August 10, 2022
By Sharan Kaur Phillora
The latest ‘gifting’ feature on popular NFT marketplace OpenSea has confused users over ‘mislabeled’ transactions as this can pose threats of NFT scams. The new feature can prove to be a potential exploiting tool by NFT scammers.
Here’s what we know:
NFTs can now be sent directly to any wallet on OpenSea just in a single transaction. Thus, buyers can purchase an NFT with Ethereum from one wallet and deliver the fungible-token to another wallet during the trading process. The feature was meant to save users’ gas, as per OpenSea.
However, some third-party wallet trackers make the gift receiver look like the actual buyer who bought the NFT for themselves. For the uninitiated, third- party wallet trackers are trading apps that track NFT trades of influencers and celebrities. The feature could thus be an instrument for carrying out NFT scams.
A Twitter post from Metaverse HQ’s pseudonymous founder “JakeandBake” reveals that this feature is already being used by miscreants. Yes, the feature is allegedly used to make it look like NFT influencers like Gary Vaynerchuk and Pranksy are buying NFTs from several collections.
OpenSea has responded to these tweets by saying that the activity feed and API can differentiate between normal purchases and purchases for another wallet by following ways:
- ‘Purchase for another wallet’ transactions have different ‘receiving’ wallets for the sale and transfer event.
- ‘Normal’ transactions have the same ‘receiving’ wallet for the sale and the transfer event.
OpenSea further tweeted, “We could have done a better job giving 3rd party apps & developers a heads up, as this requires a tweak to how they display transaction data. We’re doing this work now.”
About the author
Sharan Kaur Phillora’s thirst for knowledge has led her to study many different subjects, including NFTs and Blockchain technology – two emerging technologies that will change how we interact with each other in the future. When she isn’t exploring a new idea or concept, she enjoys reading literary masterpieces.
