OpenSea Bug Destroys $130,000 Worth of NFTs

On September 8, a bug was found on the NFT marketplace OpenSea that destroyed at least 42 NFTs worth around US$100,000, as reported by Nick Johnson, lead developer of Ethereum Name Server (ENS).

42 Users Affected – 28.44 ETH Lost

Johnson discovered the bug when he tried to transfer an ENS name (which comes in the form of NFTs), titled rilxxlir.eth, to one of his personal accounts but instead it was randomly sent to an unused burn address.

The NFT ended up in an address no one uses and thus was lost forever. Despite the fact that the bug was reported and patched up by OpenSea, Johnson started receiving reports regarding at least 32 other transactions from 21 users who were similarly affected, with losses totalling 28.44 ETH, or US$100,000 at the time. OpenSea stated that Johnson was the only affected user of the bug.

The bug has since been patched, and while Johnson said that the rilxxlir.eth NFT didn’t have monetary value, it did have historical value as the first ENS name ever registered.

NFTs Skyrocketing in OpenSea

NFTs are exploding in popularity more than ever, especially at OpenSea, which has become the leading platform for content creators to expose and auction their artworks and digital collectibles. On March 19, the protocol raised US$23 million in a Series A funding round as an attempt to expand its operation.

However, there are some risks as the popularity of DeFi and NFTs increases. As Crypto News Australia reported last month, several OpenSea users were victims of phishing attacks from scammers posing as support staff on the Discord server.