Not All NFTs That Are Reported Stolen Are Actually Stolen

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NFT marketplaces like OpenSea are often under pressure to crack down on stolen or counterfeit NFTs, but there are many NFTs that are reported as stolen yet were willingly sold. While the total number of stolen NFTs is unknown, there exists millions of dollars' worth of high-value NFTs that are reported as stolen, and are thus frozen from OpenSea's platform, even though some of them weren't actually stolen. This is a problem primarily for high-value NFTs from famous collections, but it can happen to any NFT on the blockchain, and OpenSea hasn't adapted yet to discern between a true theft and a ruthless trader abusing the system.

OpenSea is a Web3 marketplace built on Ethereum where users can list, bid on, and buy blockchain non-fungible tokens (NFTs) from each other. OpenSea itself is a company headquartered in the United States, and has earned a controversial reputation in the Web3 space for exerting centralized control over its platform. Unlike its community-owned, decentralized competitors Rarible and LooksRare, OpenSea is owned and operated completely by a centralized team, and thus suffers the same problems other centralized platforms have in dealing with malicious users. In an industry that champions decentralization and community ownership, OpenSea has always been a sore subject.

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Decrypt recently detailed the estimated value of big-name NFTs that had been stolen as of early July, which amounted to over $25.4M across 823 stolen NFTs. However, many of the tokens from these NFT collections (often worth millions) aren't actually stolen, but were still reported as stolen by malicious users. Also, an NFT that was stolen at any time in its history is banned from