research-article

Unveiling the Paradox of NFT Prosperity

Authors:

Haoyu WangAuthors Info & Claims

WWW '24: Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2024

Pages 167 - 177

https://doi.org/10.1145/3589334.3645566

Published: 13 May 2024 Publication History

Abstract

Unlike fungible tokens (e.g., cryptocurrency), a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) is unique and indivisible. As such, they can be used to authenticate ownership of digital assets (e.g., a photo) in a decentralized fashion. Given that NFTs have generated significant media attention since 2021, we perform a large-scale measurement study of the NFT ecosystem. We collect over 242M transfer logs and over 97M marketplace transactions until Aug 1st, 2023, by far the largest NFT dataset, to the best of our knowledge. We characterize the on-chain behavior of NFTs and their trading across five major marketplaces. We find that, although the NFT ecosystem is growing rapidly, it is driven by a relatively small set of dominant centralized players, with suspicious trade activities, e.g., over 23% of the monetary volume is generated by malicious wash trading and the ecosystem has experienced over 157K cases of NFT arbitrage, with a total sum of over \25M profit. Our observations motivate the need for more research efforts in the NFT security analysis.

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Cited By

Ma KHuang JHe NWang ZWang H(2025)SoK: On the Security of Non-Fungible TokensBlockchain: Research and Applications10.1016/j.bcra.2024.100268(100268)Online publication date: Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bcra.2024.100268
Muzammil MWu ZBalasubramanian ANikiforakis NVallina-Rodríguez NSuarez-Tángil GLevin DPelsser C(2024)Panning for gold.eth: Understanding and Analyzing ENS Domain DropcatchingProceedings of the 2024 ACM on Internet Measurement Conference10.1145/3646547.3689009(731-738)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3646547.3689009

Index Terms

Unveiling the Paradox of NFT Prosperity
1. Security and privacy
  1. Intrusion/anomaly detection and malware mitigation

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

WWW '24: Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2024

May 2024

4826 pages

ISBN:9798400701719

DOI:10.1145/3589334

General Chairs:
Tat-Seng Chua
National University of Singapore
,
Chong-Wah Ngo
Singapore Management University
,
Proceedings Chair:
Roy Ka-Wei Lee
Singapore University of Technology and Design
,
Program Chairs:
Ravi Kumar
Google
,
Hady W. Lauw
Singapore Management University

Copyright © 2024 ACM.

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Published: 13 May 2024

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WWW '24: The ACM Web Conference 2024

May 13 - 17, 2024

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Cited By

Ma KHuang JHe NWang ZWang H(2025)SoK: On the Security of Non-Fungible TokensBlockchain: Research and Applications10.1016/j.bcra.2024.100268(100268)Online publication date: Jan-2025
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bcra.2024.100268
Muzammil MWu ZBalasubramanian ANikiforakis NVallina-Rodríguez NSuarez-Tángil GLevin DPelsser C(2024)Panning for gold.eth: Understanding and Analyzing ENS Domain DropcatchingProceedings of the 2024 ACM on Internet Measurement Conference10.1145/3646547.3689009(731-738)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3646547.3689009

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