NFTs are now spotted with Fakes as Demand Soars

We have already entered into the new age of technologies including Blockchain, DeFi, Crypto, NFTs and the Metaverse. Sales of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, soared to around $25 billion in 2021, leaving many baffled as to why so much money is being spent on items that do not physically exist and which anyone can view online for free. NFT technology is helping to make art profitable again, but plagiarism and fakes are “becoming a massive issue” for both artists and buyers, warns a world-famous British artist who has crossed over into the digital space.

NFTs are crypto assets that record the ownership of a digital file such as an image, video or text. Anyone can create, or "mint", an NFT, and ownership of the token does not usually confer ownership of the underlying item. Plagiarism and fraud have been an issue since NFTs exploded in early 2021, but something shifted last fall. The explosion appeared to be from bots scraping artists’ online galleries, or even keyword searches on Google Images, and then creating collections with auto-generated texts. Those listings have proliferated on OpenSea.

It has come as evidence that there are a record number of fake NFTs in the marketplace. An NFT is a digital asset that can be an image, audio clip, or GIF and whose ownership is recorded on a tamper-proof digital ledger known as a blockchain. “NFTs are the future of art, without question. We’re increasingly living digital lives and NFTs allow us to take the images we love into this world – with an even further enhanced experience for the buyer. It’s the inevitable way forward. Over the last year, the NFTs market has exploded, with a digital-only piece of art selling for $69 million in 2021.

Since then, an ever-growing number of artists and celebrities, fashion, music, tech and sports brands have been creating, buying and selling ‘tokens.’ This is attributable to two main reasons. First, demand is soaring globally for NFTs and therefore there are simply a lot more people in the market – both collectors and artists. Second, some of the major NFT platforms are not fit for purpose because users can list NFTs without adding them on the blockchain and they don’t pay fees until they sell. Vetting systems need to be more robust. The best way to ensure your NFT is genuine is to choose the right platform, perhaps one with human moderators is best.