A Texas man who "unknowingly" sold his Bored Ape #3475 non-fungible token (NFT) for 0.01 ETH (~US$26), is suing OpenSea.
Timothy McKimmy claims the NFT marketplace knew about a bug in its platform that allowed hackers to buy unlisted NFTs for a fraction of the market price.
It is added that McKimmy filed a complaint that he did not even list his NFT for sale, yet a hacker managed to buy it and quickly resold it for 99 ETH (~US$260,000).
Lawsuit Details
- McKimmy claims he is the rightful owner of Bored Ape #3475, one of 10,000 highly coveted Bored Ape Yacht Club primate NFTs, and supposedly in the top 14th percentile in terms of value.
- It is added that the "stolen" NFT is significantly rarer than the one recently bought by Canadian singer, Justin Bieber for US$1.3 million.
- McKimmy is currently seeking monetary damages from OpenSea for over US$1 million.
- Apparently, McKimmy also tried to regain possession of the NFT from its current owner, but the request was rejected.
- Besides that, McKimmy claims that OpenSea knew about the bug that was widely reported in the media, and instead of shutting down its platform to rectify the issue, OpenSea continued to operate.
OpenSea's Background
- The company was founded by Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah in 2017.
- OpenSea is a marketplace that allows NFTs to be sold directly at a fixed price, or through an auction, based on the Ethereum ERC-721 standard and the layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum Polygon.
- OpenSea's revenue reached US$95 million in February 2021 and US$2.75 billion in September the same year.
- The NFT marketplace is valued at more than US$13 billion during January 2022.
