Beware of This NFT Scam

In this article, I share my experience with a new NFT marketplace called Fantasea.io. There’s not much information available about it online. The domain has been registered just a little over a month ago, and the homepage currently feels like a work in progress. Because more and more photographers seem to get contacted to sell NFTs on this site, it’s important to determine if it’s legit.

How I Learned About Fantasea.io

I’m not in the NFT business and primarily sell my photos as prints or license them via my homepage. Two weeks ago, someone interested in purchasing four of my photos contacted me. At first, it seemed he wanted to license the photos for some exclusive use.

But after some back and forth, I found he was interested in buying those photos as NFTs. And he didn’t shy away when I suggested a price of 2 ETH per photo — more than $3,000. I offered to mint (create) them at OpenSea, a well-established marketplace. He didn’t like that site and suggested using a new NFT marketplace called Fantasea.io.

I have now learned that the story is a common one. I know of three other photographers who had a similar interaction with other “buyers” wanting them to sell their photos as NFTs via Fantasea.io.

Scam or Legit?

As usual in the crypto space, be careful when there is “easy” money to make. To be honest, I liked the prospect of making more than $12,000 from four of my images. But I was cautious of Fantasea.io. When I first explored the site, it revealed several flaws. It also contains only vague information and doesn’t conform to the General Data Protection Regulation yet.

One could say that it’s a very new marketplace, and there can be benefits to being an early adopter. The problem with Fantasea.io is that minting an NFT costs around $250. And it’s not even a fully automated process where you connect a wallet like MetaMask and use it for funding.

Without getting too technical here: to create an NFT on Fantasea.io, you must send the required fee to a wallet provided by Fantasea.io after registration.

Remember that the “buyer” wanted me to mint four photos. It would have cost me $1,000. I estimated my chances of this being a legit request very low, and I would definitely not spend $1,000 on such a gamble.

By then, I had decided to write an article about this experience, and I needed a bit more evidence. So, I asked the “buyer” if we could start with just one photo as I was low on funds. I would later use the profits to mint the other NFTs. He agreed.

Since I still had some funds from writing articles on my hive.blog, I used those to mint one photo. It solidified my impression of Fantasea.io and the “buyer”. He began stalling soon after, writing he was still getting the funds ready and doing some small talk.

The great thing about cryptocurrencies is: you can follow the money using tools like Etherscan. So, I checked the transactions on the wallet address to which I had sent the money. As soon as my money was received, it was already sent to another wallet and from there on to Binance.

By now, I know that I’m not the only one who has been contacted this way. Since I have one of the few accounts at Fantasea.io, other photographers contacted me about my experience with this marketplace. Like me, they were also in contact with potential “buyers.”

Conclusion

For me, this whole interaction didn’t feel right from the time I first checked Fantasea.io. But I wanted certainty, and I see the $250 I spent as an investment in this article. If you found it on Google after having a similar interaction as I had, you can now better decide if you want to gamble your money. Also, use block explorer tools like Etherscan to check the wallets where your money is going for suspicious activities.

And in case you wonder why I didn’t include proper links to Fantasea: I didn’t want to boost their SEO. And who knows, maybe there’s a marketplace under a new domain soon with a similar “buyers” fan base. So, take care.