The thing is though, no one cares about digital signatures. Tech bros can't even be bothered checking signatures for ISOs they are about to deploy to production. You think normies are going to check the NFT metadata, track down the original sale, find the artists public key and validate its legit so they can think "Oh no this NFT is a clone, I will now revoke my enjoyment of this picture"
Most of our interaction with digital signatures is indeed transparent.
You are viewing a website right now with a certificate stating this is news.ycombinator.com signed by someone in your OS trust store.
I can just make a certificate saying a different website is news.ycombinator.com. What I can’t do (hopefully) is get it signed. You will have a very different UX when I do this.
Even though I can easily make an unsigned document, the digital signature in the certificate still has value, just like the NFT.
You can’t automate checking NFT certificates because they are all “real” and valid NFTs. The fact that the one you have wasn’t signed by the person who created the picture isn’t something cryptographically or even technically possible.
