Our team at ArgusNFT is delighted to announce we’ve completed a proof of concept for integrating Ethereum NFTs into the Argus fake NFT detection protocol. And in doing so, we’ve reached our first major milestone in taking the protocol cross-chain.
While there’s certainly value in identifying any fake or counterfeit NFT, one of Argus’ biggest value propositions is its potential to protect (at scale) against cross-chain copies — NFT art being stolen from an original collection on one chain, and fraudulently re-minted on another chain.
Currently, there are many millions of NFTs circulating across a large number of smart contract blockchains — far more NFTs than could be manually monitored, even with a large team working on the problem around the clock. And because NFT ecosystems are somewhat siloed, cross-chain blind-spots currently pose too big of an attack surface for scammers to take advantage of creators and collectors.
For this reason, we’ve prioritized the integration of as many NFTs as possible into the Argus protocol, and after Cardano, the natural choice for the next blockchain to integrate is Ethereum: In one of our Fund9 Project Catalyst proposals, we outlined how we plan to use this integration to drive adoption of Cardano NFTs by Ethereum NFT market participants. And let’s face it — currently most NFT plagiarism, counterfeiting scams and derivative projects are based on original Ethereum collections, so you can’t really address these problems industry-wide unless your solution incorporates the Ethereum NFT ecosystem.
Kurt Hartman leads Argus’ Ethereum Integration
Thanks to our funded, Fund8 Catalyst proposal, a few months ago we were able to welcome senior developer Kurt Hartmann to our team. Since then, Kurt has done an absolutely stellar job in leading the team’s Ethereum integration efforts, enabling us to complete a PoC for the integration well ahead of schedule.
We’re hugely grateful for Kurt’s efforts; he’s a consummate developer and huge asset to the Cardano ecosystem. And if you’d like to support his (Hosky Rug Pool Alliance) stake pool — and its efforts to help companion dogs in need, please consider staking to WOOF pool.
For the first-ever Ethereum NFT collection integrated on Argus, we’ve chosen the notorious (and much-copied) Bored Ape Yacht Club. Thanks to our partnership with JPG Store, we were quickly able to start warning collectors shopping at the Store that Bored Apes on Cardano are indeed copies. We’re excited to begin working on integrating ALL NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. And because we’re ahead of schedule, if our Fund9 proposal is funded, we should be able do more with those funds in terms of ingesting Ethereum NFTs, and testing and refining our approach, than we originally promised.
That said, we want to thank all of you who have supported us in getting to this milestone, and doubly thank any of you who continue to support us going forward. We couldn’t do it without you, and we promise that with your help, we’ll continue to deliver innovative, impactful NFT tooling and infrastructure into the future.
