An Analysis of Optic: Artificial Intelligence NFT Verification Protocol

Written by: Paul Veradittakit, Partner at Pantera Capital

Compiled by: Amber, Foresight News

Optic is building an AI-based NFT verification protocol focused on NFT fraud analysis and value discovery within the community, aiming to help the entire NFT market achieve greater authenticity and transparency. Pantera recently participated in Optic's $11 million seed round funding alongside institutions like Kleiner Perkins, Lattice, OpenSea, Circle, and Polygon.

Typically, purchasing NFTs is the most common choice for newcomers interested in cryptocurrency before diving into the broader Web3 ecosystem. It is an interesting and relatively simple way to buy digital assets while better integrating into the community. Unfortunately, the number of scams associated with it has also seen explosive growth, as NFTs can be easily forged or replicated and moved back onto the blockchain. Once these counterfeit assets are placed on trusted market platforms, buyers can easily fall victim to fraud. Although this does not hinder the booming NFT market—where NFTs worth $2 billion were sold in the first quarter of 2021, with about 90% of transactions occurring on OpenSea—the OpenSea platform is actually filled with various scams. Optic aims to change this situation by using an AI engine to monitor newly minted NFTs and compare them with existing legitimate collectibles on market sites to detect potentially fraudulent NFT projects as early as possible, fundamentally addressing the issue.

A Universal Toolkit Covering the Entire Market

Optic's AI index currently covers 3,334 NFT collectibles, monitoring assets worth over $30 million. The protocol processes assets worth over $5 million daily (2TB of data). OpenSea is the world's largest NFT marketplace and is also Optic's first and largest client. Optic's AI algorithms monitor details such as color distortion and clarity changes of the NFTs they evaluate. Of course, the capabilities of Optic go far beyond monitoring NFTs; they also provide developers with ecosystem security APIs to build applications that enforce content creation policies and customer protection policies. These smart contracts allow developers to call Optic's AI for content verification, search, and recommendations. Wallets, games, and social platforms (or any other platforms rendering or trading NFTs) can also access Optic's infrastructure for authenticity verification and other analyses.

Optic also allows markets to customize operational workflows and digest their data through Optic's API to discover trending scams and fraudulent activities. For creators, Optic provides data on individuals who "plagiarize" others' works and notifies original artists when someone creates work inspired by their existing pieces.

The NFT community can use Optic's tools to build their brands, conduct authenticity checks, discover noteworthy NFTs, and assess the rarity and value of collectibles. The team's founder, Andrey Doronichev, points out, "Optic is not an enforcement 'agency.' Our goal is to make information available and transparent to the ecosystem. Artists and markets can decide how to handle it." Through this flexible approach, different communities and art platforms have the power to decide how to manage the data.

A Team with Deep Experience in AI and Authenticity

Andrey Doronichev is the CEO of Optic; he previously served as the Director of Product Management at Google and was responsible for establishing the ContentID system (the infrastructure for combating fraud) while leading the mobile division at YouTube. CPO Roman Doronin is a co-founder of Eora AI, a consulting service company specializing in computer vision, automation, and artificial intelligence. CTO Vlad Vinogradov co-founded Eora AI with Roman and has extensive experience in ML, AI, and computer vision. The core team of Optic consists of 17 members, along with a strong and growing advisory board.

What Else Can Optic Do Besides Exposing Fraud?

In an industry that continues to struggle against scams, applications like Optic have become a market necessity. Optic is currently developing their product suite to help users identify counterfeit NFT collections. Future additions will include text metadata analysis to detect more types of fraud patterns and further enrich SDK use cases to cover more developers engaged in authenticity verification-related protocols.

When discussing Optic's advantages, Doronichev stated that while fraud in this market will always exist, he believes Optic's technology will significantly help mitigate this issue through its market tools, developer SDK, and consumer protection analytics.