- Mintable claims it found Azuki #1178, #4176, and #1180 listed for sale on LooksRare.
- The marketplace says it bought the NFTs for $36,000 and plans to return them to their owners.
- Mintable’s CEO criticized OpenSea for failing to reimburse the victims despite having the means.
NFT platform Mintable has recovered three NFTs stolen from the users of rival marketplace OpenSea in the past week. The firm announced this news earlier today, noting that it discovered the NFTs on the LooksRare marketplace, which is purportedly infamous for wash trading and hosting stolen NFTs. Mintable claims it found the NFTs while acquiring digital collectibles for a flash sale.
In the announcement, Mintable specified that it was buying Azuki NFTs for its February 20 flash sale when it stumbled upon listings of Azuki #1178, #4176, and #1180. These NFTs, among others, were stolen on February 19 following a phishing attack that requested OpenSea users to authorize the migration of their digital collectibles to another OpenSea website promising to be gas-free.
Mintable said it purchased the three NFTs for approximately 13.35 Ether (ETH) each. Combined, these three NFTs are worth $36,000. The marketplace said it plans to reach out to the Azuki project to help identify and return the NFTs to their owners.
Commenting on this noble cause, Mintable’s CEO, Zach Burks, said,
This exploit was possible because of a bug on OpenSea, and If OpenSea isn’t going to make it right, someone has to. For some of these people, all their net worth is tied up in their NFTs and it’s horrible to have them stolen. We like the Azuki community and we want to help give back to the people who lost over $140,000 through the exploit.
A mission to create a secure space for NFT collectors
According to Mintable, the OpenSea hack, which saw users lose NFTs worth $1.75 million, highlights the security risks of web3. The marketplace emphasized the importance of users being well-informed about the potential threats in the rapidly evolving sector. Mintable added that although it recovered three NFTs, hundreds more remain lost.
While Mintable has achieved multiple milestones, including introducing gasless minting, batch minting, and supporting credit card purchases, the platform strives to be better. By returning the stolen NFTs, Mintable hopes to show its commitment to developing and maintaining a safe space where NFT enthusiasts can transact worry-free.
Bashing OpenSea for failing to look out for its users’ interests, Burks tweeted that he prowled Twitter and found none of the affected OpenSea users got a response from the marketplace. He added that it is depressing that OpenSea could not afford a reimburse the victims despite having over a billion dollars in cash on hand.
