[HN Gopher] OpenSea administrators can take any tokens minted on...
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       OpenSea administrators can take any tokens minted on OpenSea Shared
       Storefront
        
       Author : fulldecent2
       Score  : 116 points
       Date   : 2022-11-07 16:18 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.phor.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.phor.net)
        
       | kuratkull wrote:
       | I have been keeping tabs on digital currency/NFT news just out of
       | sheer malicious curiosity. The "positive" news mostly seem to be
       | "company X is trying out NFTs!". The high profiles cases don't
       | seem to end up with a usable product or are outright cancelled Y
       | months later with the whole thing labeledd as an "experiment".
       | The negative news on the other-hand are pretty scarring - insane
       | amounts of theft, bankruptcies, price drops, dead-end ideas,
       | echo-chambers. I hope this keeps up.
        
         | CaptainZapp wrote:
         | In a way it's like watching a freight train, loaded with
         | nitroglycerin, running downhill with all breaks failing.
         | 
         | You know that you shouldn't watch, but you just can't help it.
         | 
         | The sad thing is that a lot of people will get burned by this.
        
           | ok_dad wrote:
           | The train blew up a while ago and we're now watching the
           | ruins smoldering until they eventually go out and we can go
           | in and clean up.
        
             | CaptainZapp wrote:
             | Damn! And I thought that I have a great metaphor going
             | here.
             | 
             | But yours is more on point, I dare say.
        
           | hypertele-Xii wrote:
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstoppable_(2010_film)
        
             | adynaton wrote:
             | Great movie. RIP Tony Scott.
        
         | onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
         | Sales volume dropped from >$150M per day in the beginning of
         | the year to ~$8M today (and the trend is still going down).
         | 
         | Keeping in mind this is an established market now (5+ years
         | old) - and that the vast majority of sales are known to be wash
         | trades - this is a small, extremely insignificant market.
         | 
         | Magic the Gathering, at this point, is substantially larger
         | than the non-wash trade NFT market.
        
           | mjr00 wrote:
           | My barometer for this stuff is the UFC, which is the perfect
           | platform to market to this crowd. They're already very loudly
           | sponsored by vechain and crypto.com, plus a ton of crypto
           | gambling sites that have come and gone.
           | 
           | Last year there was an NFT advertisement every 10 minutes
           | during UFC broadcasts, telling you to pick up the latest UFC
           | NFT packs. For the past 6 months I haven't heard the
           | announcers mention NFTs a single time.
           | 
           | If you can't even market this stuff to the UFC crowd, it's
           | completely dead.
        
       | glofish wrote:
       | I find it really weird that they had to decompile the smart
       | contract.
       | 
       | That surprised, me I thought the whole point of these smart
       | contracts were that everyone could see them like the transactions
       | that take place.
        
         | Karliss wrote:
         | Seeing the contract doesn't mean it's in easy to read format.
         | Any software of sufficient size becomes something which you
         | need to put in effort to analyze even if you have source code.
         | And that's ignoring possibility of obfuscation. The stuff that
         | uploaded to Etherium blockchain and executed is bytecode for
         | Etherium virtual machine. Which makes sense, because it's much
         | easier to precisely define semantics and ensure that multiple
         | different implementations behave exactly the same for a small
         | vm than it is for higher level programming languages.
         | 
         | Some websites like etherscan show the the source code with the
         | version of compiler which was used to compile it. I assume that
         | it works by author of contract uploading original source to the
         | website as gesture that there is nothing to hide. But not every
         | author does that. Assuming a reproducible build the website and
         | anyone else who wants can then verify that it's the original
         | (ore equivalent to original) source code by compiling it with
         | specified compiler version. If the compiled output matches with
         | what's on blockchain, it's then relatively safe to assume it's
         | the original source code and analyze that instead of
         | decompiling bytecode.There is still a chance that clever person
         | hid a backdoor by exploiting a bug or quirk of compiler, making
         | it harder to find unless you reverse engineer compiled bytecode
         | or aware of specific bug in that version of compiler.
        
         | drtz wrote:
         | This is the result of optimizing for storage constraints.
         | Storage is expensive on the ETH blockchain, so compiled
         | bytecode is sent to the blockchain instead of raw source.
        
       | drtz wrote:
       | There has been a move toward centralization in the NFT space with
       | Opensea and Magiceden marketplaces completely dominating the
       | space, largely to the detriment of projects and / or users. One
       | recent example: project royalties are now optional, so projects
       | relying on these royalties from sales have had the rug pulled out
       | from under them.
       | 
       | I expect we'll start to see some backlash where major new NFT
       | projects build more safeguards into their contracts to try and
       | reel back in some of the control the marketplaces have gained.
        
         | AlexandrB wrote:
         | The way NFT royalties were marketed was always highly
         | misleading IMHO. A lot of the news articles made it sound like
         | royalties were a property of NFTs themselves via some kind of
         | smart contract. But it is in fact a feature of some NFT
         | _exchanges_ and you always had the option of trading the NFT
         | via other means if you wanted to avoid the royalty payment. So
         | royalties were _always_ optional. The marketing just made it
         | sound like they were not[1].
         | 
         | Given this, it must be asked how NFTs are in any way different
         | from the traditional art markets for the artists themselves.
         | 
         | [1] https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/02/whats-going-on-with-nft-
         | ro...
        
       | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
       | I guess a back door does qualify as "Open".
        
         | MichaelCollins wrote:
         | With some legacy exceptions, anything called "Open[Something]"
         | is a farce.
        
       | zomglings wrote:
       | This is a bad title on the HN submission. I suspect the title is
       | intentionally designed to capture people's attention and mislead
       | them. The article title is much better: _Does OpenSea Shared
       | Storefront have a backdoor?_
       | 
       | The submission title does not specify _who_ can take anybody 's
       | tokens. Anyone who reads the article can see that the author
       | claims that Open Sea _administrators_ can seize anybody 's
       | tokens, and questions whether it is legal for them to retain this
       | ability. This is much more of a nuanced situation than "omg open
       | sea has a backdoor all your nfts are belong to us". The author
       | also says that they will write more about this in a follow-up
       | post.
       | 
       | I believe the author is correct. This is behaviour pertinent to
       | Open Sea's ERC1155 contract (called the Open Sea Shared
       | Storefront), and not their marketplace as a whole.
        
         | cmeacham98 wrote:
         | I'm not sure if it's intentional, but the title is written in
         | such as way that it is very easy to misparse as something like
         | "Backdoor in OpenSea allows anybody to take tokens..."
         | 
         | That actually is how I first read it. Not saying that doesn't
         | make this a bad thing, but the HN title should really be
         | reverted to the article title.
        
           | throwaw20221107 wrote:
           | This title rewrite is really bad. One interpretation of it is
           | basically slandering opensea. I suspect OP (the person who
           | decided to make up a title instead of using the article
           | title) is not a native English speaker, and there are two
           | ways to interpret their title and intentions:
           | 
           | 1. they meant it as a question " _does_ backdoor in opensea
           | allow to take anyone 's tokens?".
           | 
           | 2. they meant it as a statement "backdoor in opensea allows
           | _you_ to take anyone 's tokens"
           | 
           | Obviously #2 is a lot worse. Hopefully they just forgot the
           | question mark and weren't intentionally being malicious.
        
         | codetrotter wrote:
         | The original title is bad as well, because it is clickbaity.
         | 
         | Best title for submission would be: OpenSea administrators can
         | take any tokens minted on the OpenSea Shared Storefront
        
           | dang wrote:
           | Ok, done. (Submitted title was "Backdoor in OpenSea allows to
           | take anybody's tokens".) Thanks!
        
       | PestoDiRucola wrote:
        
         | nithayakumar wrote:
         | No but even if true, being stupid doesn't mean they should get
         | scammed
        
       | gerikson wrote:
       | Actual title: "Does OpenSea Shared Storefront have a backdoor?"
       | 
       | Please don't spread FUD.
        
         | Herbstluft wrote:
         | Please read things before you accuse.
         | 
         | To quote the beginning of the post:
         | 
         |  _This project demonstrates how OpenSea administrators can take
         | any tokens minted on the OpenSea Shared Storefront. This is a
         | previously-undocumented backdoor._
        
         | mirashii wrote:
         | I agree that the title is editorialized, but calling it FUD
         | seems a bit dismissive. From the intro to the article:
         | 
         | >This project demonstrates how OpenSea administrators can take
         | any tokens minted on the OpenSea Shared Storefront. This is a
         | previously-undocumented backdoor.
        
           | dwohnitmok wrote:
           | Fun violation of Betteridge's law.
        
         | sroussey wrote:
         | Well, immediately after they say yes, so it actually seems a
         | little (not much) less clickbait.
        
         | rank0 wrote:
         | Did you read the article?
        
       | chrisco255 wrote:
       | The Shared Storefront is OpenSea's proprietary NFT contract that
       | artists can use to create for free on. OpenSea will allow you to
       | create NFTs for free using their centralized servers as a
       | temporary backend and they only get minted on-chain if they sell.
       | It's understood that the Shared Storefront is controlled by
       | OpenSea. While it's a nice feature for beginner artists it is
       | also frequently abused by scams and copyright violators and
       | unoriginal dupes. High quality NFTs issue their own contracts and
       | open source the code.
       | 
       | I think they should open source the code for the contract and be
       | transparent about it, but it's not surprising they maintain
       | control over it.
        
         | nradov wrote:
        
           | K0balt wrote:
           | The only thing I've seen attempting to give legitimacy to
           | tokenization is the pruf protocol.
        
           | Kiro wrote:
           | Why is low-effort bait like this being upvoted? Do people
           | seriously want to have another off-topic flame war? It's like
           | people are compelled to upvote generic sarcasm. Extremely
           | disappointing.
        
             | jrm4 wrote:
             | I get that it's simple, but at this stage, it's hard for me
             | to suggest that it isn't true? It strikes me as presently
             | generally accurate.
        
             | davidcbc wrote:
             | Because it is accurate
        
               | Kiro wrote:
               | I agree but it's noise and has nothing to do with the
               | topic. Why do you want to encourage that instead of
               | actually discussing the article?
               | 
               | I was glad to see it flagged and dead after my comment,
               | but then someone even vouched for it. Like it's such an
               | important comment that it needs to be heard. Even the
               | premise is questionable (does quality presuppose it is
               | moral?) but it's obvious what the parent means and
               | commenting on it is just bait.
        
               | sdiacom wrote:
               | The article is about the low-quality implementation of
               | platforms selling NFTs. I don't see how discussing the
               | lack of quality of NFTs themselves, the "product" they
               | sell, falls too far off the tree.
        
               | Kiro wrote:
               | That's a really far-fetched and generous interpretation.
               | The comment is obviously just sarcastic NFT bashing,
               | picking up on the lowest denominator in the parent
               | comment and not talking about the platform or article at
               | all. Come on, we can do better. Instigating another
               | generic NFT flame war is pointless and off-topic.
        
           | throwaway98797 wrote:
        
             | luddit3 wrote:
             | Who hasn't been hurt if you invested in NFTs in the past
             | year.
        
               | throwaway98797 wrote:
               | adults made adult decisions
               | 
               | most lost money, some did not
               | 
               | i don't see anyone complaining about the millions of
               | people losing their paychecks to state lotteries
               | 
               | and i think that's cool, they are adults. decisions have
               | consequences.
               | 
               | so to op, grow up and take responsibility for your
               | actions.
        
               | AlexandrB wrote:
               | Does this also apply to some of the founders like Do Kwon
               | or do they get an exception because they're rich?
        
             | smegsicle wrote:
             | this is a grudge he still holds after overpaying for a pog
             | back in 1998
        
         | gilleain wrote:
         | What makes a 'high quality' NFT, in your opinion or experience?
        
           | smegsicle wrote:
           | i assume the implication is that successful/desirable nfts
           | also tend to have a well-thought-out implementation, the
           | union of which being hqnft
        
             | gilleain wrote:
             | perhaps, but isn't the desirability of something due to its
             | (high) quality? how can its quality be measured from its
             | desirability?
             | 
             | seems the wrong way around
        
               | chrisco255 wrote:
               | I am not talking about high quality art. That is fairly
               | subjective.
               | 
               | I am referring mainly to the smart contract itself. One
               | should be able to audit the contract to understand the
               | transfer mechanics. Most NFT contracts are forks of
               | popular open source implementations of ERC721 such as
               | OpenZeppelin's
               | (https://docs.openzeppelin.com/contracts/4.x/erc721). You
               | want to know things like max supply, mint mechanics,
               | transfer mechanics, etc. And you want to be able to
               | inspect the contract, such as this example: https://ether
               | scan.io/token/0x1CB1A5e65610AEFF2551A50f76a87a7...
        
               | gilleain wrote:
               | I did not mention art :)
               | 
               | Ok, sure so 'quality' here is literally just the
               | technical implementation of this pointer to a thing. Good
               | to know, thanks.
        
           | next_xibalba wrote:
           | I sense a trap...
        
           | chrisco255 wrote:
           | An open source contract that adheres to the ERC721 or ERC1155
           | standard. I'm indifferent to the metadata URI, but some
           | collectors prefer metadata to be fully on-chain or IPFS
           | based. There's trade-offs with each one, so it really
           | depends.
        
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