#42 Grand Theft Dona
#42 Grand Theft Dona
An NFT sale, of 2007 Kia Sedonas, turns sour.
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Intellectual Property Rights
NFTs have become a popular tool for speculation in crypto. This is because there are many NFT collections that have traded hundreds if not thousands of ETH in volume for a single, yes that’s correct, jpeg. An NFT is simply an image file stored on the blockchain. Yet, uploading an imagine to the blockchain is different than posting a picture on Facebook.
When you upload an image to say - Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, the data is moving from your computer, across the internet and then saved (often times many duplicates are saved) on the computers at whichever company you uploaded the data to. As many have seen, when you upload data to one of these companies they own it. They have copies of it and in some cases, like Instagram, you must agree to give up ownership of the image when you upload it. This means Facebook or Instagram can reuse your image in many ways.
When you upload an image to say, OpenSea, the proof of your image upload and sometimes the image itself (if metadata is saved) is wrapped in a smart contract and embedded in the ledger of the blockchain. In the case of Ethereum the blockchain is immutable, meaning it can never be altered. This means as long as the Ethereum network is running you will have sole proof that you are the first person to register your image on the Ethereum network. This is essentially a technological innovation for intellectual property rights. While, many have only used NFTs to generate strange projects like, Crypto Punks and Bored Apes, it is a proving ground for what could become a revolutionary technology in public ledgers. Maybe, there needs to be a better acronym, because who the hell can understand what Non-Fungible Token means outside of Crypto. TRIPR, Token Representing Intellectual Property Rights.
The 2007 Kia Sedona
If bored apes, crypto punks, and ether rocks don’t represent the height of irrational exuberance in the NFT marketplace then the recent auction of 2007 Kia Sedona must. What I mean is, NFTs will surely exist in the future and a few of these iconic collections will hold value, but NFTs are much more interesting for the future of intellectual property rights than spending 1000 ETH ($3mm USD) on a poorly drawn picture of a cartoon rock. A photoshopped image of 2007 Kia Sedona is probably also not the breakthrough use case NFTs are waiting for.
What am I even talking about? Check out Jay Pegs Automart. Hilarious right, Jay - Pegs, jpegs… They even did a great job with the marketing, making it feel scummy and scammy just like the used car buying experience we all know. What they have done so far is create a token $DONA that was put up for auction using Sushiswap’s new Miso platform. On MISO, developers can release tokens for their news projects through several types of auctions. This allows the initial offerings of these tokens to go to a wider initial community and hopes to create a fairer distribution than a private sale.
Back to the Kia Sedonas, if you possess 1 $DONA there is a promise from Jay Pegs Automart that you’ll be able to redeem a 2007 Kia Sedona NFT. These NFTs are not yet available but we guess they will look similar to the images posted on Jay Pegs’ website. That’s it that’s all we know about Jay Peg’s Automart.
The Bait and Switch
Just moments after the MISO auction closed and 858 ETH was raised by selling $DONA tokens, a hacker stole all of the ETH. The hacker had realized there was an exploit in the smart contracts that defined the MISO auction and when an auction completes there was a chance for the funds to be extracted from the smart contract. There’s no real resolution here other than the MISO contracts have now been fixed to prevent further exploits. This just get weirder.
The hacker claimed to know the Sushiswap development team and to have helped them on the contracts. The hacker even asked for an apology from Joseph Delong (a leading member of Sushiswap’s team) on Twitter for posting rude tweets about the hacker.
Moments after the Sushiswap team learned the identity of the hacker (including his home address) they mailed him a bowl of Miso soup.
The hacker returned all of the funds. Presumably having his heart warmed by the soup. Here is the official statement from Jay Pegs Automart:
That’s all we really know. The 2007 Kia Sedonas are set to release soon and can be purchased for $1 DONA each at Jay Pegs Automart.
NFTs have been going wild and it’s a lot to keep up with. If you’d like to follow along more closely with the NFT ecosystem we recommend you check out Morning Drop, “Your weekly dose of what’s minting, popping, and brewing”.
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