OpenSea Hides Suspicious NFT Transfers

NFT marketplaces are one of the biggest pillars of the space, offering a place for buyers and sellers to meet and exchange assets. But running an NFT marketplace, especially one as successful as OpenSea, is no small feat. The site has been targeted by hackers and is even facing lawsuits from users due to some fraudulent activity. 

But the site isn’t taking any of this lying down. On June 13, 2021, OpenSea announced some changes to its NFT transfer mechanism that are designed to crack down on malicious links being sent to users. 

Safe For Transfer

As per the official blog post on OpenSea, the site will begin hiding any NFT transfers that appear to be suspicious. Usually, users of OpenSea, which is based on the Ethereum blockchain, can easily send NFT transfers and listings to each other. 

While this has often helped the community, some problems have arisen. 

“With this openness, blockchains can also enable activity that isn’t welcome. One particular ecosystem-wide issue involves unexpected NFT transfers from someone you don’t know. This is similar to email: anyone can send you an email, including scammers,” the post explains, adding that scammers sometimes send NFT listings with links to third-party websites. 

If users click on these links and make use of these websites, their wallets are sometimes compromised and their NFTs stolen. In light of this, OpenSea is taking some actions to make sure that customers are less vulnerable. 

First, certain transfers will automatically be sent to the hidden folder. As with emails, accounts that are found to spam users with NFT transfers will be mainly affected by this and OpenSea hopes to perfect this mechanism over time. 

But this does not mean that the user will automatically miss these transfers. On the contrary, OpenSea will notify users when they receive a transfer that has been sent to the hidden folder and will be directed to the folder where they can unhide the transfer. 

Within the hidden tab, users can filter transfers by ‘hidden by you’ or ‘autohidden’ and view both the transfers that they marked as suspicious and those that were automatically flagged by OpenSea.

These changes will be rolled out over the next few weeks and months and while OpenSea acknowledges that there might be some glitches, like legitimate transfers being flagged, they have asked for the community’s support during this transition. 

“Ultimately, an ecosystem-wide effort is required to defeat scam and theft techniques. While we work with partners to achieve that larger goal, we hope that today’s change has a positive impact on the issue of theft in the web3 community. It is the first step of many we plan to take over the next few months. As always, we appreciate the community’s feedback on these changes,” the post says.

Tying Up Loose Ends

One of the benefits of the NFT space becoming more mature is that many of the common issues that plague buyers are being addressed. Today, it is OpenSea tackling suspicious transfers and tomorrow, it will be something else entirely.