A suite of fake Reddit NFTs that aimed to exploit the buzz resulting from the social platform’s move into Web3, has been delisted by OpenSea.  

Reddit’s official NFT Collectible Avatars incredibly rose to fame this month. The per day transaction volume set a new record of over $2 million on Sunday.

NFTs of Reddit offer certain benefits; however, its major draw lets users acquire their profile pictures or display avatars as well as trade them through marketplaces like OpenSea.

Unluckily, the platform has allowed at least one fake NFT collection to merge with the legitimate tokens that could be viewed through the official OpenSea collectibles page of Reddit for a minimum 24 hours. 

On October 25, the scammer took advantage of RPlanet’s Genesis airdrop and flooded Reddit’s Opensea page with ERC-721 tokens that were both minted and airdropped by the scammer themselves.

These tokens showed up under the collected tab of Reddit where it was for them to be mistaken for the originals. 

On OpenSea, the “collected” tab displays the NFTs that are bought or received by a certain wallet, while the “created” tab displays NFTs made or minted by a particular account.

Blockchain analytics company Halborn shared about identifying the main address of the scammer which hardly had $4,500 in several assets. However, the firm couldn’t  link the address.

OpenSea users can browse Reddit NFTs through a separate “Explore Reddit Collectible Avatars” portal or the verified and official “RedditCollectibleAvatars” page.

However, in the collected tab, there was nothing but only copies of the originals. The assets were delisted by OpenSea.

It was later confirmed that blue check marks were missing next to the names of NFTs that were listed on the “RedditCollectibleAvatars” collected tab.  

An OpenSea spokesperson previously said that their policies prohibit plagiarism, theft and fraud and are regularly enforced via delisting of items and even via banning accounts in certain cases. 

A source confirmed that one scammer slipped past the copymint system of OpenSea.

According to OpenSea’s policy page, the marketplace treats an NFT as a copymint it was made with the aim of deceiving users by making them believe it to be original.

The scammer sent similar looking NFTs to the “RedditCollectibleAvatars” from where they went into the collected tab and not in the created tab.

OpenSea utilizes its copymint system’s conjunction besides the actual monitoring by employees.

It seems like OpenSea depends on community outreach to alert them about doubtful activities. Reportedly, the counterfeit Reddit NFTs were available for at least 24 hours before appropriate action was taken by the marketplace.