A new “gift” feature on leading NFT marketplace OpenSea is creating confusion over mislabeled transactions – potentially being exploited by predatory NFT traders.
NFTs– unique blockchain tokens which means ownership of digital objects – can now be sent directly to anyone wallet during the purchase process at OpenSea. This means that traders can buy an NFT with Ethereum from one wallet, but delivers NFT to another wallet in a single transaction.
And on some third-party wallet trackers — trading apps that keep track of NFT purchases made by influencers and celebrities — the new feature launched on Friday makes it look like the gift recipient bought NFT for himself.
The feature has reportedly already been “exploited” to make it look like public figures and influencers like Gary Vaynerchuk are buying NFTs from various pools, according to a Twitter post by Metaverse HQ’s pseudonymous founder “JakeandBake.”
While this may not be a concern for casual NFT traders, it can lead to more serious traders tracking celebrity and influencer buying activity being misled into buying into certain collections. Some NFT traders buy and sell assets based on what “smart money” traders do and copy them, and this is especially true when some with a cult following that Gary Vaynerchuk is investing in a collection.
“Ugh – first [please]- nobody ever buys anything f [sic] just because I do,” Vaynerchuk tweetedand adds that he hopes the problem will be “solved”.
“Don’t buy based on me,” he stressed.
NFT influencer Farokh Sarmad also expressed concern about the new feature. “That’s actually the worst update I’ve ever seen wtf,” he tweeted.
An OpenSea representative acknowledged the problem in another email Decrypt yesterday, but emphasized that the problem is “not an exploit” and is “the result of data misinterpretation.”
“It appears that third-party wallet trackers are misclassifying these actions as purchases by the gift recipient.” the company added in a chirping.
The company too so that it “could have done a better job of notifying third-party apps and developers that this requires adapting the way they display transaction data. We’re doing that work now.”
Despite OpenSea’s new feature, Ninjalerts — an aggregator of “the most important NFT buyers,” according to its Twitter page — says its data is still accurate. “Not true for Ninjalerts,” CEO trevor.btc tweeted yesterday. “We look at raw blockchain data, do not rely on the OpenSea API. Only wallet trackers that rely on the OpenSea API will be exploited.”
Moby Insights – another NFT wallet tracker – said it has already released a fix in response to the new feature. “The way we read transfers from the chain still allowed it to be exploited,” a platform representative wrote on Twitter. “We just released the fix for that.”
This is not the first time that OpenSea’s API has led to concerns. Back in January, a UI bug allowed some opportunistic buyers to snap up Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs at old listing prices that were not clearly displayed on the website.
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