Tencent tears open the "fig leaf" of China's NFTs

Produced | Tiger Sniff Technology Group

The author | Zhou Zhou

The head art | Visual China

Tencent has torn apart the "fig leaf" of China's NFT industry.

On July 20, 2022, a piece of news shook the blockchain industry: Tencent will turn off the magic core, which is one of the largest NFT platforms in China. Subsequently (July 21), phantom core told the China Times reporter that it had not received a notice and did not deny whether phantom core would be abolished.

But that doesn't seem to matter anymore. People suddenly realized that even the largest NFT platform in China could not guarantee that the NFTs purchased by users would not suddenly disappear. Those who buy domestic digital collections suddenly find that the NFTs they buy are not their own from beginning to end.

China's NFT industry began in June 2021, when Ant Group blew out the first trumpet, Tencent, Byte, Baidu, JD.com, B Station, Xiaohongshu... Almost all internet manufacturers have "rushed to the top" and entered the NFT industry. Among them, the largest volume is also the NFT platform Whale Probe under Ant and the phantom core of Tencent's NFT platform. At the peak of the NFT, millions of users poured into these two major NFT platforms every day.

Until now, there have been more than 600 NFT platforms in China. However, the heat of the industry can not hide the embarrassment of the domestic NFT platform, they are in the name of NFT, and what they actually do has nothing to do with NFT. The news that Tencent plans to turn off the phantom core has once again exposed the dilemma of this industry to people' eyes.

Whether Tencent will turn off the magic core is not important. Importantly, Tencent can choose to turn off the magic core at will, while users cannot choose NFTs to belong to themselves.

An NFT (non-homogeneous token), an asset that can be circulated online, is characterized by the fact that each NFT is unique and that each NFT can have only one owner. Based on these characteristics, NFTs can create an Internet world where everyone has data rights, a more real and immersive Internet world. Specifically: when you are in the real world, your computer, your car, your house, your paintings... Every labor of the creators is earned, and people create paintings, music, videos, virtual cars created in the online world... Also belongs to the creators.

One of the problems that NFTs solve is to make every Internet creator (the worker who works on the internet) work like every worker in the real world. What NFT wants to achieve is to allow every creator to have the right to create their own data, which can be owned by themselves or resold to others.

Foreign NFT platforms are moving in this direction, whether it is Nike, Adi, Puma and other sports shoe manufacturers; The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and other mainstream media; Or BMW, Ferrari, Rolls-Royce and other car companies are choosing to try the exploration of the NFT direction. Without exception, they upload every NFT they make to the public chain, so as to ensure that every NFT will not be controlled by a giant. Decentralization ensures the uniqueness, scarcity and security of NFTs.

However, Tencent Magic Core and more than 600 other NFT platforms in China are simply selling pictures.

The digital collection released by Tencent Phantom Core is a non-NFT form of data, and its data is still held by centralized giants such as Tencent. Simply put, Phantom Core is a platform for selling pictures. Each picture ranges from 10 yuan to 100 yuan, and each same picture can sell for 10,000 copies. These pictures, like all the pictures on the web, have no value.

The magic core uploads one picture after another to Tencent's blockchain, and Tencent can still change or remove the blockchain at will. This makes the matter of data on-chaining optional.

In fact, NFT data, once owned by users, can be owned for life, it is as unique as all offline assets. It's like Picasso's paintings, like Jay Chou's first limited edition music album, like a notebook sent to you by a friend... Each one is unique and valuable. However, NFTs only exist on the line.

Why do people buy these pictures, music and videos? Collecting is an act rooted in the human heart. For a rare and precious thing, people can't help but collect. The birth of the Internet, so that a large number of creative behavior occurs on the Internet, the Internet so that every creation can be infinitely forwarded, people seem to have no interest in online things, there is no interest in collecting.

The characteristics of NFTs make people hope to realize the desire and demand for collecting digital artworks, which will also greatly promote the creative passion of Internet creators.

The future Van Gogh, perhaps not painting on canvas, but creating on the Internet; The future Michelangelo may no longer use clay and stone as raw materials for sculpture, but 3D production online; And the great musicians and writers of this era, while the Internet spread their works to the world for free, they do not have to worry about not receiving the cost of creation, as long as they are good enough, there will be fans to buy the unique music or NFT versions of the books they produce, which will be extremely collectible.

People collect because of the scarcity and uniqueness of the collected items. However, the NFT launched by the domestic NFT platform, because of the reason of centralized platform control, each collection can be easily copied, and each collection can be easily taken away, which also makes the value of its collection close to 0.

This is also the reason why many domestic NFT entrepreneurs are confused at present, they are not doing real NFTs, but with the help of users do not understand and hype speculation mentality. Even some NFT platforms launched NFTs are not on-chain, but directly hang pictures on the web page for people to buy. This is undoubtedly a deception.

If you go in the wrong direction, you can't reach your destination no matter how far you run. Today, China's NFT industry is moving in a departure from its destination. And these bubble innovations don't seem to be beneficial to the goal of building a digital society and unlocking the value of data.

Data, as the fifth largest factor of production, has become an indispensable part of the productive forces of today's world. In the history of human economic and social development, production and labor force are the most basic factors of production, and with the advancement of the times, capital and technology have become new factors of production, and they have all had a revolutionary impact on the productive forces. As a kind of rights confirmation and valuable data, NFT is gaining more and more attention and layout in the industry. It confirms the right to data through technology and becomes a key factor in releasing the value of data.

Today, there are two kinds of data, one is NFT form of data, and the other is non-NFT form of data. Don't name the latter the former.

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