Blockchain Seeks to Redefine Digital Ownership

Sony has been making headlines for its stance on digital game ownership in court. The company claims that players don't own the games they buy, a position that has sparked debate about the nature of digital assets and their relationship to traditional property law.

This isn't an isolated issue, it's a symptom of a broader problem with centralized intermediaries controlling access to digital media. As Kostas Chalkias, Co-Founder and Chief Cryptographer at Mysten Labs, put it: 'With media, we're used to renting and streaming, and we're increasingly finding that the things we think we're buying don't actually belong to us.'

Blockchain and decentralized technologies have been touted as a solution. NFTs were initially seen as a way to give users verifiable ownership of digital assets, but they've faced limitations in their early iteration, particularly with public metadata and reliance on centrally hosted files.

Encrypted NFTs are being developed to address these issues. They use technologies like trusted execution environments (TEEs) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) to provide users with true ownership and control over digital assets.

As Guy Itzhaki, CEO of privacy blockchain Fhenix, explained: 'The main issue is that ownership of the $NFT does not necessarily give you exclusive control over the asset behind it.' Encrypted NFTs aim to change this by giving users both ownership and access control.