NFT marketplace OpenSea tightens measures to combat fraud and plagiarism

The leading NFT marketplace OpenSea has rolled out a suite of measures to guard against plagiarism, IP infringements and fraud, according to its co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer.

At @opensea, we feel a huge responsibility to ensure our users are safe, while providing expansive access to the NFT ecosystem.

I want to share my views on our many efforts to protect against plagiarism, IP infringement, and fraud. 👇https://t.co/S2Krco2yW8

— Devin Finzer (dfinzer.eth) (@dfinzer) June 8, 2022

According to him, in the first half of 2022 the marketplace built several important technical systems that help the team promote authentic content and reduce the amount of fraudulent activity.

Among the solutions implemented, he listed:

• a new verification mechanism that more clearly identifies authentic accounts;
• a copy-protection tool using image-recognition technology to scan NFTs and detect duplicates;
• an improved search system that optimised the results for users of authentic content.

Other product improvements in this direction included:

• In-Product Reporting — helps OpenSea specialists respond to user reports about suspicious items;
• Account Compromise Tool — a tool that allows listing of NFTs in a wallet to be blocked via the platform’s interface if the wallet has been compromised;
• Proactive Account Suspensions — a proactive system for suspending marketplace services to accounts suspected of fraud;
• Smart Moderation Tools — intelligent moderation tools for monitoring problematic collections and taking action.

OpenSea has also expanded its user-support and security team to 200 people.

Finzer also announced that by the end of 2022 there would be significant investments in several core areas, including:

• preventing thefts and fraud in collaboration with marketplaces, wallet providers and other market participants;
• protection of intellectual property online, again in partnership with third parties;
• scaling content review and moderation on the platform;
• reducing response times to user reports of critical issues.

In February OpenSea announced that more than 80% of NFTs created via the free-mint option were plagiarised, counterfeit or spam.