DOWNLOAD LINK GATHER AT THE END OF THIS CONTENT
There’s a new website in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, that allows you to torrent an entire blockchain’s worth of NFTs. It’s called The NFT Bay, and it’s pretty comparable to (with a cheeky DMCA takedown link added).
As a site, it looks to fulfill exactly what it promises, but as a statement it might start an interesting discussion on what ownership means on the internet.
Almost every link on the site (except for the one that is a Rick Roll) will eventually take you to the description page, which has all of the hallmarks of a real Pirate Bay (according to my friend, who is definitely not me because I’ve never pirated anything).
To the right of it is a download link that takes you to the torrent file; clicking on it will bring up a file called “preview.jpg,” which appears to include images from Bored Ape and zip files that appear to contain all of the NFTs from both Ethereum and Solana blockchains. In total, the download is approximately 20TB in size.
To put it another way, it’s an awful lot of picture files. In the comments to Huntley’s tweet, a common debate is playing out: nft haters cite it as proof that NFTs have no value, while crypto enthusiasts try to show how unconcerned they are by replying in hordes that it’s really the proof of ownership, not the picture. As they say, having a right-click mentality is dangerous.
Right? Isn’t that what good art is supposed to do? It’s a topic that should elicit an in-depth examination.
Huntley states that he made it because NFTs frequently don’t store any media on the blockchain, but rather connect to a version stored on a potentially fragile web server.
He also addresses several questions about The NFT Bay in an FAQ on his GitHub and an excellent interview with Motherboard.
The NFT Bay, however, not only takes NFT-boosters at their word but also mocks the idea. “You want to claim ownership over something,” it states.
And Huntley’s announcement message of “OMG WHO RIGHT CLICKED ALL OF THE #NFTs?” adds sardonic humor to the “you wouldn’t download a JPEG” meme (shared by both supporters and critics alike).
However, there is still an important question: does it contain every NFT in the Ethereum blockchain? I’m not sure if I can give you an answer—downloading the over 15TB zip file would put me well over my data usage limit with Comcast, who would most likely break down my door with a battering ram.
Others, on the other hand, have shown that all NFTs may be downloaded, so Huntley isn’t claiming the impossible here (basically, your program would just need to locate all of the tokens on the blockchain and utilize the links they contain to download the media).
Would it matter if someone finally finishes downloading it and discovers it doesn’t contain all of the JPEGs?
This is a question you’ll have to answer for yourself. Unfortunately, it appears that in order to access the collection, you will have to go through the download process, as far as I can tell.
Despite the nice checkboxes promising to show you only CryptoPunks or Bored Ape Yacht Club photos, the NFT Bay’s search feature just returns the same results regardless of what you put in it.
That’s what happens when you distribute your stolen NFTs using ancient, centralized Web 2.0 technology. That’s why instead of the web3 version of LimeWire, I’ll be utilizing the original one (which is still in use by some people today).
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