Expensive NFTs sometimes disappear without a trace, buyers noticed

[Arus]

People who purchase NFT tokens have begun to notice that the objects they have purchased are disappearing. As explained by representatives of the OpenSea marketplace, one of the largest providers of non-fungible tokens, the problem lies in the way NFT works, which buyers do not always understand.

Last month, Tom Kuennen from Ontario acquired for $ 500 in JPEG - Image of Moon Ticket by DarpaLabs, a collective of anonymous digital artists. He bought NFT through the OpenSea marketplace and planned to resell. A week later, Kuennen opened his digital wallet and encountered a 404 error; the image he expected to see on the page has disappeared.

According to Vice, Kuennen is not the first NFT buyer to complain about tokens disappearing. One Reddit user elm099 complained that an NFT called Big Boy Pants had disappeared from his wallet. In this case, the user could see the transaction registered on the blockchain, but could not find the image itself.

As Ed Clement, OpenSea Community Manager, explains, when a person purchases an NFT, in most cases they don't buy a piece of art or even an image file. Instead, a small snippet of code is acquired that links to a media file located somewhere on the Internet. Digital artworks themselves are not registered on the blockchain when a purchase is made. Rather, when purchased, a cryptographic signature is generated that, when decoded, points to an image hosted elsewhere.

So when Kuennen acquired the Moon Ticket, there was no JPEG file in the blockchain itself, just a certificate pointing to a URL. And that pointer, Clements explained, could be blocked for a number of reasons, including a violation of the terms of the marketplace. Copyright infringement and theft of works of art are a characteristic feature of the emerging NFT space, points out at OpenSea. And in the event that the NFT was actually deleted at the source, and not blocked for violation, it will not be displayed no matter what website it was posted on.

According to Kuennen, he doubted his NFT was violating the OpenSea terms and conditions, and he received no warnings about it. He said that he could not even find the record of the token itself on the blockchain, although he was able to view the details of the transaction, which seemed strange to him, since even if the artwork was deleted, the record should still be available.
As it turned out, the problem could be related to the format of the token. NFTs are usually presented in the form of an ERC-721 token.Finding out the location of this token is easy. For example, the NFT SuperRare marketplace sends tokens directly to buyers' wallets, where they can be tracked fairly easily. OpenSea, however, is experimenting with a new variant of the token: ERC-1155, or "multi-token". This token standard is not yet compatible with Etherscan, a service where you can view statistics on the Ethereum network. This means that ERC-1155s are not displayed, even if they are on the blockchain.

Kuennen's case boiled down to two reasons: a violation of the terms of service in OpenSea, which led to the blocking of the image, and an unreadable ERC standard 1155, which made it inaccessible to Etherscan. OpenSea advised Kuennen to connect his wallet to another platform, such as Rarible, where the token may not be locked. Kuennen did just that, however the tab still displays an empty frame where the image should have been. The image is either locked or deleted.

As Vice points out, all of this illustrates a common problem with Ethereum and cryptocurrencies in general: despite the fact that they are immutable and not subject to hacking , they can only be used through unreliable third-party applications.