OpenSea will bring in the police to combat NFT thefts

This will prevent users from buying stolen tokens on the platform

11.08.2022 - 14:40

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What’s new? Representatives of NFT marketplace OpenSea have announced a new policy that will allow for additional measures against the sale of stolen non-fungible tokens. The announcement emphasizes that the rules take into account US laws, where knowingly allowing the sale of stolen items is prohibited. The company said it will not allow the platform to be used for such purposes and will add the use of police reports naming specific NFTs that are better not to be purchased on the marketplace.

1/ Can we address the 🐘 in the room? We want to provide you more clarity and transparency around our stolen items policy ↯— OpenSea (@opensea) August 10, 2022

Why did the platform change its policy? Platform representatives acknowledged that in some cases, customers who unknowingly bought stolen tokens were punished. In response to this, as well as negative feedback from the NFT community, the marketplace changed its policy by expanding the use of police reports. OpenSea said that information from them will now be used not only within the platform when resolving escalated disputes, but also to confirm all claims of theft. This will prevent users from buying stolen NFTs.

The company stressed that they are exploring other ways to solve the problem. In particular, they are working on automating threat and theft detection.

According to analysts at Comparitech, attackers have stolen $86,68 million in NFTs since the beginning of 2020. Today, the tokens are estimated to be worth more than $896,5 million. There were a total of 166 thefts during that period, with 2 committed in 2020, 14 in 2021, and the remaining 150 recorded in the first half of 2022.

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