Binance accused of copying NFT creation tool from hackathon winner – Cryptopolitan
Binance is facing accusations of plagiarism following the launch of Bicasso, an AI-based non-fungible token (NFT) tool. It has been alleged that Binance copied a tool created by Chatcasso just two months after awarding them the first prize in the BNB Chain hackathon held in Seoul between December 17-19, 2022.
Binance CEO Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao announced the launch of Bicasso on March 1, describing it as a product that can be used to “turn creative visions into NFTs with AI”. This has prompted community member ggoma to accuse Binance of blatantly copying their project Chatcasso and passing it off as their own.
Binance responds to the accusation
Binance has denied the allegations of theft. A Binance representative has said that Chatcasso was only an experimental project by a small team at Binance as part of their testing and experimentation process. The spokesman further commented that NFTs and AI are concepts that many players in the industry are exploring. Chatcasso was awarded first prize in the BNB Chain hackathon for successfully creating an AI-powered tool to produce NFTs, earning $5,000 in Binance USD as a result.
When he saw Binance launch a similar platform within two months of ggomas, he expressed his surprise and disappointment. “For a large company like Binance to copy our project, down to the name, is highly unethical,” he said. “The names are so similar that it can confuse users – even the user interfaces and functions are largely the same.” To illustrate this point, ggoma published screenshots of the two projects.
Binance insists that the similarity does not mean that their ideas have been stolen. A spokesperson for the exchange commented: “After an internal review, we are confident that Bicasso was built from scratch more than two weeks before the start of the BNB hackathon.”
In addition, the spokesperson said that Binance and BNB Chain operate independently of each other, with the Binance development team not participating in any hackathon conducted on the BNB chain, as confirmed by the cryptocurrency exchange.
Binance revealed that the name of its AI-powered NFT generator, Bicasso, derives from the OpenAI tool ‘Dall-E’, a reference to renowned artist Salvador Dali. The company expressed that their team was particularly fond of this concept.
The incident left ggoma worried about participating in hackathons in the future, asking if his ideas would be reused by a major player down the road. He implored Binance to take responsibility for their actions and reminded creators that “there are companies out there that will try to capitalize on your hard work.”
Regardless of the controversy, Bicasso quickly amassed a large following among NFT investors, with over 10,000 mints executed within 2.5 hours of launch.
