OpenSea NFT Phishing Attack Could Have Triggered Drop in Trading Volume

It is worth noting that the marketplace saw a net gain in volume of about 5 percent in the last 30 days.

A phishing attack on Saturday, 19 February, saw traders lose over $1.7 million

(Photo: Stock)

OpenSea, the world's largest marketplace for non-fungible tokens, reportedly saw a significant drop after a phishing attack on Saturday, 19 February, led to traders losing over $1.7 million.

Trading in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) plummeted in recent days. According to DappRadar data, OpenSea's trading volume has dropped 25 percent in past 24 hours, while its seven-day trading volume is down by 37 percent.

It is worth noting that since the market is already highly volatile, the marketplace saw a net gain in volume of about 5 percent in the last 30 days.

Phishing Attack

Hundreds of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) were stolen from OpenSea users on Saturday, sparking rumours that the world's largest NFT marketplace was hacked and $200 million was lost in value.

Devin Finzer, co-founder and CEO of OpenSea, clarified on Twitter that it was apparently a phishing scam directed at 17 individual users, and not connected to the NFT marketplace itself.

This phishing attack apparently exploited a flexibility in the Wyvern Protocol, an open-source and decentralised protocol used by several marketplaces.

Phishing is a type of cyberattack where an attacker sends a fraudulent message designed to trick people into revealing sensitive information that they can exploit to deploy malware or steal things.

He also said that rumours of a $200 million hack are false and that the attacker has $1.7 million of Ether in his wallet from selling some of the stolen NFTs.

A spreadsheet put together by blockchain security and data analytics company PeckShield lists 254 tokens stolen over the course of three hours, including tokens from popular collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club, Cool Cats, and Azuki.

OpenSea has also been struggling with a plagiarism problem. It offers 'lazy minting' which uses a portion of the selling price as gas, effectively allowing users to mint for free. It tried to put a 50-item limit on this free-minting tool because it was being abused, but later relented.

It is valued at around $13 billion.