Hello, copymints

In a newsletter-y email from OpenSea this morning, there's a section titled Copymints¹ that reads what follows in italics.

Copymints are a problem that can sometimes make it difficult for our community to find authentic content with confidence. We’re committed to threading the needle between removing these copymints and giving space for substantively additive remixes to prosper in the following ways:

• Image Recognition Technology – Our new copymint prevention system leverages computer-vision tech to scan all NFTs² on OpenSea (including new mints) — looking for flips, rotations & other permutations. We'll continue expanding and training our models to improve detection.

• Dedicated Human Review – Making this image recognition technology work requires dedicated “humans in the loop” who can review removal recommendations and train our models continuously.

It feels like a rat race. The better the copymint image recognition technology gets the better the generation of fake copies will get. Verification is likely to help and filter out scams, yet that makes "the open sea" less and less open. On the other end, we've heard how miserable moderating content manually is.

The numbers shared on OpenSea's email are brutal. The largest trading volume day in OpenSea history was May 1, 2022, with $476,139,461, and there were 3.1 million transactions on OpenSea over the last 30 days. Some have to be making lots of money and many are probably losing a lot.

Please, please, don't take any content on my blog, podcast, or YouTube channel as financial advice. I don't endorse these platforms nor do I encourage you to invest your money in cryptocurrencies or NFTs. These are highly volatile markers prone to making you lose your money.

Here's an OpenSea post on verification and copymint-prevention updates.