Though the concepts behind the blockchain can be tracked back several decades widespread use of blockchain-based applications has only taken off in the last few years.
The speed of adoption of new use cases, such as NFTs, has left regulators playing catch-up, exposing buyers to significant hazards, the most significant being plagiarism.
Though a non-fungible token represents an immutable blockchain record of ownership of a digital asset, the blockchain doesn’t prove that whoever generated that NFT had the legal right to do so.
Many artists and photographers are seeing their work copied and minted as NFTs as scammers attempt to cash-in. Given that this kind of crime simply requires a right-click copy/paste, it is very difficult to police but buyers should make every effort to ensure that the seller owns the copyright to an NFT.
As the number of blockchains that support NFT standards increases there is also a growing risk that NFTs are being minted across multiple chains. Blockchains exist as isolated domains unable to reference data on other chains, so there is no easy way to ensure that NFTs aren’t being created in multiple places in parallel.
Leave a Reply