In the past few days, because Shen Teng compared himself to the "dog king" of the meta-universe world in the Spring Festival Gala sketch, the meta-universe has become the object of hot discussion and instantly ignited the audience's investment enthusiasm.
On the evening of January 31, Dogeking had a short-term super Yang line, up 1009.83% during the day, ranking in the top ten of the major exchanges' growth list, with a 24-hour trading volume of 2.45 million US dollars (about 15.58 million yuan).
On the other hand, there are thieves who are eyeing the NFT collection in the hands of large collectors.
On the evening of February 1, in just a few minutes, the tens of millions of NFT collections in the hands of large collectors were stolen by hackers, and "all my apes were lost."
It is reported that NFTs are non-homogeneous tokens, and the difference between bitcoin, ethereum, Dogeking and other virtual currencies is that each of the latter is the same, and everyone can exchange with each other. But NFTs can represent different assets, each NFT is unique, must be sold in its entirety, can not be torn to sell, which makes NFT more collectible.
As for "apes", they are very fashionable in the NFT market. It's not just a pixel image, an avatar on a social networking site, it also brings collectors an entire community, various status symbols, "a bit like wearing a high-end watch or rare sneakers," as one "boring ape" collector described.
Even so, most of the non-netizens still expressed their incomprehension after hearing the news - "people have a lot of stupid money, tens of millions of dollars to buy a map, and lost it."
Hackers stole sky-high avatars
According to China Securities News, on February 1, a large NFT collector larrylawliet.eth said on social media that a number of valuable NFT collections such as the Bored Ape Yacht Club, the Mutant Ape Yacht Club and the Doodles NFT were stolen by hackers, hoping that the well-known NFT online trading platform Opensea And LooksRare and others can help.
Figure: Network
Based on the real-time floor price of Boring Apes (118.68 Ethereum), Mutant Apes (25.2 Ethereum) and Doodles (16.28 Ethereum), the total value of the stolen NFTs is about 617 Ethereum (based on the real-time price of Ethereum 2750 US dollars, about 10.79 million yuan). However, considering that there are more rare models of these NFTs, such as the laser-eyed apes like BAYC #1606, the total value of these NFTs is actually much more than that number.
At present, the well-known NFT trading platform Opensea has given a risk warning for this security incident, and the address of larrylawliet.eth and related NFTs have been marked in red.
The collector said that the direct cause of the theft was the leakage of private information from his wallet.
In this regard, Yu Jianning, executive director of the Meta-Universe Industry Committee of the China Mobile Communications Federation, told reporters that in the world of blockchain, NFT assets are stored in on-chain wallets, which are safe without operational errors. However, if a user does not keep the private key of the wallet and leaks the private key or the corresponding mnemonic information to others, then the hacker who gets the private key can steal the NFT in his wallet. In addition, behind the NFT is the smart contract, if the smart contract has a vulnerability at the code level, hackers can also transfer assets by attacking the vulnerability.
One of the most popular projects in the field of NFTs
The full name for NFT is Non-Fungible Tokens, Chinese often translated as "non-homogeneous token/irreplaceable token".
Simply put, NFT is an entry for blockchain. Although mainstream crypto assets such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) are also recorded in the blockchain, NFTs differ from them in that any NFT token is irreplaceable and indivisible. NFTs have verifiable, unique, indivisible, and traceable properties that can be used to mark ownership of specific assets.
Specific to the Boring Ape Yacht Club, it is currently one of the hottest collectible communities in the NFT market.
What kind of club is this?
According to the surging news, 10,000 apes were born in the void. Their features are randomly generated by the program, with different combinations of bodies, heads, hats, and clothes. The process is like opening a blind box, and according to a New Yorker interview with the creative team of the NFT series Bored Ape Yacht Club, each image is hidden until the original collector pays for it.
The blockchain records the birth date of each "boring ape" and their original collectors. On the evening of April 22, 2021, 30 "boring ape" NFTs were first "cast". The next day, the ownership of the remaining 9970 digital apes was sold at a unit price of 0.08 ether (about 1449 yuan), and the various forms of "boring ape" images were unveiled one after another, according to media reports, on April 30, the series was officially launched, and it was sold out on May 1.
"Boring apes" have some features that are rare and therefore precious, such as laser eyes and rainbow skins. If collectors can have such rare "boring apes", the profit margins in the secondary market will be huge. For a small number of cryptocurrency "big guys", at the beginning of the NFT work, buying a large number of NFTs in bulk and selling them after the price rises is a common strategy.
In an interview with The New Yorker, the author, Gorner, explains the origin of the name "boring ape": "In the crypto industry, you buy a new token or NFT, at the risk of losing a large amount of money, known as 'stud' (Aping in, borrowed from the ape word Ape). ”
In November 2021, "Boring Ape" also appeared on the cover of the American music magazine Rolling Stone, becoming the first digital cover NFT.
As for the "mutant ape", after the success of the "boring ape", the creative team launched a derivative project. In August 2021, the sale of 10,000 "mutant apes" generated $96 million worth of ETH sales in one hour.
According to an article published by the US media on December 29, 2021, the "mutant ape" as a derivative of the "boring ape" imitates the success of the latter. A few months ago, American talk show host Jimmy Fallon and NBA star Steven Curry bought "Boring Ape", and Curry also used ape images as his social networking site avatars.
The controversy behind the benefit myth
However, the sudden popularity of the metaverseal NFT, coupled with the related financial productization, has to make the outside world suspect that it has the possibility of speculation.
Nadya Ivanova, chief operating officer of emerging markets research firm L'atelier BNP Paribas, once said in an interview that anyone on the internet can create NFTs with anything, meaning there are a lot of "really bad" tokens that require a trained eye to discern what is worth collecting or investing in.
In this regard, Shen Meng, director of Chanson Capital, also holds a similar view. "Both metaverses and NFTs are technological concepts that are in the process of evolution and improvement, but in reality many technicians lack the understanding of reality and economy." He told reporters.
But even though the NFT product is not yet mature, in order not to miss the outlet of the meta-universe, players still flock to this outlet. According to DappRadar, NFT sales reached US$2.5 billion in the first half of 2021, up from US$13.7 million in the first half of 2020.
In addition to the "out of the circle" of NFT products, in the meta-universe economy, there are also game software, advertisers and other participants. According to market forecasts, in the nearly $800 billion cosmic economy, the market for game manufacturers and game hardware may generate $412.9 billion in revenue by 2024, $138 billion more than in 2020, with live streaming and social media occupying the remaining market. By 2024, Metaverse's total market size could reach 2.7 times that of gaming software, services, and advertising revenue.
This has also led to a lot of virtual world products known as metaverses. However, as long as any company has a recession, investors will buy virtual products that will lose their money, and such lessons abound in the history of game prop trading.
In the final analysis, the maturity of the new concept and its industry still needs to be built brick by brick, and with the development of technology, the support of reality, the constraint of rules, the cohesion of consensus, and the progress of concepts, we can truly go far and steady.
Source: 21st Century Business Herald (author: Hu Huiyin), China Securities News, The Paper (reporter: Shu Yi'er, Wei Yao, Du Haiyan), public information, etc
Editor of this issue: Wang Tingting