There's always a possibility across any platform for users to become possible victims of scams or spams. Unfortunately, this can happen because you may be unaware or inattentive to the content that's being offered to you. Scammers may distribute and sell fake NFTs, trying to disguise them as original works. We want to try help you avoid this. This article addresses how you can make the right decision when purchasing an NFT.
Note: If you do purchase an NFT that is fake or banned at some point due to it being a scam or violating copyright laws, Rarible is not liable for it and cannot re-fund you. You need to be cautious and do your research before purchasing an NFT.
How to identify a fake NFT:
1. Look at the image quality.
If an NFT is original, the resolution of the image (or video) will be high. Fake NFTs usually have poor image quality.
Example of a fake NFT:
Example of an original NFT:
2. Check for a verification badge and official project links.
Search the name in our search bar to see if there's an official collection or user. You'll identify a collection or user as official if it has a yellow check-mark next to its name.
Use Google to find the project's official website and social media accounts. Usually official collections or accounts will have a high number of followers and are very active on their social media.
Note: Remember to do a virus check on links before clicking on anything to avoid going on to a scam or unsafe site. You can use: https://www.virustotal.com/ as a checking tool.
3. Check the collection's status.
Pay attention to the collection's data section. Original collections' "Volume" are usually high. This shows that there has been a lot of activity and transactions with the collection. Additionally, look at the difference between the items and owners. If there are a lot of items created with a high amount of owners in comparison to the items (at least 50% owners to items), this usually indicates that the collection is legit.
Remember to insure that there is a high volume in relation to the items and owners. A collection could have a large amount of owners to items but a low volume. This would indicate that this is most likely a collection that has been airdropping items to different users and therefore, would flag as spamming or scamming activity.
Example of a fake collection:
Example of an original collection:
4. Check the item history.
Most original NFTs are never created using the free minting function (they aren't lazy-minted). To check whether the work is minted or not, you can look at the item history ("Activity"). If the very first or the second entry in history (at the very bottom) is not minted to the collection (it's only listed) by the creator or if the history is completely empty, this NFT is not on the blockchain yet (it was created using free minting).
Note: You can also go on to the blockchain's explorer itself to get more information about an NFT's history. For example: Ethereum = https://etherscan.io/
Example of a fake NFT:
Example of an original NFT:
5. When in doubt, reach out.
If you have doubts or questions about the process of verifying the originality of an NFT, user or collection please reach out to the NFT community or contact us. Join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/rarible.
Note: Please report an NFT, user or collection if you feel that it's a fraud. You can look at this article to find out more: How do I report an NFT, user, or collection?