bullshit on the idea the entire time: the assets were never stored on the chain itself.

The blockchain is nothing if not a giant, distributed log file of transactions. That's your receipt of "ownership": something some people attached value to has changed hands. But the actual thing money changed hands over doesn't live on the blockchain. Instead, the NFT only contains a link in its meta data to the thing, because storing the thing on the blockchain itself would bog the whole network down after just a few files.

![Dipper from Disney's Gravity Falls holding a piece of paper with a URL on it, saying "Whoa. This is worthless."](https://img.sebin-nyshkim.net/i/7783874f-4e25-4932-ae32-ca00d00dc385 "Imagine spending even a cent on this")

In pure technical terms, it wouldn't be impossible. However, storing binary data on the blockchain would be prohibitively expensive (computationally as well as financially, in transaction fees) and also incredibly inefficient and slow.

To participate in a blockchain, every participant has to download the chain in its entirety[^centralized]. With how much bigger binary files are in comparison to simple text strings, this would dramatically increase the time needed to download and verify the entire chain. Blockchains also usually have a limit on how large a block can be, usually just a couple of megabytes, which isn't even enough to store your favorite song in decent quality. Remember, it's just a ledger, a giant log file that proves transactions between two parties took place, not what the contents of the transaction were.

[^centralized]: At least in theory. Blockchain is supposed to be a globally distributed, decentralized ledger between participants who do not trust each other. Marketplaces such as OpenSea, where a lot of NFTs are traded, reintroduce a trusted third party, which runs counter to the entire idea behind blockchain, which explicitly seeks to eliminate the need for one. Think "Blockchain as a Service", you don't run it yourself, someone else runs the chain for you and grants you centralized access to it. That should've already raised alarms this was all bullshit. But people were too dazed by big promises of easy money.

Yet, crypto bros sold people on the idea that NFTs being on the blockchain is some sort of sophisticated copy protection. We already had something like this when iTunes entered the scene: It's called "Digital Rights Management" (DRM), is very much anti-consumer and seeing how NFTs are now becoming inaccessible due to the hosting services shutting down, they follow [right in DRM's footsteps](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2008/04/drm-sucks-redux-microsoft-to-nuke-msn-music-drm-keys/).

Imagine paying thousands of bucks for a link to someone's Dropbox. Then something happens to their account (e.g. they generate so much traffic that Dropbox terminates their account) and it takes your JPEGs "worth" thousands of bucks with it.

As stupid as that sounds, that's [exactly what happened](https://x.com/PixOnChain/status/1915352785626845289).

![Tweet showing NFTs with unavailable images, which reads: Imagine spending $1.25M on a rare NFT… Come back 3 years later… And the image is just gone 😭](https://img.sebin-nyshkim.net/i/f96f5251-adf8-4339-bd91-203bca36ef0c "Should've right-clicked and saved")

Seems like some people pointed to a Cloudflare link in the NFT meta data and it generated enough traffic that Cloudflare caught on and terminated hosting because of violation of their terms of service. That's $795,189 or €699,053 down the shitter.

NFTs promised provenance and permanence, yet what it didn't solve was a problem that is as old as the internet itself: link rot. What believers are left with are a lot of broken promises and really expensive broken links. My sympathy is severely limited.

Remember this the next time some tech bro comes along and tries to pitch something to you as "the future" with religious fervor.
