For major artworks, people would simply Google the piece and see that it sold for however much money in some headlines previously.
The real issue is proving that a specific sale was the “true” one. There have already been incidents of people trying to sell other people’s artwork as NFTs. If you buy an NFT and the artist later comes out and declares that your NFT wasn’t authorized or licensed or whatever, the value would presumably drop. The artist could then sell the “real” NFT.
Of course, none of this real-world authorization or provenance is actually encoded in the blockchain, nor can it be. The value lies entirely in the off-chain perception of what an NFT represents and whether or not it’s real / authentic / authorized / legitimate.
The blockchain hype has led to a misconception that blockchain solves everything, but they’re all still limited to whatever we all agree the on-chain data represents what we want it to represent.
The real issue is proving that a specific sale was the “true” one. There have already been incidents of people trying to sell other people’s artwork as NFTs. If you buy an NFT and the artist later comes out and declares that your NFT wasn’t authorized or licensed or whatever, the value would presumably drop. The artist could then sell the “real” NFT.
Of course, none of this real-world authorization or provenance is actually encoded in the blockchain, nor can it be. The value lies entirely in the off-chain perception of what an NFT represents and whether or not it’s real / authentic / authorized / legitimate.
The blockchain hype has led to a misconception that blockchain solves everything, but they’re all still limited to whatever we all agree the on-chain data represents what we want it to represent.