Scams are frequent, is the NFT ecosystem a disaster?

This article is from Laoyupi (WeChat public account ID: laoyapi), reproduced and published by Odaily with authorization.

This article is from Laoyupi (WeChat public account ID: laoyapi), reproduced and published by Odaily with authorization.

Either way, the current NFT ecosystem is a disaster.

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Plagiarism Stealing and Fraud"Take OpenSea, the most popular marketplace for NFTs, for example. Last week, OpenSea abruptly limited the number of free times users can mint NFTs on the grounds that more than 80% of NFTs created with the tool are"Plagiarized Works, Fake Collections, and Spam

For artists on DeviantArt, the problem has become so serious that the platform has implemented a fraud alert system that scans the ethereum blockchain for NFT copies of artwork. DeviantArt has sent 80,000 alerts since August 2021, doubling from October to November and increasing 300% from November to mid-December.

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Buying and selling to drive up prices

OpenSea's hottest competitor, LooksRare, has another conundrum to contend with: wash trading, a type of often illegal market manipulation in which volumes and values ​​are inflated by buying and selling themselves."It is foreseeable that LooksRare's mechanism of economically rewarding users' trading volume will definitely be used by some users to make profits. Just this week, that volume surpassed that of OpenSea, accounting for roughly 87 percent of its total transaction volume since its launch on Jan. 10, thanks to an estimated $8.3 billion worth of wash trades by cryptocurrency analytics firm CryptoSlam, Decrypt reported. On January 12, the LooksRare Twitter account retweeted a thread discussing and maintaining wash trades on the platform with a comment."

Really should pay attention."MetaKovan "These are not isolated incidents. The form of self-buying and selling among elites has also been integrated into the market. to collectors"(Vignesh Sundaresan), whose purchase of the $69 million Beeple NFT sparked some of the earliest hype surrounding the digital asset. The collector is also a funder of a Singapore-based investment firm (Metapurse), which bought 20 Beeple NFTs, four virtual museums, a soundtrack, and combined them all into one"NFT bundling

Citing relevant data from a landmark study published in the journal Nature in October: The 6.1 million transactions covering 4.7 million NFTs since 2017: The top 10% of traders accounted for nearly 100% of all transactions. 90%, this group trades at least 97% of NFTs, and the biggest predictor of any NFT's value is not its appearance, but its previous price point. This is not like a normal trading market, everything is just a crazy grab for profits.

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Scams and Hacks"Most projects are run from the video game chat platform Discord, and the high trading enthusiasm combined with weak market infrastructure has led to a large number of scams and hacks targeting investors. NFTs are often used to raise funds for dubious projects that end in spectacular failures, or in sudden"tug of war"Evil Ape "In , the anonymous founder takes everyone's money and walks away. The Evolved Apes NFT project raised millions to help develop a fighting game project to pay for it, but the founding developers

And disappeared with $2.7 million. The creator of the Big Daddy Ape Club stole $1.3 million worth of tokens on Solana. Blockverse, an unofficial Minecraft NFT project, sold 10,000 NFTs in minutes before its creator disappeared with over $1.2 million worth of tokens.

There are far more bad situations than that. In addition to nefarious developers, NFT buyers also have to worry about a steady stream of scammers posing as cryptocurrency wallet workers with the sole purpose of draining your wallet and the NFTs inside. Even if you dodge fake customer service, basically say goodbye to your ape if you accidentally approve a smart contract by mistake on a fake website. Even if these pitfalls are dodged, it’s still possible to get scammed: a bunch of people were recently plundered for their valuable NFTs because of flaws in the way OpenSea handles listing and relisting NFTs.

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all-pervasive temptation

The development of things forces us to face more temptations. NFT ads and billboards plastered across major cities during the World Series, former first lady’s NFT collection, Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton showing off their Boring Ape NFT on The Tonight Show and fighting for crypto The hype that money payment company MoonPay is doing, all of this, is just to increase the value of digital assets held by a small number of businesses, celebrities and rich people, which will make them further rich.

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Love and Hate NFTs

Considering that many promoters and advocates of NFTs also believe that they will"Web3 "and"and"Metaspace

"These two vaguely defined technologies do not currently exist, but their supposed potential is so revolutionary that the real value of NFTs lies in their future role, and whatever that is, let Many of the human headaches will eventually somehow go away."NFTs are a bridge to the metaverse and facilitate identity, community, and social experiences in the metaverse,"Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, wrote so in a December blog post. In January, an OpenSea blog post boasted that last year"We're seeing the world realize that NFTs represent the fundamental building blocks of a whole new peer-to-peer economy."It goes on to say that NFTs will generate"Greater freedom, ownership of digital goods", and promote"Powerful, Interoperable Applications"of the creation. All of this ties in with what it means for Web3 and its ownership in Coinbase's own blog."decisive feature"research is consistent."。

Web3 gives users full ownership of their content, data and assets through the blockchain. It empowers users to read - write - have"In a recent article, technology critic Evgenvy Morozov called Web3 a"map without territory", which is well developed in terms of performativity and self-reference."We've got this beautiful map, we're just missing specific territories

. A vague and expansive vision of blockchain technology waiting to be brought to life by VCs, projects and platforms is a disturbing harbinger of what's to come ."There are also some interesting NFT projects rooted in reality. The game company seems to intend to give the so-called"(P2E) games (which give players a way to make money by hyping NFTs) are an opportunity, and the proliferation of P2E games like Axie Infinity allows individuals to generate a small percentage of profits. Unique tokens signify ownership of digital goods and impose artificial scarcity. So far, for DRM-loving companies, this scarcity has been frustratingly attractive and familiar to companies, though what's good for investors isn't necessarily good for the public.

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where to go

The current NFT ecosystem may indeed be improved. OpenSea may limit its free minting tools, reducing the number of thefts to a level that is frighteningly large. LooksRare's incentives may change. Maybe a new product might show up and kill them both. People might get wise to Discord scammers, just as we all get wise to the scam calls that keep coming to our phones. All of these measures may just get things back to normal.

But should we choose to do so? At present, NFTs are mainly used in the pursuit of enclosure: the goal is clear: to turn every inch of our physical world - and any digital world - into a place where almost all experiences and things are quantified, commodified and privatized. The second purpose is to provide "convenience" for a large number of fraud, spam, theft, and plagiarism: it has also caused some retail investors who do not know the truth to become cannon fodder in gambling games of big dealers. The third purpose is to bring some rich opportunities to some lucky, rich or cynical creators."Now, believers insist that this rosy vision will one day come, its true value locked away in a dark vision of the future. However, if you watch Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon show off their JPEG photos on TV, you can't help but complain"what the fuck is this