- Magic Eden stated that an exploit resulted in the sale of 25 fraudulent NFTs across four collections in the last 24 hours.
- The NFT marketplace has promised to refund all users who were duped into purchasing fake NFTs on its website.
NFT marketplace Magic Eden has promised to refund all users who were duped into purchasing fake NFTs on its website as the result of an exploit.
As per Magic Eden, a bug in its newly deployed activity indexer for its Snappy Marketplace and Pro Trade tools allowed fake NFTs to bypass verification and appear alongside genuine NFT collections.
Decoding the Magic Eden exploit
The exploit resulted in the sale of 25 fraudulent NFTs across four collections in the last 24 hours, but it was unclear whether additional NFTs were affected. The high-priced and popular Solana [SOL]-based collections, ABC and y00ts, were two other affected projects.
The NFT platform confirmed that it temporarily resolved the problem, disabling both tools and eliminating the entry points that allowed unverified NFTs to pass through. It also advised users to perform a hard refresh to ensure that the unverified listings no longer appeared in their browser session and, as a precaution, to stop purchasing unverified NFTs.
The platform added:
“Magic Eden is safe for trading and we will refund all the users who mistakenly bought unverified NFTs specifically due to this issue.”
Twitter is the whistle-blower of fake NFT deals
Magic Eden first drew the public’s attention to the fraudulent NFTs in a tweet on 4 January. The tweet further cited community reports that people had purchased fake ABC NFTs. It assured investors by acknowledging that it had added verification layers in an attempt to resolve the issue.
Thank you to the community for alerting us there was an issue where people could buy fake ABC NFTs. We've added more verification layers per collection to resolve the issue. If you were affected by ABC or other collections, please chat https://t.co/CyteCOTQ2V so we can help you.
— Magic Eden ? (@MagicEden) January 4, 2023
Following the announcement, Twitter users continued to raise the alarm about the prevalence of fake y00ts NFTs on the platform. A screenshot from ABC creator HGE showed at least two sales of 100 Solana each, for about $2,600.
y00ts creator DeGods also tweeted to his followers about an exploit on Magic Eden that allowed unverified NFTs to be listed as part of the collection. The latest exploit is the second incident that Magic Eden users have had to deal with this week.
There is currently an exploit on Magic Eden allowing for unverified NFT’s to be listed as part of the collection
You can verify if an NFT is part of the collection on our explore page linked below
If it’s not in our explorer, it’s not our NFThttps://t.co/c4HKIJJD1n
— DeGods III (@DeGodsNFT) January 4, 2023
Magic Eden stated that the fake NFTs were caused by a third-party image hosting provider and assured users that their NFTs were safe.
