As the NFT ecosystem evolves, OpenSea remains committed to improving trust and authenticity in the space. In May, we announced improvements to our verification/badging process and an automated system to help identify, remove, and prevent instances of copymints (copies of authentic NFT content) being visible on OpenSea. Our work here is just starting, and we’re pleased to share some exciting progress based on the last few months of learnings.

First, on account verification and collection badging: since launching our new system in May, we’ve reviewed and responded to 90% of verification applications in one day and 99% of applications in seven days. By adding more badged collections, this means that we have a larger arsenal of authentic content from which to detect copymints.

Starting next week, we’re expanding account verification and collection badging even further: any account with more than 75 ETH of collection volume (down from 100 ETH in May) will be invited to apply for verification. We hope to continue to drop this threshold over time, until any authentic creator’s account can be verified. Learn more about verification eligibility here.

The growing number of badged collections helps improve the efficacy of our copymint detection system, which is now able to detect and remove copymints of those collections within 2 hours after appearing on OpenSea – including those with flips, rotations, and other permutations.

Lastly, we’ve worked closely with creators and collectors to publish a deeper look into our copymint policy. This policy articulates what we do and don’t classify as a “copymint.” We’d like to give a special thanks to the creators and collectors in our community who shared their valuable feedback with us to ensure this policy is sufficiently nuanced and helpful. Please note this policy may evolve over time.

While we’ve made some great progress, we look forward to improving our systems and rolling out new features to combat copymints. Over the coming months, some of our goals include:

1. Continue to broaden eligibility for verification and badging so that eventually, any authentic creator’s account can be verified.
2. Detect and remove copymints at the time of creation – preventing them from being displayed on OpenSea in the first place.
3. Expand the ways we detect possible copymints by incorporating new signals to detect new image manipulations and other modifications that may potentially deceive the community. If you see anything we didn’t catch, let us know!

Improving trust and authenticity in the NFT space is among OpenSea’s top priorities, and we’re excited to further improve the OpenSea experience and share more updates on our efforts to keep the community safe. Stay tuned!