OpenSea Rolls Out Two New NFT Theft Protection Features

Leading non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea said Wednesday it is offering two new features to prevent theft on its platform.

The features, one to prevent NFT theft and the other to detect it, come as part of the company’s larger effort to reduce scams and exploits by bad actors within the industry.

“Trust and safety issues – specifically scams and theft – are some of the biggest barriers to broader NFT adoption today,” OpenSea said in a blog post. “Ultimately, the goal of this work is to help make the ecosystem safer by reducing the downstream sales of stolen items … and thus reduce the incentive for NFT theft in the first place.”

The platform’s new theft prevention feature will proactively scan URLs to prevent malicious links from appearing on fraudulent collection listings. These types of links have been a major problem in recent months, commonly used as “wallet drainers,” where a bad actor can trick a user to sign over control of their NFT wallet to drain funds or transfer digital collectibles.

The second theft protection feature they are testing will auto-detect and flag potentially stolen or suspiciously transferred NFTs and then bar them from being traded on the platform. OpenSea expects this feature to reduce the incentives for NFT theft by lowering the value of any stolen goods. The platform had previously flagged stolen NFTs with a warning sign but still allowed them to be traded. The new feature will bar any trades and mark the NFT as “under review” for seven days while the previous owners are contacted to confirm or deny if the sale was legitimate.

OpenSea says it’s working with other entities in the NFT space to reduce scams, though a company representative declined CoinDesk’s request for more information.

“We’re working closely with other marketplaces, wallet providers, analytics organizations, and others, to develop holistic scam detection and prevention systems. We look forward to sharing more on this front soon,” OpenSea said in the blog post.

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