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CryptoPunk is selling for a fraction of the likely market price due to the zombie smart contract

A rare CryptoPunk NFT recently sold for just 10 ETH (~$25,300), despite a market value that is likely around 600 ETH (~$1.5 million). The sale happened thanks to persistent smart contracts from a defunct NFT sharding platform called Niftex, which allowed people to buy and sell “shards” of various NFTs. Niftex launched in November 2020 and is now defunct, its domain being redirected to Kraken cryptocurrency exchange.

The platform’s smart contracts remain operational, however, and so despite the lack of a frontend website for the platform, the backend still remains. A trader was able to use these smart contracts to trigger a feature that allows a buyout of shard holders that, unless countered by someone else, automatically passes within 14 days. The bidder proposed a purchase of 0.001 ETH per share, and without an operational Niftex frontend, no one noticed. The offer went through and the trader successfully purchased all 10,000 shares – and thus the NFT – for 10 ETH.

Since then, several people have offered to buy the NFT for amounts ranging from 100 to 605 ETH. If the new owner accepted the offer of 605 ETH, it would be 60 times their purchase price.

An owner of a fractional share said he thought he had succeeded in blocking the sale, but he had miscalculated. “GG ​​to the new owner,” he wrote. He tweeted: “I don’t consider this a steal. It is a tree. The smart contract worked as intended. If you want decentralized systems, you have to take the good with the bad. It’s part of the game. That’s why we’re here, if you don’t like those rules you probably shouldn’t be playing.

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