A popular non - fungible token ( NFT ) market has pulled the plug on most transactions after discovering people were trade tokens of plagiarised or steal content .
The weapons platform , called Cent , gained prominence afteran NFTof the first - ever tweet by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey was sold there for $ 2.9 million . In astatementon February 6 , the caller allege they ’d become mindful of “ bad worker ” using Cent for the aim of " play a trick on others into purchasing imitative work . "
“ Our response has been to ostracize the offending accounts , but we trust that this approach is not sustainable . That ’s why , effective today , we ’re removing the ability to sell NFTs here , ” they added .
For those blissfully incognizant , NFTs arecrypto assetsthat record the " ownership " of a digital file via the blockchain ( basically a decentralized , public account book ) . The digital file can be anything from a song , a tweet , an image , anovel , avirtual BigMac , or a digital painting ofMelania Trump ’s eyes .
At the moment , much of the hoopla is around pieces of digital artwork , like Bored Ape Yacht Club or Cryptopunks
If you buy an NFT – which can sell for the equivalent weight of thousands of dollar mark in cryptocurrency – it ’s effectively a digital reception of ownership of the digital item , as opposed to forcible or rational ownership . you could copy a digital file as many metre as you desire by , for example , right - clicking and lay aside the image . However , NFTs are design to give people ownership of the work , which in essence ca n’t be replicated . gratuitous to say , many people are skeptical of this conception .
It ’s comparatively easy for anyone to create an NFT , a cognitive operation known as “ minting . ” you could strike a doodle you did on Microsoft Paint or create an NFT of a tweet of yours that went viral . However , it appear people are using NFT minting tools on mental object they do n’t in reality own . In theory , someone could mint a JPEG of the Mona Lisa they found on Google Images , but the seller has no legal rights over the actual house painting .
This is not a job that ’s limited to Cent . story of scams , rig , and counterfeit havebecome commonplacein the burgeon world of NFTs . Just last month , the outstanding NFT marketplaceOpenSea put outa tweetsaying they are putting a 50 item bound on their free minting toolbecause it was being abused by bad apples .
“ Over 80 percent of the items created with this tool were plagiarized works , imitation collections , and spam , ” theyadded .
