Ask HN: What happens when bots flood NFT art markets?

5 pointsTenal5y ago2 comments

I was reading this post today (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26285655) and the comments discussing how most of the Internet has been overrun by automated bots which clone source content (eg: a news article from Reuters) and then: - Effortlessly tweak just enough of the verbs/nouns so as to avoid DMCAs (which take time/effort to dole out anyway) - Can pad the content with auto-generated keyword-driven crap that outperforms SEO more than the original source ever could - Can do this across thousands of sites at once, etc.

So now take NFT artworks, and marketplaces, etc. What's to stop bot networks start creating:

(1) Thousands of shady "shell" marketplaces that visually look, feel, and operate no differently from rarible.com, opensea.io, etc... (2) Taking perfect source copies of artworks and generating billions of sales to unsuspecting users, and logging it all to the blockchain...

Now you've got perfectly "valid" sales and contracts all flooding this giant decentralized blockchain, causing utter mayhem not only for buyers but also the sellers, whose life is now bound by an endless ritual of finding fake marketplaces, fake sellers, sending out DMCAs, and constantly updating their social presences to say "Hey everyone, sales are only legit if they're bought from <MarketplaceA>!"

I feel like this is just one of a million outcomes from simple thought experiments on this and I'm wondering why there is seemingly zero discussion on it or just how hairy this is 100% going to get.

Is there a consensus starting to form? Am I getting it all wrong?

2 comments

kleer0015y ago

I think you might be overestimating the number of people interested in these markets and their attention span. Additionally I think this comes down to a matter of trust, the same issue in spam and phishing. So, maybe a bit of a problem, but only fractionally.

michael_carter5y ago

No issue here, all comes down to provenance end of the day. Which is easily tracked via blockchain.

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Ask HN: What happens when bots flood NFT art markets?

5 pointsTenal5y ago2 comments

So now take NFT artworks, and marketplaces, etc. What's to stop bot networks start creating:

I feel like this is just one of a million outcomes from simple thought experiments on this and I'm wondering why there is seemingly zero discussion on it or just how hairy this is 100% going to get.

Is there a consensus starting to form? Am I getting it all wrong?