More Than 80% of NFTs Created For Free On OpenSea Are Fraud Or Spam, Company Says (vice.com) 38
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: OpenSea has revealed just how much of the NFT activity on its platform is defined by fakery and theft, and it's a lot. In fact, according to the company, nearly all of the NFTs created for free on its platform are either spam or plagiarized. The revelation began with some drama. On Thursday, popular NFT marketplace OpenSea announced that it would limit how many times a user could create (or "mint") an NFT for free on the platform using its tools to 50. So-called "lazy minting" on the site lets users skip paying a blockchain gas fee when they create an NFT on OpenSea (with the buyer eventually paying the fee at the time of sale), so it's a popular option especially for people who don't have deep pockets to jumpstart their digital art empire.
This decision set off a firestorm, with some projects complaining that this was an out-of-the-blue roadblock for them as they still needed to mint NFTs but suddenly couldn't. Shortly after, OpenSea reversed course and announced that it would remove the limit, as well as provided some reasoning for the limit in the first place: The free minting tool is being used almost exclusively for the purposes of fraud or spam. "Every decision we make, we make with our creators in mind. We originally built our shared storefront contract to make it easy for creators to onboard into the space," OpenSea said in a tweet thread. "However, we've recently seen misuse of this feature increase exponentially. Over 80% of the items created with this tool were plagiarized works, fake collections, and spam."
This decision set off a firestorm, with some projects complaining that this was an out-of-the-blue roadblock for them as they still needed to mint NFTs but suddenly couldn't. Shortly after, OpenSea reversed course and announced that it would remove the limit, as well as provided some reasoning for the limit in the first place: The free minting tool is being used almost exclusively for the purposes of fraud or spam. "Every decision we make, we make with our creators in mind. We originally built our shared storefront contract to make it easy for creators to onboard into the space," OpenSea said in a tweet thread. "However, we've recently seen misuse of this feature increase exponentially. Over 80% of the items created with this tool were plagiarized works, fake collections, and spam."
And the other 20%? (Score:5, Informative)
With the last 1% being people trying to do something half way serious?
NFT's are just today's version of Beanie Babies.
Re: And the other 20%? (Score:3)
More like Tulip Mania, only there are no flowers involved but lots of waste and pollution.
Re: And the other 20%? (Score:2)
I know history, and history is not hard to find if you can pull yourself away from "The View" and "Jerry Springer".
There is a striking similarity between tulip mania and the current crypto craze.
All we need now are classical painters to create beautiful portraits of all of the foolishness surrounding the crypto craze.
Re:And the other 20%? (Score:4, Funny)
They said more than 80% are fraud or spam -- which means 100% (I'm rounding up from 99.99%.)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:And the other 20%? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you had a beanie baby you'd have a stuffed toy children could play with. With an NFT you have nothing but lost money you'll never get back.
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I actually have two Beanie Baby crabs, and my sons have bought Beanie Baby toys as birthday and Christmas presents for (usually female) friends from primary school. I've never thought of them as investments or a medium for speculation.
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NFT's are just today's version of Beanie Babies.
Not Beanie Babies. More like Pet Rocks.
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NFT's are just today's version of Beanie Babies.
Not Beanie Babies. More like Pet Rocks.
Even so, after you bought it, you'd have a nice rock to play with.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
With the last 1% being people trying to do something half way serious?
Which would be what, exactly?
I'm still waiting for the NFT use-case that doesn't immediately scream "scam" or more subdued just sings "a fool and his money are easily parted".
Anyone got an actual use-case that's not part of someone's get-rich-quick scheme ?
Crazies, kooks, and morons (Score:3)
"digital art world"
The analog art world is filled with mentally deranged people (more the buyers/appraisers than the sellers) who will value a painstakingly crafted painting at a few hundered dollars, if that, but value some "abstract art" (often a LITERAL pile of junk) in the 100ks to million dollar range.
It seems the old style insanity wasn't enough, so they are moving up to the NFT world of insanity.
I wonder what people a thousand years from now will think of all of this? Outook not so good.
Re: Crazies, kooks, and morons (Score:2)
sellers = creators
Re:Crazies, kooks, and morons (Score:4, Insightful)
It makes perfect sense when you realize the art business is simply a money laundering scheme.
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It seems the old style insanity wasn't enough, so they are moving up to the NFT world of insanity.
I think it's a matter of pushing just a little harder once they managed to get people to invest in digital coin.
"So what can we get stupid people to pay fore even more stupid stuff?" Enter NFT's.
Maybe we can get people to buy turds of the pop stars next.
Re: Crazies, kooks, and morons (Score:2)
"Maybe we can get people to buy turds of the pop stars next."
You kid, but some people would actually do this. :-\
Re: Crazies, kooks, and morons (Score:2)
Opensea gives zero fucks about fraud and spam (Score:2)
Sorry.... (Score:3)
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Is it a crime to fake nothing? (Score:2)
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Re: Is it a crime to fake nothing? (Score:2)
It's not 80% (Score:1)
It's 100%
Now Obligatory (Score:2)
This Folding Ideas video is so good it it's hard to ignore as probably the best criticism of NFT's and crypto in general, it should just be attached to every post about these things. It deserves the 3m views it has gotten so far.
Line Goes Up - The Problem with NFTs [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
There's got to be a way to summarize his main points in less than 2 hours.
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Here it is:
"NFT's are a worthless scam".
my religion forbids me to say i told you so (Score:1)
I'll Repost: NFTs explained. (Score:2)
https://media.discordapp.net/a... [discordapp.net]
ERm, 100% of NFTs are fraud. (Score:1)
JPEGs are not worth that money.
NFTs are fraud.
Slashdot should acknowledge that fact.
At least with tulip mania ... (Score:2)
Proof (Score:2)
We now have proof that 100% >= 80%. And we didn't even require AI to prove it!
"plagiarized" yet non-fungible? (Score:2)
And before someone says it: the NFT is the finger not what the finger points at. Pointing an NFT at someone else's art isn't plagiarism any more than your browser bookmarks are copyright violations.
100% of NFTs are frauds and scams (Score:3)