Recently, one of the largest non-fungible-token marketplace OpenSea had a backlash from the NFT community, regarding their new policy.
On January 27, OpenSea Support posted an unexpected tweet announcing that they had addressed the feedback received about the creator tools, and lowered the limits of NFT collections. Additionally, they asked the community to not "hesitate to share how this affects your creative flow”.
The NFT marketplace had made a controversial decision that allowed collection creators to mint using its smart contract, also limiting the number of NFTs.
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To be exact, OpenSea allowed unlimited collections and items in the past, but recently changed the policy to only grant 50 items per collection when using the storefront contract (an online marketplace that connects commercial spaces and commercial projects), and five NFT collections in total.
The NFT creators do have an opinion about this situation. They are unhappy that the collections that were still in progress would now never be finished, as a result of the change. Others pointed out that they were in fact halfway through developing collections that number even in the thousands. Also saying that:
Why are you destroying my collection with your limit?
The OpenSea smart contract deployment costs approximately from $1,000 to $2,000 in gas fees. Gas fees refer to the fee that ensures the transaction on Ethereum is conducted successfully. In regards to that, a few creators noted they will be moving their collections to other marketplaces.
However, after dealing with all of the criticisms OpenSea soon reversed its decision. They made a tweet apologizing for not consulting with their community before making such a big decision. They said, “we hear you”.
The reason behind the limits was that over 80% of the items created were plagiarized, spam, or fake collections, and the smart contract wasn’t being used. Now, they are working their way through a number of solutions to ensure full support for their creators.
The bug was widespread with Bored Ape Yacht Club, and Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT collectibles. Furthermore, the main issue was that the alleged fraudster bought the most popular collectibles at their old listing price and sold them for the current market price.
It all took place after OpenSea users received an email asking to cancel their old listing because of the recently found exploit.
Furthermore “dingdalingts” a crypto influencer, warned his followers in a thread:
He notes that attackers can pay higher gas fees to make sure their order is executed before cancellation in a practice known as “front-running”, hence purchasing the NFT for a cheaper price.
OpenSea commented saying they have things under control by building a dashboard so the users could see their listings, and notifying them when an NTF is transferred from their wallet containing associated active listing. They also changed the listing duration to one month from six months.
Overall, the OpenSea users were satisfied with the way the issue was handled, knowing that they can easily view and be notified of their listing associated with their NFTs.
