OpenSea

Main article: NFT (cryptographic tokens)

2022

20% of employees laid off amid falling cryptocurrency market

In July 2022, it was announced that the largest NFT marketplace OpenSea would lay off 20% of employees amid a fall in the cryptocurrency market.

Ex-employee faces 20 years in prison for fraud

In May 2022, a former OpenSea employee from New York was charged with money laundering and electronic fraud. Employee Nate Chastain used advance information about the OpenSea listing for a huge profit. He faces 20 years in prison.

In early June, Nathaniel Chastain was charged with insider trading in non-interchangeable tokens, in which he used sensitive information to secretly acquire dozens of NFTs and resell them at a profit 2-5 times the original purchase price. The accused used anonymous crypto wallets and anonymous accounts.

$1.7 million NFT theft

On February 19, 2022, the OpenSea marketplace reported the theft of non-replaceable tokens of some users as a result of a phishing attack. In three hours, 254 tokens worth more than $1.7 million were stolen. According to the co-founder and CEO of the marketplace Devin Finzer, only a part of the stolen tokens were returned to the owners.

During the investigation of the theft claims, it turned out that in fact users suffered from a rather typical phishing attack. Marketplace customers were sent letters designed as an update to the OpenSea community, which suggested transferring Ethereum listings to an updated smart contract. Since OpenSea presented its own legitimate smart contract on February 18, 2022, many marketplace users believed in a phishing email, hackers only skillfully took advantage of this change.

OpenSea marketplace reports $1.7 million NFT theft

According to OpenSea and CEO Devin Finser on the social network, the phishing attack was not related to the marketplace site itself and was carried out separately. 32 people were injured from the attack by signing a contract, as a result of which the victims handed over non-replaceable tokens (NFT) to the attacker.

The explanatory topic states that as a result of the attack, victims signed half of Wyvern's warrant, citing the open source standard commonly used in NFT smart contracts. The warrant was actually empty, but with the exception of the call data and the target of the attacker's contract, while users signed half, and the hacker signed the other. After signing, the attacker calls his own contract specified in the double-signed order, which then starts the process of transferring NFT from the victim to the attacker. Information security specialists from OpenSea are continuing to investigate the incident to determine exactly how the attack occurred.^[1]

Passive fight against scammers

In February 2022, the largest NFT marketplace OpenSea was called a new haven for scammers. On it, they mint tokens from other people's drawings and photographs, profiting from the ideas of others, and do not bear any responsibility for this. As, however, the platform itself, writes the Wired edition.

In December 2020, the company allowed all users to mint tokens for free, and later canceled the mandatory verification of NFT collections before listing on the marketplace. Other services, meanwhile, moderated all content.

At first, the thieves profited from the ideas of the DeviantArt artist community, and later began to steal pictures from Twitter or Steam.

To partially curb plagiarism, at the end of 2021, she blocked two sets copied from the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection - Phunky Apes Yacht Club and PHAYC. And on January 26, 2022, OpenSea also changed the general rules. Now each user could create only five collections for free - a maximum of 50 tokens each. According to the marketplace, previously more than 80% of coins turned out to be plagiarized, spam or bench.

Users complained that scammers exploit vulnerabilities in the system and buy tokens at a price below the market price. OpenSea had to compensate the owners for losses and pay more than 2,000 airs - about $6.2 million as of February 11, 2022.

2021

Owner of rare NFT sells it for $3,000 over $300,000 due to typo

On December 14, 2021, one of the traders accidentally sold the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT worth $300,000 for $3,000, CNET reported. The reason for the costly gaffe was an inappropriate decimal point. Read more here.

Monthly volume of transactions reached $3.4 billion

In August 2021, the monthly volume of transactions on OpenSea reached $3.4 billion. Considering that the platform takes 2.5% of the commission for transactions, revenue amounted to $85 million.

2020: The company employs 5 employees

In 2020, when the NFT phenomenon was just beginning its development, OpenSea employed only five employees.