Gargamel, one of the lead devs of the Bored Ape Yacht Club posted a great guide to secure trading today:
There are multiple fake collections popping up on OpenSea every day (more like every hour at this point). They’ll use our logos and a similar name, and sometimes will even cleverly add a blue check mark as their collection image. Make sure you’re buying from the right collection by:
– Following the link to the correct OpenSea collection on our site: https://boredapeyachtclub.com/#/home
-or, on OpenSea.io click through to Stats > Rankings> and then click the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection from there
-and/or, checking the contract address in the “details” area of a given ape’s profile against the actual BAYC smart contract address. The correct address is: 0xBC4CA0EdA7647A8aB7C2061c2E118A18a936f13D
Another common scam is people making offers on apes in USD, but tricking people into thinking it’s WETH by changing their username image into the WETH logo and naming their account WETH or VVETH. We’ve seen multiple people sell apes for 1.8 dollars when they thought they were selling for 1.8 ETH.
Finally, people get scammed out of their apes by trading insecurely. It is very easy to impersonate someone on Discord, so people think they are setting up a trade with a trusted person when it’s a scammer. The solution here is never to trade in an insecure way. Use SudoSwap.xyz or https://nfttrader.io/ to trade.
We love these three simple rules for avoiding scams, distilled to work for all projects:
- Following the link to the collection from the project’s site to OpenSea.
- Finding the project via OpenSea’s Ranking page.
- Always confirming the address of the NFT’s Smart Contract.
Gargamel also offers great advice for tools to use for trading NFTs securely. We haven’t tried these out ourselves yet, but we will do so at some point in the future:
Always be extra careful when buying NFTs, as you can easily get caught in a scam if you are careless or inattentive. Also, be even more vigilant when someone asks for you to make a trade. Don’t forget that often times, the fee you pay to the exchange and the creators is there in part because you can trust that you are getting an authentic piece with a lot less verification.
Be safe out there!