With the growth of NFTs comes the apparent concern of how secure marketplaces are, particularly for OpenSea, the biggest and most prominent NFT platform.
Users cannot generate, trade, or auction NFTs on OpenSea, a peer-to-peer marketplace for digital assets. Instead, it acts as a marketplace for the trading of NFTs amongst various users.
The trade of NFTs has increased dramatically. This is due to the metaverse, new web trends, and huge brands, leading to a multi-million-dollar enterprise. Tools encode NFTs as data on the blockchain, giving them value and legitimacy. Anyone can use NFTs for nearly anything, such as audio, photographs, films, or even whole digital realms. However, artworks have emerged as one of the most popular NFT commodities.
OpenSea’s Problems
While OpenSea has its program that enables individuals to mint an NFT for free, the service has increased criminal activities. OpenSea recently revealed the severity of the situation in an unceremonious Twitter discussion. Frauds use their tool to plagiarize and spam NFTs. More than 80% of NFTs are plagiarized, fraudulent, or outright spam. Their minting tool is free. For those unfamiliar, minting is the act of converting digital art into a valuable asset on the Ethereum blockchain.
OpenSea permanently keeps an NFT in a decentralized system where it cannot be altered or amended once minted. Upon this realization, the firm chose to limit the number to only 50, which sparked outrage in the community. OpenSea ultimately overturned its decision, revealing how widespread the issue of copying and fraud has become in the NFT ecosystem.
In addition to revising its position, Opensea stated that it was working on various ways to guarantee it rewarded its artists while preventing undesirable activity. The platform also announced that it would test these improvements with its users before rolling them out. NFT frauds are a multibillion-dollar industry. They range from impersonating an artist to faking bids on OpenSea to typosquatting and insider trading. Authorities also convicted Nate Chastain, OpenSea’s Head of Product, for manipulating NFT prices via insider knowledge. Phishing scams are also common, and notable digital artists have warned about how easy it is to carry out forgeries.
Significant Inflow of Money
Despite these issues, the area is rapidly increasing, with a Bloomberg article estimating the NFT business to have been worth more than $40 billion in 2021. With all that capital at their disposal, investors flock in from all sources, including tech behemoths. TikTok first introduced a creator-focused NFT collection in September of last year.
YouTube has also stated that it intends to capitalize on the NFT boom. Facebook, which is now known as Meta, has much grander ideas. According to reports, the business is working on technologies that will allow Facebook and Instagram users to make digital art, mint it, and even sell it on its local marketplace.
