In the field of NFT, the line between plagiarism and parody is not clearly defined. It therefore happens that works are plagiarized under the pretext of parodying. When this happens, it can lead to a lengthy legal process, with many social media posts at the end of the day, with each user supporting whatever NFT is right for them. This is what happened with the NFTs of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and Phunky Ape Yacht Club (or PAYC). One would have plagiarized the other.
Bored Ape Yacht Club, PAYC and PHAYC
The NFTs that are part of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (or BAYC) collection are among the most expensive on the market. Unfortunately, nothing prevents it from being copied or modified by users. This is how PAYC and PHAYC simply flipped the BAYC avatars to the right in order to make it look like new NFT works. Once that was done, they put them up for sale on the Internet.
PAYC announced the launch of its NFT in early December. To defend his work, he mentioned that some time ago, another project did the same: CryptoPhunks. The creators of the NFTs that make up this project had used the images from CryptoPunks earlier this year.
Regarding PHAYC, it was launched a few months later on a humorous web platform describing it as a “A limited collection of NFT where the token itself offers no membership and no allegiance.” In his description of the project, a member of the PHAYC community went even further by considering it as “A satirical take on the current state of NFTs and members of the NFT community who might take the NFT market a little too seriously.”
The role of the OpenSea marketplace
Since the launch of PAYC and PHAYC, members of both communities have launched attacks on Twitter to find out which of the two projects is the more authentic. The founder of PAYC went so far as to qualify PHAYC as “Fraudulent plan to gain money”. But in the meantime, of the two projects, PHAYC is the one that generates the most revenue, since the creators of the project cashed in around 500 ETH, or 1.8 million dollars. As for PAYC, the project only generated 60 ETH, or $ 225,000.
If the NFT market offers many possibilities, it is above all thanks to the influence of market places like OpenSea. Since its launch, this platform has already attracted thousands of investors as well as projects as juicy as each other. Of course, plagiarized NFTs have crept in. However, the platform was quick to remove them from the options offered to buyers. It remains to be seen which project between PAYC and PHAYC will suffer the same fate.
Two NFT projects are at the heart of a very strange situation on the grounds that they were conceived by doing plagiarism. But the problem is, right now, it’s impossible to know who plagiarized.
Source: Theverge
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TCT writing
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