Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin wants to provide safer passage for businesses and individuals involved in the NFT market. He proposed that non-fungible tokens should have a more straightforward, private system for safer buys.
He wants to create a new streamlined smart contract wallet transaction that lets the sender block their address from a third party, hence the “stealth address.”
While this could be a dream come true, he admits that the Ethereum blockchain will need to find a solution to cut gas fees up to 50 times.
But, would it be possible?
Transparency is the Current Problem
Sure, privatized transactions are good, but how do both parties know that the money and product are going to the right hands? To this day, Web3 developers are still looking for ways to make blockchain purchases more streamlined so the general crowd does not have a hard time including transfer fees, various gas prices, multiple wallet types, and the like.
After all, there have been many cases of users stealing IP addresses from NFT marketplaces like OpenSea and Magic Eden.
Trust is needed for both the buyer and the seller, and if the issue already happens with fiat money, what more with crypto money?
In an investigation by Convex Labs, researcher Nick Bax took a closer look at how either party in the transaction steals an IP address. Convex Labs tested this with a custom code that logs the viewer’s IP address and shares the information with the seller when the NFT listing has been seen.
Quickly enough, Bax made a faux listing of The Simpsons x South Park collaboration NFT titled “I just right click + saved your IP address.”
Sense of Urgency Follows
Web3 developers must act fast if investors and large companies want to ensure their customers get what they want. NFT-based platforms and transactions have recently been under fire from hackers.
Since January 2022, attackers have stolen around $8 billion from multiple exchanges and games, including Axie Infinity, Beanstalk Farms, Bored Ape Yacht Club, and Solana-based wallets.
