on Toshareproject.it - curated by Bruce Sterling
*Well, what is “Hic et Nunc”? Here’s a recently written guide. It’s not complete. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s never complete.
*However, it’s the best one I’ve seen to date.
Hic Et Nunc — the story, facts, suppositions and ideas (June 2021)
Matheus Siqueira
1 day ago·
12 min read
If the NFT platform Hic Et Nunc was a series the hack that happened on the 28th of June, 2021 would be the cliffhanger that finishes season 1 and leaves everyone suspended in disbelief waiting for the next season to begin (quite literally in this case since all activities have paused waiting for a new contract to launch).
On the upside, this forced pause has provided space to breath and look at the larger picture. Without the constant Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) on all the amazing art that is constantly being minted the community is taking a step back to reflect, propose, and also criticize everything that happened during the latest incident.
In light of many of the discussions happening on Discord and Twitter I propose in this article to briefly explain the bigger dynamics that are in play as a way to guide fruitful and realistic dialogues on what can be done:
1. Who is Rafael Lima and why Hic Et Nunc was created.
2. Unaudited what? Who cares about smart contracts.
3. The tight rope between centralizing and decentralizing. (coming soon)
4. The last straw that lifts the lid: the hacker accident, developer dissent, and community discontent. (coming soon)
5. Relinquishing control? hDAO and the future of Hic Et Nunc. (coming soon)
(…)
…Returning to Hic Et Nunc, whenever you access the website and click on the menu button a appears on the bottom of the site announcing that “This is an experimental dApp”. What does that mean? That means that you’re interacting with an unaudited contract. Or in HEN’s case, contracts in plural as Rafael divided the whole functionality of Hic Et Nunc in 7 smart contracts.
Where does the trust in Rafael Lima’s code come from? I suppose that in HEN’s case it organically grew from artists that started using the platform and advocating for it. Mario Klingemann being the spark that brought more high profile artists that in turn inspired trust in many smaller artists. Collectors soon followed this migration to HEN also without questioning how experimental the smart contract codes really were.
Always remember that the website is merely an interface for the smart contracts. Differently from other NFT platforms HEN doesn’t keep any of your information on a private database and as such you always have to sync your Tezos wallet so that it can pull all the information from the blockchain. Even if the website ceases to exist Hic Et Nunc will live as long as Tezos blockchain is running….