A non-fungible token holder (NFT) @dino_dealer accidentally sold his Clipart EtherRock NFT for a fraction of its value.
The user listed the NFT for 444 Wei instead of 444 ETH. One Wei is equal to one quintillionth (~1/1000000000000000000) of an ETH.
An NFT is an immutable digital “title deed” that records ownership of physical or digital items on the blockchain, most commonly Ethereum. Other blockchains popular with NFTs are Solana and Cardano. – we know this already. this distracts the reader who sees the title and knows its a more “advanced” piece. Remove this paragraph.
Not long after the accidental sale for a fraction of its value, the NFT was advertised again for 234 ETH ($601K), making the original seller rue his mistake across Twitter:
“How’s your week? Mine? I just erroneously listed @etherrock #44 for 444 wei instead of 444 eth. Bot sniped it in the same block and tried to flip for 234 eth In one click my entire net worth of ~$1 million dollars, was gone. Is there any hope? Am I GMI? Can snipers show mercy?” the tweet read.
Responses on Twitter ranged from sympathetic to mocking, with one user tweeting, “the silver lining is that your entire net worth is no longer in a rock jpeg?” while another tweeted, “[w]hat a pity that people lose their bank on inattention. Hang on in there, brother! Hope everything will be ok! @dino_dealer.”
Bot sniping growing on NFT marketplaces
But what happened that resulted in such a costly mistake?
It seems like the unfortunate user @dino_dealer was a victim of bot sniping. Bot sniping is when a bot (automated software) monitors time-based activity, and submits information at the last instant, removing the possibility for others to respond to that action.
They are typical features of auction sites like eBay, and NFT bot sniping is available as a service, to outbid competitors fast on NFT marketplaces like OpenSea. A service provider called nftnerds offers spotting of listings within 4 seconds, and configurable auto-triggers to purchase an NFT that meets predefined criteria.
Another provider Upwork offers bots ranging from $200 to $800.
What is an EtherRock?
Launched in 2017 a little after CrytpoPunks, EtherRock is part of an NFT project consisting of 100 free clipart images of a rock, each sporting a different hue. In October, a bid was placed on one EtherRock for 900 ETH ($3.5M at the time). At the time of writing all 100 rocks had been sold.
Tron founder Justin Sun purchased an EtherRock for $600K in August last year.
The most famous NFT collections, such as Bored Ape Yacht Club, created by Yuga Labs, and CryptoPunks, created by Larva Labs, are rudimentary cartoon images that have been algorithmically generated. Each algorithmically generated image depicts a character with certain features that have differing degrees of rarity.
For example, Chain CEO Deepak Thapliyal recently purchased a CryptoPunk for $23.7M, which had the “Alien” trait, one of only nine such images.
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