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This week’s featured collector: SpicyShrimpTaco

SpicyShrimpTaco’s motto is “Metaverse or bust.” They are an artist and NFT collector with a special fondness for CryptoKitties. Check out their full collection at lazy.com/spicyshrimptaco

Crypto is an ever evolving field. Want proof? Consider these two words you probably never thought you’d hear together—Bitcoin NFTs. That’s right: a clever developer has figured out how to store NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain. The move has sparked curiosity and controversy.

Bitcoin was the first blockchain. And in the decade since its creation there have been many fierce debates on if, and how, Bitcoin should change. For example, one of the most notorious fights was over the size of the blocks in the blockchain. Ultimately, the core developers of Bitcoin adopted a conservative path: minimally updating the protocol while focusing on Bitcoin as a technology for storing and transferring value.

That is why it has come as a surprise that a 2021 update to Bitcoin known as “Taproot” has unwittingly made it possible to add NFT functionality to the Bitcoin blockchain. Now a clever developer has discovered a way to make it happen.

Bitcoin NFTs are being called “inscriptions.” The protocol for these inscriptions is called Ordinals. For a fascinating technical deep dive into how these Bitcoin NFTs work, read Illegitimate bitcoin transactions.

The growing popularity of Bitcoin NFTs is already sparking debate. While some are excited to see Bitcoin learn new tricks, others see these NFTs as a mis-use of the technology.

Isn’t it interesting that NFTs are playing the role of catalyst once again? We are keen to see how this will play out.

This week’s poll: Should Bitcoin embrace NFTs?

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This week’s featured collector: ClipCity

ClipCity’s motto is “No idea what I’m doing and that’s the fun part.” And we appreciate the spirit! Their collection focuses on Ethereum profile pics and NBA TopShots. Includes many projects we’ve never seen before. Check it out at lazy.com/clipcity

Hackers strike again… Here’s how to protect yourself from the sophisticated scam that stole $1m worth of NFTs from Kevin Rose, the creator of Moonbirds

A couple days ago, Kevin Rose, the creator of Moonbirds, lost over $1,000,000 worth of NFTs. This is another dramatic reminder that even highly knowledgeable NFT creators and collectors can fall for sophisticated hacks.

This week we are going to discuss what happened and how you can protect yourself.

How was Kevin Rose hacked?

Technically, Kevin Rose was hacked because he signed a malicious signature request that transferred his NFTs to the hacker.

The way the hack works, in simple terms, is that the victim visits a scam website that appears legitimate. The website requests that they sign a transaction and explains that the signature is needed to login or claim an NFT. However, the signature actually gives the malicious site permission to transfer the victim’s NFTs using OpenSea’s Seaport protocol.

The signature request might look something like this:

As you can see, there is nothing obvious in the signature request that alerts the user to the fact that it’ll steal all your NFTs. This explains why people keep falling for this particular hack.

How can you protect your NFTs?

First, and most obviously, the best way to protect yourself from this hack is by only signing transactions that you trust. The trouble, however, is that hackers are now going to extreme lengths to craft websites that appear 100% legitimate. So it is important to be skeptical of any website that requests your signature.

The reason this hack has been so effective is that the signature request is not written in a human readable format. After all, it is hard to understand that signing a string of numbers can jeopardize your NFTs.

To address this, there are a few browser extensions that aim to make all signature requests human readable.

Two options are the browser extension from Revoke.Cash and Fire. We haven’t fully tested these, so please do your own research before installing.

Given the recent spate of high profile hacks, there is a lot of pressure building for a solution at the wallet level. It is likely that we will see MetaMask and other wallets introduce features to protect their users from NFT scams. Until then, stay safe!

This week’s poll: Have you ever lost NFTs in a hack?

 🎨 Lazy.com is seeking a UX/UI designer with an interest in NFTs. 🖌

Tens of thousands of collectors use Lazy.com to display their NFTs. Help us shape what they see. Apply now by sending a sample of your work.

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This week’s featured collector: Jeevan

Jeevan has a sizable collection of Ethereum NFTs. In fact, they have a little bit of everything—from ENS names to generative art to profile pics. Lots of interesting finds! Check it out at lazy.com/jeevan

What do you think about Conceptual NFTs?

This week jpg.space released a curated list of Conceptual NFTs. This is a genre of NFTs “in which the idea or concept takes precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, or material concerns.” In other words, while many NFTs are judged by how they look, Conceptual NFTs are judged by their ideas.

The curated list of Conceptual NFTs has generated some buzz in the ecosystem. Primarily because this is not a genre that many collectors are familiar with. In fact, 32 out of 75 NFTs on the list have 0 volume.

View the full list here.

So what do you think? Is this a tremendous opportunity to scoop up NFTs in a neglected genre? Or are Conceptual NFTs interesting but not worth collecting?

 🎨 Lazy.com is seeking a UX/UI designer with an interest in NFTs. 🖌

Tens of thousands of collectors use Lazy.com to display their NFTs. Help us shape what they see. Apply now by sending a sample of your work.

We ❤️ Feedback

We would love to hear from you as we continue to build out new features for Lazy! Love the site? Have an idea on how we can improve it? Drop us a line at info@lazy.com

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This week’s featured collection: dklounge

Dklounge is the web3 pen name of Dennie Kim, an Assistant Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia. (Don’t worry, we’re not doxxing Dklounge, they list their real name publicly.) Dklounge’s collection is very cool: it ranges from Top Shots to Invisible Friends and more. Check it out at lazy.com/dklounge

Financial engineering is coming for NFTs in 2023. It is an exciting development… but is it good for the industry?

Just two weeks into the new year and it is clear that one of the biggest developments for NFTs in 2023 will be the merging of DeFi with NFTs. This trend is being called NFT Finance.

Previously the main thing that could be done with a collectible art NFT was to buy and hold it.

Now, traders will be able to take out complicated perpetual futures and options to bet on the rise and fall of NFTs without ever owning one directly. For a taste of what is to come, take a look at nftperp.xyz and hook.xyz.

On the one hand, these developments are exciting: they are proof that the NFT ecosystem continues to grow, attracting new participants and fostering new ways of interacting with NFTs.

On the other hand, the financialization of NFTs could open the door to negative outcomes: pushing NFTs away from art and culture toward financial engineering and gambling.

Either way, we will be watching these developments closely. It is clear that some serious building is happening during this bear market!

What do you think about NFT Finance? Fill out this poll and let us know!

👉🏼 Lazy.com is seeking a web3 front-end developer with React experience. 👀

Tens of thousands of collectors use Lazy.com to display their NFTs. Help us shape what they see. Apply now by sending a sample of your work.

We ❤️ Feedback

We would love to hear from you as we continue to build out new features for Lazy! Love the site? Have an idea on how we can improve it? Drop us a line at info@lazy.com

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This week’s featured collection: MiguelFaus

MiguelFaus is a writer and director from Barcelona, now living in London. ​ His first feature film, Calladita, was the first European movie funded by NFTs. MiguelFaus’s collection includes several famous NFTs, such as CryptoPunks, HashMasks and Ringers. Check it out at lazy.com/miguelfaus

Hello 2023! This week we are kicking off the New Year by deepening our understanding of how NFTs work. You may be comfortable navigating an NFT marketplace, but today we’re going to look behind the scenes at smart contracts on the blockchain.

Let’s start with a basic recap. In very simple terms, there are three kinds of cryptocurrencies: 1) native tokens that power a blockchain 2) fungible tokens or 3) non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Native tokens, like Ethereum, are the fuel for the blockchain: you spend the native token to pay for transactions, such as transferring an NFT.

Fungible and non-fungible tokens are managed by smart contracts that run on the blockchain. What distinguishes NFTs from fungible tokens is that each NFT is one-of-a-kind. Think of it this way: each NFT has a unique serial number. And if you know the serial number of an NFT then you can also prove who owns it.

With that background out of the way, we can now look more closely at a specific NFT’s smart contract.

We’ll look at an NFT that we don’t own: Azuki.

First, we head to OpenSea and find Azuki’s smart contract address by clicking the Etherscan icon on the collection page.

Etherscan is a blockchain explorer. It tells us everything that is happening on the blockchain in an easy to read format. Each NFT has a smart contract that keeps track of ownership and other information.

Azuki’s smart contract address is 0xed5af388653567af2f388e6224dc7c4b3241c544 and if we open that address in Etherscan then we see this page:

Spend some time exploring this page. For now, we’re going to click on the Contract heading. This will load the NFT’s smart contract. If we are doing due diligence on a project then we could look at the smart contract to see if it was sophisticated or a simple copy/paste.

If you’re not a programmer then looking at the smart contract isn’t particularly helpful. Instead, try clicking on the “Read Contract” button. This allows you to query the NFT’s smart contract for information. You can scroll down to “ownerOf” and put in the serial number (or “tokenId”) of an Azuki NFT.

For example, if you put in the tokenId 1 then it will tell you who owns that NFT:

Keep playing around with the Read Contract screen and you’ll notice that all kinds of information is stored in the smart contract. For example, if you go to tokenURI and input 1 then the smart contract will give you a link to where the NFT’s image and attributes are stored.

In this case, the NFT’s information is stored on IPFS, a distributed file storage system.

Now you can understand how an NFT marketplace knows the attributes of your favorite NFT: the smart contract tells the marketplace where the information is stored!

Congratulations, you just interacted with an NFT smart contract running on the blockchain! Keep exploring and let us know what you learn!

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Tens of thousands of collectors use Lazy.com to display their NFTs. Help us shape what they see. Apply now by sending a sample of your work.

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This week’s featured collection: Illestrater

There is something deeply satisfying about browsing an extremely large collection of NFTs. That is why this week’s featured collector is Illestrater, whose Ethereum NFT collection is extensive and includes many big name projects along with new ones worth discovering. Have fun looking through their collection at lazy.com/illestrater

Learning to “Delegate” could be the most important new skill for NFT collectors in 2023. Here’s how delegation can keep your NFTs safe.

A few of weeks ago, an extremely sophisticated scammer stole over a million dollars worth of NFTs from a Bored Apes collector. Although hacks are common, this particular scam attracted a lot of attention due to its complexity.

In brief, the scammer contacted the victim and claimed they wanted to license their Bored Ape for an upcoming film. When the collector went to sign the paperwork, they were asked to login to a web3 site. The site requested their signature and their Apes were instantly stolen.

Many people assume that signing a transaction is harmless, after all it is how we sometimes login to web3 sites. However, these scammers exploited a feature of OpenSea’s marketplace that allows the creation of private auctions using signatures. In other words, if you sign the wrong transaction it can be used to steal your NFTs. Scary!

For a full analysis of the scam, check out this thread.

One of the best ways to protect against getting scammed is to delegate your NFTs.

There are a few different delegation systems. The most well known is delegate.cash. Others, such as the one announced by Punk6529, will be released soon.

The way they work is simple:

1. You, the collector, store your NFTs in a cold wallet

2. You use a delegation system to link your cold wallet to a hot wallet

3. When a site wants to check if you own a specific NFT, it queries your hot wallet address instead of your cold wallet.

In other words, websites and smart contracts interact with your hot wallet (which does not contain any NFTs) instead of your cold wallet. And because your hot wallet is empty, nothing can be stolen.

It is an elegant solution. However, it does require NFT projects to upgrade their smart contracts and/or websites to support delegation. The best way to encourage that process is for collectors to make delegation a core part of their strategy for staying safe in 2023.

Thanks for reading! We wish you a wonderful end to 2022!

👉🏼 Lazy.com is seeking a web3 front-end developer with React experience. 👀

Tens of thousands of collectors use Lazy.com to display their NFTs. Help us shape what they see. Apply now by sending a sample of your work.

We ❤️ Feedback

We would love to hear from you as we continue to build out new features for Lazy! Love the site? Have an idea on how we can improve it? Drop us a line at info@lazy.com