NFT Heist: Infiltrated for 14 Days, 10E Snatched Black Monkey, Profiting 60 Times

Author: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily

In the early hours of today Beijing time, CryptoPunk #2386, numbered #2386, completed a transfer on-chain.

Surprisingly, the transfer price for CryptoPunk #2386 was only 10 ETH. Even in today's extremely sluggish NFT market, this is still an unbelievable figure.

As of the time of publication, the floor price of the CryptoPunks series remains as high as 30.45 ETH, not to mention that CryptoPunk #2386 is one of the rarest "ape" variants in the series. In a market where head holders are generally reluctant to sell, this level of CryptoPunk has almost always been priced but not traded ------ there are only 24 apes in the entire CryptoPunks series, second only to the 9 "alien" variants.

When NFTs were still hot in 2022, CryptoPunk #2386 had received a massive offer of 1800 ETH, and just a few hours after this transfer, the market price for CryptoPunk #2386 quickly rose to 600 ETH ------ this means that its mysterious buyer could immediately resell it for 600 ETH after buying it for 10 ETH, making a profit of up to 60 times.

Clearly, the transfer this morning was an abnormal transaction, and NFT industry insiders have even referred to this transaction as a "heist." So how was this strange transaction completed? Ethereum ecosystem developer Quit provided a more detailed explanation.

A few years ago, attempts to improve liquidity for NFTs were still a major entrepreneurial hotspot in the industry. At that time, there was a protocol called Niftex that could split specific NFTs into multiple fungible ERC-20 tokens (hereinafter referred to as "fragments") to improve the liquidity of the NFTs themselves.

On September 26, 2020, CryptoPunk #2386 was fragmented on Niftex with an estimated value of about 450 ETH, and this NFT was divided into 10,000 "fragments." After these "fragments" flowed into the market, they are now held by a total of 257 users.

Time has passed, and with the cooling of the NFT sector, Niftex has announced its shutdown, but its contract has remained active, and the main body of CryptoPunk #2386 has always been held in Niftex's smart contract.

For the repurchase of the NFT itself, Niftex's contract designed multiple paths: one is the most conventional path, where you can collect all the split "fragments" and then redeem the main body from the contract ------ considering the dispersed situation of "fragment" holders, this path is actually very difficult to operate; the second is that you can make a "forced purchase" offer to the contract, and if there are no other "fragment" holders opposing it within the 14-day offer period, you can purchase the NFT at the corresponding price.

On August 28, an address starting with 0x282 made a "forced purchase" offer to Niftex's contract at a price of 0.001 ETH per fragment (i.e., a total price of 10 ETH).

Perhaps due to Niftex's shutdown, the vast majority of "fragment" holders did not notice this offer, but Quit pointed out that at least two "fragment" holders were aware of this dynamic… One "fragment" holder may not have taken any action due to the ample time remaining, while another "fragment" holder ( @gmoneyNFT) did take opposing action.

According to Niftex's contract rules, if you want to oppose someone else's "forced purchase," you must buy the "fragments" from the other party at a price higher than the offeror's price. Since 0x282's offer was 0.001 ETH per fragment, the effective opposing price must be at least 0.0010000001 ETH.

However, the opposing price proposed by gmoneyNFT was only 0.000001 ETH per fragment, which did not exceed 0x282's original offer, so their opposition was unsuccessful.

In the following 14-day offer period, no user made an opposing offer higher than 0.0010000001 ETH, so 0x282's "forced purchase" was successfully approved. Ultimately, 0x282 acquired the highly rare CryptoPunk #2386 at a cost of 10 ETH, a price that is even 70% lower than the floor price of the CryptoPunks series.

Currently, no one has successfully traced the true identity of 0x282, nor is it certain whether this user will agree to the market offer that has already reached 600 ETH and is still expected to continue rising. The story is still ongoing, and Planet Daily will continue to monitor it.