What is “NFT authentication” and why is it necessary in 2022.
A brief introduction explaining what is NFT authentication, the issues it solves, and how it works.
With some NFTs trading for millions of dollars, it is not a scoop to tell you that traders have found in NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) a new way to make enormous gains in a limited amount of time. Unfortunately, where there is a lot of money to make, you can expect to find people who decided to take dark paths by thinking of ways to scam others. In the case of NFTs, frauds appear in diverse ways with the purpose to either steal valuable NFTs or to sell fakes/copies.
At the beginning of the year, Opensea revealed a shocking news that 80% of NFTs minted using their free mint tolls are either plagiarized or spam, putting NFT traders at risk. This alone justifies why we need NFT authentication to verify the real identity of the creators as well as to authentify the original NFTs of the creators.
While some elements such as metadata might give you information to help identify the owner or the original creator of the NFT, it does not allow you to clearly tell who is the real person who created the NFT. Moreover, Opensea does not offer any kind of NFT authentication process meaning that it is almost impossible to be assured that the person who “created” the NFT is the original creator or not.
What is NFT authentication?
The NFT authentication has two main purposes: The first one being about clearly identifying the original content creator, and the second one being about verifying the authenticity of the NFT linked to its original creator.
Creator Verification:
NFT authentication is the process of verifying the real identity of the creator as well as verifying the originality of the NFTs minted its creator. As simple as that. In reality, it is more difficult than it seems to find whether the NFT is the original one or if the creator is the real one.
We, at VIW, created an advanced authentication system to verify the identity of the enterprise, the brand, or the artist who create and publish NFTs. To get verified, the enterprise, brand, or artist must submit to us a list of information such as their names, birth date, email address, wallet address, etc. By providing us with such information, we can verify and certify the real identity of the creator behind an NFT. More information about that topic can be found in our next articles dedicated to the verification process.
Take the example of a bank card, if the bank card you are holding does not have any names or numbers written on it, you cannot know who is the real owner of the bank card and can easily be traded. However, if the card has a name and number written on it, then it is possible to authenticate the owner and the authenticity of the card. This is what NFT authentication is about.
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Image Verification:
It is a lot easier to authenticate the creator or owner of an NFT compared with authenticating the uniqueness of an NFT. As an example, it is easy to identify modified NFTs by comparing them with the original ones. However, this task is increasingly difficult if you do not have or know the original NFT. The difficulty lies on linking the NFT to its original authenticated creator, this is what we, at VIW are solving. For more details about how we solve the above-mentioned issues and about the technology behind it, please navigate through our website and whitepaper.
About VIW
VIW project distributes smart contracts connected to IPFS through simple UI/UX. Individuals have full ownership by creating and distributing NFTs through smart contracts connected to IPFS. Try and own your smart contract and NFT through VIW.
