A man, Timothy McKimmy, from Texas in the US is suing OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace, over a “bug” that allowed hackers to buy non-fungible tokens way below the market price.
McKimmy said he did not list his Bored Ape for sale and claimed it was stolen. He highlighted that the buyer resold it for 99 ETH – around $250,000. The token is said to be in the top 14th percentile when it comes to rarity. McKimmy claims his token to be rarer than the Bored Ape NFT Justin Bieber recently bought for $1.3 million. As such, he wants his token back or to be compensated over $1 million in damages.
Moreover, McKimmy has alleged that OpenSea knew about the bug but refused to stop trading in the interest of profits. He highlighted in the lawsuit that instead of shutting down the platform, OpenSea continued to operate. By doing so, the platform risked the security of its users’ NFTs and digital vaults to continue collecting 2.5% of every transaction uninterrupted. McKimmy accused OpenSea of negligence and breach of contract.
He outlined that he tried to resolve the issue with OpenSea but the platform said it is actively investigating the incident. McKimmy claimed the platform has failed to do anything more. This is only the tip of the iceberg as in January, the NFT marketplace issued around $1.8 million in refunds to users hit by a similar hacking incident.
However, it remains unclear as to how OpenSea is reimbursing and determining refund amounts. There are also rumors on NFT forums that OpenSea has been approaching victims of the bug and offering them the floor price.
