Counterfeit NFTs! (And how to spot fakes)

“Chaos creates Opportunity” – Mark Cuban.  The NFT art market has entered an unprecedented and exciting phase. This fast moving and growing period is creating many opportunities for artists to take control of the narrative and go direct to the market with high-quality and amazing art.  Additionally, artists are finding new ways to allow collectors access to amazing pieces that represent their values, passions, and hobbies.  Unfortunately, with this high growth, the industry is still playing catch up and those collectors need to keep a keen eye when making massive investments into highly-collectable art. With that, we noticed some…. issues.

NFT Culture staff regularly frequents the NFT markets, and while browsing, we noticed an irregularity…

See the price, 1 ETH?!

I looked into the seller “nifty_gateway_omnibus” and confirmed the account is counterfeiting works right away:

Note the problem: 2 active listings for Lambo Jesus! If you aren’t familiar with the pretty sweet work by lushsux,  Lambo Jesus is a 1 of 1. A quick check of Nifty Gateway confirms the forgery.

The Authentic NFT:

Contract Address: 0x85dbceb0829f8403166a011f4eab2dea7688cf41
Token ID: 23700010001
(Source: Lambo Jesus on NiftyGateway)

The Counterfeit or Fake NFT :

Contract Address: 0x495f…b7b5e
Token ID: 1043466286743860…<
(Source: Fake Lambo on Opensea)

The other obvious give away is that the 1 of 1 still exists inside of Nifty Gateway, meaning it hasn’t been transferred out to a private wallet. So, it can’t possibly exist on another marketplace.

If you are a Nifty Gateway regular, you might be aware of the Nifty Gateway “Omnibus” account. This is a master holding account used for the purpose of transferring NFTs back to Nifty Gateway. The real “Omnibus” account is spelled with hypens and not underscores: “nifty-gateway-omnibus” (See: The Real Omnibus, note the checkmark).  We don’t love that obvious deceptive accounts are allowed to exist on OpenSea.

So, the NFT counterfeit takeaways:

1. Be sure to know the accurate contract address of the piece you are buying.
2. If you are buying a bespoke edition of something, make sure it actually exists on the marketplace you are using before making the purchase.
3. Top tier marketplaces do have some checks and balances in place that make it safer when purchasing art.

Most of the time, you don’t need to worry, but when buying expensive and highly-collectable pieces, it’s worth taking the time to do a little extra due diligence.

If you ever have a doubt, feel free to tweet @NftCulture and we can give you a hand with validation.

Safe Buying!

-Rob