Nifty News: Marketplace exploit on Smol Brains, NFT for trees and metaverse movies

Reports emerged on Thursday of an exploit discovered on the TreasureDAO marketplace nonfungible token (NFT) trading platform that allows a user to buy items at zero cost, no matter the listing price or floor price of the collection.

Security specialist for MetaMask and MyCrypo Harry Denley (harry.eth) tweeted on Thursday around 1:00 am UTC, confirming a flaw in the code on Marketplace, which allows a user to purchase NFTs for 0 MAGIC (MAGIC). At least 28 Smol Brains and Smol Brains Land NFTs appear to have been taken using this exploit so far at the time of writing.

Yah, quantity here is 0… still emits all the data for block explorers and other sites to show a sell…

There’s no checks on buyItem() to ensure quantity > 0

So price emitted is pricePerItem * 0 = 0 MAGIC

Still investigating… pic.twitter.com/c4u85iQO9C

— harry.eth (@sniko_)

The TreasureDAO team has not yet responded to a request to confirm or deny that there is an issue with the marketplace.

MAGIC is the token used to make purchases on TreasureDAO’s marketplace. The MAGIC price crashed 33% from $3.75 to $2.50 in an hour on Thursday but rebounded to about $3.25, according to CoinGecko. Both the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and marketplace operate on the Arbitrum layer-2 Ethereum scaling solution.

Harry told Cointelegraph in an email update on Mar. 4 that the Marketplace bug “is not common among NFT marketplaces,” but that this particular issue could easily have been spotted by novice coders. He said:

The Smol Brains collection’s floor price is about 2,469.69 MAGIC ($8.100) as of the time of writing. However, the total losses so far may have hit nearly $1 million, as most of the taken items were listed for much more than the floor price. The most valuable item taken so far was Smol Brains #5203, which was worth 15,000 MAGIC ($585,555) at the time it moved.

Buy an NFT, donate a tree

Trees for the Future is a nonprofit organization that uses donations to plant trees in sub-Saharan Africa.

The thought to use NFTs emerged after the founder of Trees for the Future asked crypto investors to donate to the environmental group. Artists from UltraDAO answered the call and combined work from 111 artists to create the Woodies NFT collection.

To say that we’re proud of achieving our goal of planting ONE million trees w/@Treesftf is an understatement!

We also couldn’t do it without the incredible support of our community, thank you so much

And this is just the beginning…
pic.twitter.com/SEUh6WfhkL

— Woodies (@WoodiesNFT)

In total, UltraDAO donated about $252,000 to Trees for the Future from two separate sales of the Woodies NFT collection. UltraDAO is a “DAO for the arts” by artists and NFT collectors.

Woodies artist and UltraDAO contributor Richard Powazynski told Philanthropy.com on Wednesday that he hopes the collaboration will help promote the charitable work Trees for the Future does. He said:

Philanthropic organization Trees for the Future has collected over $250,000 in donations from an organization of artists that sold “Woodies” NFTs for cryptocurrency.

Movie screening in the Metaverse

Movie GameStop: Rise of the Players was shown to an audience at a drive-in theater in the Metaverse on Jan. 22 to mark the first anniversary of the GameStop stock’s (GME) peak price of $258.18. As a partnership between film producer firm Super and movie studio Decrypt Studios, the film covered the events in the meme stock boom of early-mid 2021. 

Alanna Roazzi-Laforet, founder of Decrypt Studios, said the meme stock saga was the perfect subject matter to screen in the Metaverse:

Attendees also received a proof-of-attendance protocol token, or POAP, for “driving in” to view the film.

An exhibit designed to tell the story of the meme stock frenzy has been erected in the Metaverse as well. To visit the exhibition, visitors can use a mobile app, web browser, or VR headset.

Nifty League raises $5 million

NFT gaming platform Nifty League has secured a $5 million seed investment round led by investment firm RSE Ventures and Spartan Group. 

The team will use the funding to build its community, develop more characters, create more items as NFTs and expand game offerings on its metaverse platform.

CEO of Nifty League Andrew Mahoney-Fernandes said in the official announcement on Wednesday that “NFTs make it possible to add the next level of dimension to our games.”

Other Nifty News

Monthly NFT buyers are declining in number these days. In February, the total number of unique buyers dropped below 800,000 for the first time in four months. CryptoSlam data shows that 796,009 buyers scooped up NFTs on secondary markets in February for about $2.6 billion in total sales, a decline of 40% from January.

Sony Music and Universal Music Group, the world‘s two largest labels, have partnered to create the Snowcrash NFT marketplace. The platform will feature music as NFTs from legendary artists Bob Dylan and Miles Davis.