How did NFT thieves escape from the massive robbery? Cryptographic transactions occur on the public ledger, so it should be easy to find the culprit. However, NFT thieves are almost unlikely to be caught. Even today's rapidly growing Web3 field can not completely do that? Why? The following article will answer this question for you.

1、 Why does the transparency of Web3 not prevent NFT theft?

No matter which method is adopted, in the field of Web3, any thief needs a reliable retreat plan. Since every transaction of the blockchain is publicly listed, it takes considerable effort to escape NFT theft.

After selling stolen NFT collections and obtaining cryptocurrency,NFT thieves have several options:

1. Fiat's encryption will be sold on the exchange as soon as possible.

2. Transfer ETH to the conspirator's wallet in exchange for Fiat.

3. Hide their tracks and wait for a while

If NFT thieves successfully convert their encrypted stolen goods into fiat currency, tracking will become difficult. Because they can use old-fashioned criminal means of money laundering to put dirty money into legitimate businesses and mix it with clean money.

However, Web3 criminals can also use Web3 privacy plan to mix encryption to make their activities look clean. Moreover, privacy is very important for many early Web3 adopters, because we all know that NFT thieves and other network criminals will use these methods to cover up their tracks. This led to a recent review of Blender The debate over encryption mixers such as io and UniJoin, especially Tornado Cash.

The reason is that the encryption mixer provides a smart contract that allows users to store a fixed number of ETH into a pool of up to 60000 transactions. After hosting for a period of time, you can use the token in the smart contract to extract the stored ETH to other wallets. The aggregation process makes it almost impossible to track transactions.

And tornado cash is related to an amazing amount of secret money laundering. This led the US Treasury Department to ban domestic residents from using tornado cash and forced the closure of tornado cash websites. Roman Semenov, co-founder of Tornado Cash, was also blocked by GitHub. But the open source mixer protocol can still run, and even be re uploaded to GitHub by an encryption professor to test the level of freedom of speech on Github owned by Microsoft. Therefore, it remains to be seen whether the supervision will have a real impact on the encryption criminals or only hinder the privacy of daily users.

2、 How NFT theft challenges the essence of Web3

Until now, the tenet of Web3 has always been that "code is the law". When a transaction is verified on the blockchain, it is a fact. This is the basis of the original peer-to-peer cryptocurrency Bitcoin. This approach makes it possible to build Web3 without centralized authority and regulatory authority.

However, with the influx of users with low technical background, Web3 may be challenged. In most cases of NFT theft and "unexpected discounts", NFT holders are vulnerable to it. This may indicate that NFT holders do not believe in the signs of self-restraint and responsibility, nor are they willing to read these guidelines as part of their research. As regulators and the market try to combat NFT theft, the lack of adaptation of the NFT community may lead to changes in the nature of Web3. And this sign has already appeared.Here are some examples。

1. The celebrity NFT theft victim has requested intervention.

2. The regulator closed the website and arrested open source developers.

3. Markets like OpenSea have frozen accounts, NFT, and urged victims to contact the police according to their stolen goods policy.

4. The popular encrypted wallet MetaMask now requires users to read the instructions directly.

summary

The above content is why the transparency of Web3 can not completely prevent NFT theft? Analysis of this problem. As we know, this may be the beginning of Web3 bifurcation. We may see many supervised and more user-friendly measures to cater to users who do not know much about technology. No matter how it sounds. You can also consider learning more about ways to avoid NFT theft.