After yesterdays eBay 'authentication' post (where the eBay employee 'authenticated' a pair of Cactus Jack Air Trainer 1's which haven't yet released), I was swimming in comments for a while...going through trying to discern this and that and hoping I made sense in my responses...
Making the post, I tagged @sneakerpreservationsociety because I highly respect his opinion and I know he's the god of the AT1. He responded with a great comment...and...it made me think of this thing that I have been trying to shop around for a few years now...
We've all seen the majors... StockX, GOAT, and now eBay becoming the 'end all be all' of authentication...but the problem is, they are still just relying on one or two people at the end of the day...this...again...is the 'Web2' problem that I detailed very vividly in my 'Non-Fungible by Nature' blog series...there is a single point of success and a single point of failure. A bottleneck. Let's just say...ol' girl had a late night, didn't get her coffee and she authenticated something she shouldn't have authenticated...what then? You complain to the single point of failure in hopes that you get your money back.
IMO, the goal of 'authentication' should be 'authentication', not 'peace of mind'. For true 'authentication', I don't think we should be using 'single points' of reference, I think multiple points need to be considered. And that means...crowdsourced...IMO.
Look at that Logan Paul thing a few weeks ago - likely a publicity stunt - but dude dropped $3.5m on a Pokemon case that was authenticated by a single point of reference and it turned out to be a worthless case of GI Joe cards. If that case were authenticated by a group of experts with a wider vested interest, would it have gone as far as it did?
I dunno...I'm of the 'Web3' mind with this stuff. The more eyes the better. The more you put in, the more you get out. There is a very smart way to do this and, really, I'm shocked no one is. I hope I can find someone who wants to partner up on it in this way...anyway!
What do y'all think about crowdsourced authentication?