More on Web3 & Crypto
CNET
3 years ago
How a $300K Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT was accidentally sold for $3K
The Bored Ape Yacht Club is one of the most prestigious NFT collections in the world. A collection of 10,000 NFTs, each depicting an ape with different traits and visual attributes, Jimmy Fallon, Steph Curry and Post Malone are among their star-studded owners. Right now the price of entry is 52 ether, or $210,000.
Which is why it's so painful to see that someone accidentally sold their Bored Ape NFT for $3,066.
Unusual trades are often a sign of funny business, as in the case of the person who spent $530 million to buy an NFT from themselves. In Saturday's case, the cause was a simple, devastating "fat-finger error." That's when people make a trade online for the wrong thing, or for the wrong amount. Here the owner, real name Max or username maxnaut, meant to list his Bored Ape for 75 ether, or around $300,000. Instead he accidentally listed it for 0.75. One hundredth the intended price.
It was bought instantaneously. The buyer paid an extra $34,000 to speed up the transaction, ensuring no one could snap it up before them. The Bored Ape was then promptly listed for $248,000. The transaction appears to have been done by a bot, which can be coded to immediately buy NFTs listed below a certain price on behalf of their owners in order to take advantage of these exact situations.
"How'd it happen? A lapse of concentration I guess," Max told me. "I list a lot of items every day and just wasn't paying attention properly. I instantly saw the error as my finger clicked the mouse but a bot sent a transaction with over 8 eth [$34,000] of gas fees so it was instantly sniped before I could click cancel, and just like that, $250k was gone."
"And here within the beauty of the Blockchain you can see that it is both honest and unforgiving," he added.
Fat finger trades happen sporadically in traditional finance -- like the Japanese trader who almost bought 57% of Toyota's stock in 2014 -- but most financial institutions will stop those transactions if alerted quickly enough. Since cryptocurrency and NFTs are designed to be decentralized, you essentially have to rely on the goodwill of the buyer to reverse the transaction.
Fat finger errors in cryptocurrency trades have made many a headline over the past few years. Back in 2019, the company behind Tether, a cryptocurrency pegged to the US dollar, nearly doubled its own coin supply when it accidentally created $5 billion-worth of new coins. In March, BlockFi meant to send 700 Gemini Dollars to a set of customers, worth roughly $1 each, but mistakenly sent out millions of dollars worth of bitcoin instead. Last month a company erroneously paid a $24 million fee on a $100,000 transaction.
Similar incidents are increasingly being seen in NFTs, now that many collections have accumulated in market value over the past year. Last month someone tried selling a CryptoPunk NFT for $19 million, but accidentally listed it for $19,000 instead. Back in August, someone fat finger listed their Bored Ape for $26,000, an error that someone else immediately capitalized on. The original owner offered $50,000 to the buyer to return the Bored Ape -- but instead the opportunistic buyer sold it for the then-market price of $150,000.
"The industry is so new, bad things are going to happen whether it's your fault or the tech," Max said. "Once you no longer have control of the outcome, forget and move on."
The Bored Ape Yacht Club launched back in April 2021, with 10,000 NFTs being sold for 0.08 ether each -- about $190 at the time. While NFTs are often associated with individual digital art pieces, collections like the Bored Ape Yacht Club, which allow owners to flaunt their NFTs by using them as profile pictures on social media, are becoming increasingly prevalent. The Bored Ape Yacht Club has since become the second biggest NFT collection in the world, second only to CryptoPunks, which launched in 2017 and is considered the "original" NFT collection.
Yusuf Ibrahim
3 years ago
How to sell 10,000 NFTs on OpenSea for FREE (Puppeteer/NodeJS)
So you've finished your NFT collection and are ready to sell it. Except you can't figure out how to mint them! Not sure about smart contracts or want to avoid rising gas prices. You've tried and failed with apps like Mini mouse macro, and you're not familiar with Selenium/Python. Worry no more, NodeJS and Puppeteer have arrived!
Learn how to automatically post and sell all 1000 of my AI-generated word NFTs (Nakahana) on OpenSea for FREE!
My NFT project — Nakahana |
NOTE: Only NFTs on the Polygon blockchain can be sold for free; Ethereum requires an initiation charge. NFTs can still be bought with (wrapped) ETH.
If you want to go right into the code, here's the GitHub link: https://github.com/Yusu-f/nftuploader
Let's start with the knowledge and tools you'll need.
What you should know
You must be able to write and run simple NodeJS programs. You must also know how to utilize a Metamask wallet.
Tools needed
- NodeJS. You'll need NodeJs to run the script and NPM to install the dependencies.
- Puppeteer – Use Puppeteer to automate your browser and go to sleep while your computer works.
- Metamask – Create a crypto wallet and sign transactions using Metamask (free). You may learn how to utilize Metamask here.
- Chrome – Puppeteer supports Chrome.
Let's get started now!
Starting Out
Clone Github Repo to your local machine. Make sure that NodeJS, Chrome, and Metamask are all installed and working. Navigate to the project folder and execute npm install. This installs all requirements.
Replace the “extension path” variable with the Metamask chrome extension path. Read this tutorial to find the path.
Substitute an array containing your NFT names and metadata for the “arr” variable and the “collection_name” variable with your collection’s name.
Run the script.
After that, run node nftuploader.js.
Open a new chrome instance (not chromium) and Metamask in it. Import your Opensea wallet using your Secret Recovery Phrase or create a new one and link it. The script will be unable to continue after this but don’t worry, it’s all part of the plan.
Next steps
Open your terminal again and copy the route that starts with “ws”, e.g. “ws:/localhost:53634/devtools/browser/c07cb303-c84d-430d-af06-dd599cf2a94f”. Replace the path in the connect function of the nftuploader.js script.
const browser = await puppeteer.connect({ browserWSEndpoint: "ws://localhost:58533/devtools/browser/d09307b4-7a75-40f6-8dff-07a71bfff9b3", defaultViewport: null });
Rerun node nftuploader.js. A second tab should open in THE SAME chrome instance, navigating to your Opensea collection. Your NFTs should now start uploading one after the other! If any errors occur, the NFTs and errors are logged in an errors.log file.
Error Handling
The errors.log file should show the name of the NFTs and the error type. The script has been changed to allow you to simply check if an NFT has already been posted. Simply set the “searchBeforeUpload” setting to true.
We're done!
If you liked it, you can buy one of my NFTs! If you have any concerns or would need a feature added, please let me know.
Thank you to everyone who has read and liked. I never expected it to be so popular.
Vitalik
3 years ago
An approximate introduction to how zk-SNARKs are possible (part 2)
If tasked with the problem of coming up with a zk-SNARK protocol, many people would make their way to this point and then get stuck and give up. How can a verifier possibly check every single piece of the computation, without looking at each piece of the computation individually? But it turns out that there is a clever solution.
Polynomials
Polynomials are a special class of algebraic expressions of the form:
- x+5
- x^4
- x^3+3x^2+3x+1
- 628x^{271}+318x^{270}+530x^{269}+…+69x+381
i.e. they are a sum of any (finite!) number of terms of the form cx^k
There are many things that are fascinating about polynomials. But here we are going to zoom in on a particular one: polynomials are a single mathematical object that can contain an unbounded amount of information (think of them as a list of integers and this is obvious). The fourth example above contained 816 digits of tau, and one can easily imagine a polynomial that contains far more.
Furthermore, a single equation between polynomials can represent an unbounded number of equations between numbers. For example, consider the equation A(x)+ B(x) = C(x). If this equation is true, then it's also true that:
- A(0)+B(0)=C(0)
- A(1)+B(1)=C(1)
- A(2)+B(2)=C(2)
- A(3)+B(3)=C(3)
And so on for every possible coordinate. You can even construct polynomials to deliberately represent sets of numbers so you can check many equations all at once. For example, suppose that you wanted to check:
- 12+1=13
- 10+8=18
- 15+8=23
- 15+13=28
You can use a procedure called Lagrange interpolation to construct polynomials A(x) that give (12,10,15,15) as outputs at some specific set of coordinates (eg. (0,1,2,3)), B(x) the outputs (1,8,8,13) on thos same coordinates, and so forth. In fact, here are the polynomials:
- A(x)=-2x^3+\frac{19}{2}x^2-\frac{19}{2}x+12
- B(x)=2x^3-\frac{19}{2}x^2+\frac{29}{2}x+1
- C(x)=5x+13
Checking the equation A(x)+B(x)=C(x) with these polynomials checks all four above equations at the same time.
Comparing a polynomial to itself
You can even check relationships between a large number of adjacent evaluations of the same polynomial using a simple polynomial equation. This is slightly more advanced. Suppose that you want to check that, for a given polynomial F, F(x+2)=F(x)+F(x+1) with the integer range {0,1…89} (so if you also check F(0)=F(1)=1, then F(100) would be the 100th Fibonacci number)
As polynomials, F(x+2)-F(x+1)-F(x) would not be exactly zero, as it could give arbitrary answers outside the range x={0,1…98}. But we can do something clever. In general, there is a rule that if a polynomial P is zero across some set S=\{x_1,x_2…x_n\} then it can be expressed as P(x)=Z(x)*H(x), where Z(x)=(x-x_1)*(x-x_2)*…*(x-x_n) and H(x) is also a polynomial. In other words, any polynomial that equals zero across some set is a (polynomial) multiple of the simplest (lowest-degree) polynomial that equals zero across that same set.
Why is this the case? It is a nice corollary of polynomial long division: the factor theorem. We know that, when dividing P(x) by Z(x), we will get a quotient Q(x) and a remainder R(x) is strictly less than that of Z(x). Since we know that P is zero on all of S, it means that R has to be zero on all of S as well. So we can simply compute R(x) via polynomial interpolation, since it's a polynomial of degree at most n-1 and we know n values (the zeros at S). Interpolating a polynomial with all zeroes gives the zero polynomial, thus R(x)=0 and H(x)=Q(x).
Going back to our example, if we have a polynomial F that encodes Fibonacci numbers (so F(x+2)=F(x)+F(x+1) across x=\{0,1…98\}), then I can convince you that F actually satisfies this condition by proving that the polynomial P(x)=F(x+2)-F(x+1)-F(x) is zero over that range, by giving you the quotient:
H(x)=\frac{F(x+2)-F(x+1)-F(x)}{Z(x)}
Where Z(x) = (x-0)*(x-1)*…*(x-98).
You can calculate Z(x) yourself (ideally you would have it precomputed), check the equation, and if the check passes then F(x) satisfies the condition!
Now, step back and notice what we did here. We converted a 100-step-long computation into a single equation with polynomials. Of course, proving the N'th Fibonacci number is not an especially useful task, especially since Fibonacci numbers have a closed form. But you can use exactly the same basic technique, just with some extra polynomials and some more complicated equations, to encode arbitrary computations with an arbitrarily large number of steps.
see part 3
You might also like
Al Anany
1 year ago
Because of this covert investment that Bezos made, Amazon became what it is today.
He kept it under wraps for years until he legally couldn’t.
His shirt is incomplete. I can’t stop thinking about this…
Actually, ignore the article. Look at it. JUST LOOK at it… It’s quite disturbing, isn’t it?
Ughh…
Me: “Hey, what up?” Friend: “All good, watching lord of the rings on amazon prime video.” Me: “Oh, do you know how Amazon grew and became famous?” Friend: “Geek alert…Can I just watch in peace?” Me: “But… Bezos?” Friend: “Let it go, just let it go…”
I can question you, the reader, and start answering instantly without his consent. This far.
Reader, how did Amazon succeed? You'll say, Of course, it was an internet bookstore, then it sold everything.
Mistaken. They moved from zero to one because of this. How did they get from one to thousand? AWS-some. Understand? It's geeky and lame. If not, I'll explain my geekiness.
Over an extended period of time, Amazon was not profitable.
Business basics. You want customers if you own a bakery, right?
Well, 100 clients per day order $5 cheesecakes (because cheesecakes are awesome.)
$5 x 100 consumers x 30 days Equals $15,000 monthly revenue. You proudly work here.
Now you have to pay the barista (unless ChatGPT is doing it haha? Nope..)
The barista is requesting $5000 a month.
Each cheesecake costs the cheesecake maker $2.5 ($2.5 × 100 x 30 = $7500).
The monthly cost of running your bakery, including power, is about $5000.
Assume no extra charges. Your operating costs are $17,500.
Just $15,000? You have income but no profit. You might make money selling coffee with your cheesecake next month.
Is losing money bad? You're broke. Losing money. It's bad for financial statements.
It's almost a business ultimatum. Most startups fail. Amazon took nine years.
I'm reading Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Creation of a Global Empire to comprehend how a company has a $1 trillion market cap.
Many things made Amazon big. The book claims that Bezos and Amazon kept a specific product secret for a long period.
Clouds above the bald head.
In 2006, Bezos started a cloud computing initiative. They believed many firms like Snapchat would pay for reliable servers.
In 2006, cloud computing was not what it is today. I'll simplify. 2006 had no iPhone.
Bezos invested in Amazon Web Services (AWS) without disclosing its revenue. That's permitted till a certain degree.
Google and Microsoft would realize Amazon is heavily investing in this market and worry.
Bezos anticipated high demand for this product. Microsoft built its cloud in 2010, and Google in 2008.
If you managed Google or Microsoft, you wouldn't know how much Amazon makes from their cloud computing service. It's enough. Yet, Amazon is an internet store, so they'll focus on that.
All but Bezos were wrong.
Time to come clean now.
They revealed AWS revenue in 2015. Two things were apparent:
Bezos made the proper decision to bet on the cloud and keep it a secret.
In this race, Amazon is in the lead.
They continued. Let me list some AWS users today.
Netflix
Airbnb
Twitch
More. Amazon was unprofitable for nine years, remember? This article's main graph.
AWS accounted for 74% of Amazon's profit in 2021. This 74% might not exist if they hadn't invested in AWS.
Bring this with you home.
Amazon predated AWS. Yet, it helped the giant reach $1 trillion. Bezos' secrecy? Perhaps, until a time machine is invented (they might host the time machine software on AWS, though.)
Without AWS, Amazon would have been profitable but unimpressive. They may have invested in anything else that would have returned more (like crypto? No? Ok.)
Bezos has business flaws. His success. His failures include:
introducing the Fire Phone and suffering a $170 million loss.
Amazon's failure in China In 2011, Amazon had a about 15% market share in China. 2019 saw a decrease of about 1%.
not offering a higher price to persuade the creator of Netflix to sell the company to him. He offered a rather reasonable $15 million in his proposal. But what if he had offered $30 million instead (Amazon had over $100 million in revenue at the time)? He might have owned Netflix, which has a $156 billion market valuation (and saved billions rather than invest in Amazon Prime Video).
Some he could control. Some were uncontrollable. Nonetheless, every action he made in the foregoing circumstances led him to invest in AWS.
Alison Randel
2 years ago
Raising the Bar on Your 1:1s
Managers spend much time in 1:1s. Most team members meet with supervisors regularly. 1:1s can help create relationships and tackle tough topics. Few appreciate the 1:1 format's potential. Most of the time, that potential is spent on small talk, surface-level updates, and ranting (Ugh, the marketing team isn’t stepping up the way I want them to).
What if you used that time to have deeper conversations and important insights? What if change was easy?
This post introduces a new 1:1 format to help you dive deeper, faster, and develop genuine relationships without losing impact.
A 1:1 is a chat, you would assume. Why use structure to talk to a coworker? Go! I know how to talk to people. I can write. I've always written. Also, This article was edited by Zoe.
Before you discard something, ask yourself if there's a good reason not to try anything new. Is the 1:1 only a talk, or do you want extra benefits? Try the steps below to discover more.
I. Reflection (5 minutes)
Context-free, broad comments waste time and are useless. Instead, give team members 5 minutes to write these 3 prompts.
What's effective?
What is decent but could be improved?
What is broken or missing?
Why these? They encourage people to be honest about all their experiences. Answering these questions helps people realize something isn't working. These prompts let people consider what's working.
Why take notes? Because you get more in less time. Will you feel awkward sitting quietly while your coworker writes? Probably. Persevere. Multi-task. Take a break from your afternoon meeting marathon. Any awkwardness will pay off.
What happens? After a few minutes of light conversation, create a template like the one given here and have team members fill in their replies. You can pre-share the template (with the caveat that this isn’t meant to take much prep time). Do this with your coworker: Answer the prompts. Everyone can benefit from pondering and obtaining guidance.
This step's output.
Part II: Talk (10-20 minutes)
Most individuals can explain what they see but not what's behind an answer. You don't like a meeting. Why not? Marketing partnership is difficult. What makes working with them difficult? I don't recommend slandering coworkers. Consider how your meetings, decisions, and priorities make work harder. The excellent stuff too. You want to know what's humming so you can reproduce the magic.
First, recognize some facts.
Real power dynamics exist. To encourage individuals to be honest, you must provide a safe environment and extend clear invites. Even then, it may take a few 1:1s for someone to feel secure enough to go there in person. It is part of your responsibility to admit that it is normal.
Curiosity and self-disclosure are crucial. Most leaders have received training to present themselves as the authorities. However, you will both benefit more from the dialogue if you can be open and honest about your personal experience, ask questions out of real curiosity, and acknowledge the pertinent sacrifices you're making as a leader.
Honesty without bias is difficult and important. Due to concern for the feelings of others, people frequently hold back. Or if they do point anything out, they do so in a critical manner. The key is to be open and unapologetic about what you observe while not presuming that your viewpoint is correct and that of the other person is incorrect.
Let's go into some prompts (based on genuine conversations):
“What do you notice across your answers?”
“What about the way you/we/they do X, Y, or Z is working well?”
“ Will you say more about item X in ‘What’s not working?’”
“I’m surprised there isn’t anything about Z. Why is that?”
“All of us tend to play some role in maintaining certain patterns. How might you/we be playing a role in this pattern persisting?”
“How might the way we meet, make decisions, or collaborate play a role in what’s currently happening?”
Consider the preceding example. What about the Monday meeting isn't working? Why? or What about the way we work with marketing makes collaboration harder? Remember to share your honest observations!
Third section: observe patterns (10-15 minutes)
Leaders desire to empower their people but don't know how. We also have many preconceptions about what empowerment means to us and how it works. The next phase in this 1:1 format will assist you and your team member comprehend team power and empowerment. This understanding can help you support and shift your team member's behavior, especially where you disagree.
How to? After discussing the stated responses, ask each team member what they can control, influence, and not control. Mark their replies. You can do the same, adding colors where you disagree.
This step's output.
Next, consider the color constellation. Discuss these questions:
Is one color much more prevalent than the other? Why, if so?
Are the colors for the "what's working," "what's fine," and "what's not working" categories clearly distinct? Why, if so?
Do you have any disagreements? If yes, specifically where does your viewpoint differ? What activities do you object to? (Remember, there is no right or wrong in this. Give explicit details and ask questions with curiosity.)
Example: Based on the colors, you can ask, Is the marketing meeting's quality beyond your control? Were our marketing partners consulted? Are there any parts of team decisions we can control? We can't control people, but have we explored another decision-making method? How can we collaborate and generate governance-related information to reduce work, even if the requirement for prep can't be eliminated?
Consider the top one or two topics for this conversation. No 1:1 can cover everything, and that's OK. Focus on the present.
Part IV: Determine the next step (5 minutes)
Last, examine what this conversation means for you and your team member. It's easy to think we know the next moves when we don't.
Like what? You and your teammate answer these questions.
What does this signify moving ahead for me? What can I do to change this? Make requests, for instance, and see how people respond before thinking they won't be responsive.
What demands do I have on other people or my partners? What should I do first? E.g. Make a suggestion to marketing that we hold a monthly retrospective so we can address problems and exchange input more frequently. Include it on the meeting's agenda for next Monday.
Close the 1:1 by sharing what you noticed about the chat. Observations? Learn anything?
Yourself, you, and the 1:1
As a leader, you either reinforce or disrupt habits. Try this template if you desire greater ownership, empowerment, or creativity. Consider how you affect surrounding dynamics. How can you expect others to try something new in high-stakes scenarios, like meetings with cross-functional partners or senior stakeholders, if you won't? How can you expect deep thought and relationship if you don't encourage it in 1:1s? What pattern could this new format disrupt or reinforce?
Fight reluctance. First attempts won't be ideal, and that's OK. You'll only learn by trying.
1eth1da
2 years ago
6 Rules to build a successful NFT Community in 2022
Too much NFT, Discord, and shitposting.
How do you choose?
How do you recruit more members to join your NFT project?
In 2021, a successful NFT project required:
Monkey/ape artwork
Twitter and Discord bot-filled
Roadmap overpromise
Goal was quick cash.
2022 and the years after will change that.
These are 6 Rules for a Strong NFT Community in 2022:
THINK LONG TERM
This relates to roadmap planning. Hype and dumb luck may drive NFT projects (ahem, goblins) but rarely will your project soar.
Instead, consider sustainability.
Plan your roadmap based on your team's abilities.
Do what you're already doing, but with NFTs, make it bigger and better.
You shouldn't copy a project's roadmap just because it was profitable.
This will lead to over-promising, team burnout, and an RUG NFT project.
OFFER VALUE
Building a great community starts with giving.
Why are musicians popular?
Because they offer entertainment for everyone, a random person becomes a fan, and more fans become a cult.
That's how you should approach your community.
TEAM UP
A great team helps.
An NFT project could have 3 or 2 people.
Credibility trumps team size.
Make sure your team can answer community questions, resolve issues, and constantly attend to them.
Don't overwork and burn out.
Your community will be able to recognize that you are trying too hard and give up on the project.
BUILD A GREAT PRODUCT
Bored Ape Yacht Club altered the NFT space.
Cryptopunks transformed NFTs.
Many others did, including Okay Bears.
What made them that way?
Because they answered a key question.
What is my NFT supposed to be?
Before planning art, this question must be answered.
NFTs can't be just jpegs.
What does it represent?
Is it a Metaverse-ready project?
What blockchain are you going to be using and why?
Set some ground rules for yourself. This helps your project's direction.
These questions will help you and your team set a direction for blockchain, NFT, and Web3 technology.
EDUCATE ON WEB3
The more the team learns about Web3 technology, the more they can offer their community.
Think tokens, metaverse, cross-chain interoperability and more.
BUILD A GREAT COMMUNITY
Several projects mistreat their communities.
They treat their community like "customers" and try to sell them NFT.
Providing Whitelists and giveaways aren't your only community-building options.
Think bigger.
Consider them family and friends, not wallets.
Consider them fans.
These are some tips to start your NFT project.