August 15, 2022
By Anjali Kochhar
OpenSea, one of the most popular venues for trading NFTs (non-fungible tokens), has revealed a new policy that will help in the handling of stolen digital arts and general theft on its platform.
“Our policy is designed to keep our community safe, but we know in some cases its side effects have damaged your trust in our platform. We’ve failed to proactively and transparently communicate the rationale behind our approach,” the company said in a tweet on August 11.
According to OpenSea, some of the users who bear the most brunt in the digital collectable world are those who buy stolen NFTs but have no fault whatsoever in the transactions.
With the new policy, some of the challenges it has been facing with respect to handling stolen NFTs can now be resolved, the trading platform said.
The company said its previous allowance to apply police reports only on escalated reports on stolen NFTs will no longer be the case, but rather, the police reports will be treated equally for all reports of NFT thefts respectively.
“Based on your input, we’ve already called to adjust elements of how we implement our policy. 1st, we’re expanding the ways we use police reports: we’ve always used them for escalated disputes, but they’ll now be used to confirm all theft reports,” the NFT marketplace said.
“For all reports going forward, if we don’t receive a police report within 7 days, we’ll re-enable buying & selling for the reported item. This change will help prevent false reports. We think this is a good 1st step & we’re grateful for the community’s suggestions,” the company added.
Web3.0 crimes are increasing day by day and some of the most concerning cases this year were the loot on Ronin Bridge and Nomad.
To provide cross-bound protection for all of its users, OpenSea plans to enable NFTs reported as stolen to be resold seven days after if police reports are not submitted to back up the claims.
OpenSea said it will shorten the process by which users who list an item as stolen can retract their claim and list the items for sales when recovered without needing a notary.
In May, the company announced improvements to its verification/badging process and an automated system to help identify, remove, and prevent instances of copymints (copies of authentic NFT content) visible on OpenSea.
About the author
Anjali Kochhar covers cryptocurrency stories in India as well as globally. Having been in the field of media and journalism for over three years now, she has developed a sharp news sense and works hard to present information that goes beyond the obvious. She is an avid reader and loves writing on a wide range of subjects.
