New NFT Fraud Project—Geometric birds

[TL; DR]

OpenSea, one of the biggest marketplaces for the burgeoning NFT art world, experiences the most difficult NFT Fraud
The originator of the Geometric birds' project, John Wilson Clinton Studio, presented deceptive information on Twitter, tricking NFT investors for trust on OpenSea, and today, is being delisted from OpenSea due to a fraud account
Through wash trading, and deliberately providing fake information to the marketplace for profit, the perpetrators manipulated the algorithm to rank on OpenSea's billboard.
NFT investors lose huge sums of assets due to the current bear market
People hope that OpenSea will take more quick actions to save investors from falling victims to NFT fraud.

Keywords: Geometric birds, OpenSea, NFT fraud, NFT, cryptocurrency, John Wilson.


Introduction

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The tremendous increase of the NFT (non-fungible token) market has opened the door for rampant fraud and piracy.

Scammers and cyber thieves are taking advantage of the many shortfalls that present themselves in the NFT art world, frequently selling fake digital copies of artworks or without the original artist's consent.

Moreover, following the Luna thunderstorm, which happened earlier this year, around May, the entire crypto market is yet to recover, and the NFT market was also affected by tremendous loss. Statistics from Dune Analytics on August 1 showed that OpenSea's July transaction volume was barely $528 million, down 89.12 percent from the all-time high of $4.857 billion in January 2022, a one-year low.

Also, as a result of the NFT market recession and the ongoing drop in transaction volume, which allows crooks to "play the list" by faking volume and fast entering the ranks, OpenSea and other NFT trading platforms have turned into a haven for new NFT fraud projects.
The Geometric birds is one of the newest and most trending fraud projects on the NFT-verse.


"Geometric birds" on OpenSea

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Between August 1 and the following day, you could spot a project called Geometric birds (now delisted by OpenSea) at the top of the 24-hour trading volume charts on OpenSea's official homepage.

According to sources, the NFT Geometric birds official push was set up by a studio of John Wilson Clinton, a popular contemporary Hungarian geometric three-dimensional abstract painter. Using geometric components, he designed a number of distinctive works of art, one of which, "Hungarian Princess," was sold for 4 million euros at Christie's fall sale.


On OpenSea, the NFT disk project was with a total of 1.5k NFTs and 576 holders, with each person holding 2.6 NFTs. In a 24-hour period, there was recorded a total transaction volume of 323Eth, with the floor price peaking at 1.3Eth before settling at or near 1Eth. In just one day of being available online, the floor price can be kept at a high price of 1Eth.

After browsing through the project's official website and on OpenSea, you are left with a delusion: that it was created by a famous Hungarian artist, who has a personal art exhibition in a national art gallery; its NFT market price is outstanding, the total amount of 1.5k proves its scarcity, and at the same time, the floor price of 1Eth represents the market's recognition of its value.

However, the actors beyond the project made it appear promising to NFT investors, who get excited since the project seems bullish and has not yet been discovered by the major Alpha groups. Unfortunately, finding out that the masterminds behind the whole thing only planned the biggest exploitative fraud ever.


Geometric Bird creators Defrauded through Wash Trading

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The aim of wash trading is to make an NFT appear more valuable than it is. Actually, the creator of the Geometric Birds tricked investors by swiping trading volume to get on the OpenSea trading list.

The technique involved selling the same NFT at a higher cost many times in two or more wallets until the floor price and transaction volume of the entire NFT project were reached, with the aim to create an illusion of "fake prosperity." As in Geometric birds, multiple wallet accounts that participate in wash trading frequently belong to the same entity due to the anonymity of Ethereum addresses.

These addresses are inextricably linked by tracing the origin of the wallet address of the Geometric Birds smart contract. The parent address of the transfer serves as an intermediate node. During this period, transactions from multiple wallets have been collected, and transfers have also been distributed to other addresses.


The back-and-forth transactions for the Geometric Birds NFT between the addresses as mentioned earlier are what caused the transaction volume of this NFT series to approach about 300Eth in less than 24 hours, with the highest transaction unit price being 28Eth.

According to the total transaction volume of Geometric birds on OpenSea of about 320Eth and 2.5 percent of the transaction procedures, the cost of this scam is randomly 8Eth (Gas Fee excluded), that is, so far, eight victims buy it on the floor price of 1Eth, their NFTs will pay for itself.

The "Geometric Birds" paid 8Eth for the handling charges in order to be displayed on the billboard of OpenSea, the major NFT trading market.


The Aftermath Of The Geometric Bird NFT Fraud

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After thoroughly scrutinizing the Geometric bird project homepage, it was eventually discovered that the project is a fake NFT based on Moonbirds as a prototype for secondary creation. Most persons who rushed to purchase this project got duped;

Someone complained on Twitter that they could not sell after purchasing geometric birds.


- Some other victimized investors tweeted a complaint that the NFT for which they had made an order had been transferred.

- Therefore, it now becomes an obvious reason that the floor price was kept at 1Eth since all NFTs with pending orders below 1Eth have been transferred.

- The Geometric Birds page on OpenSea currently displays a 404 error.

- Finally, about 24 hours later, OpenSea withdrew Geometric birds NFT from the platform, and its official push revealed no new information.


It is yet unclear how many victims have been duped by the perpetrator, at the moment, the Geometric birds' fraud project by John Wilson Clinton has been delisted on OpenSea.
But most importantly, people hope that OpenSea can take more quick actions to ban fake NFTs sooner than later to secure more investors from digital frauds.


Conclusion

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Even while it is simple to criticize trading platforms like OpenSea, for being overly vulnerable, this does not excuse the need to educate investors about security measures, especially those who have been impacted by this incident.
The recent fraud happenings in cryptocurrency are alarming; however, users or other NFT owners need to be careful when interacting with third-party platforms and to verify everything supplied by others, even if they seem reliable.







Author: Gate.io Observer: M. Olatunji
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