A bug in the popular NFT marketplace OpenSea caused at least 42 NFTs to be sent to a burn address. This means they can no longer be moved and are effectively destroyed.
The issue was first brought up by Nick Johnson, the lead developer of the Ethereum Name Service (ENS), noting that when Nick Johnson relayed an ENS name that came in NFT format, it went to a burning address. This means that it is sent to an address that no one has checked and can never be moved again.
ENS is a service that allows you to associate blockchain addresses with domain names. It is designed to make it easier to send transactions to human-readable names instead of complex blockchain addresses.
Regarding the burned ENS name, Johnson noted that it was the first ENS name ever recorded. The name was rilxxlir.eth, which is a palindrome. Johnson transferred the ENS name to his own account by entering OpenSea. Thus, he accidentally sent it to the burning address. Johnson used the following statements in his tweet:
“A frantic call to OpenSea turned out to be the first and apparently only victim of a bug that has appeared on their transfer page in the last 24 hours, affecting all ERC721 transfers to ENS names. The ownership of rilxxlir.eth is now permanently burned.”
Since Johnson remains the controller of the ENS name, he can still change it in terms of the blockchain addresses to which the ENS name is linked. It just can’t bear the name itself.
Johnson then took information from other similarly affected people and compiled a list of 32 transactions that included 42 NFTs. The majority of NFTs were of the ERC-721 standard, but a few were using ERC-1155. He checked the base prices (the lowest in the market) for each of the NFTs and calculated the total at $100,000.
Johnson claimed that OpenSea has now fixed the bug.
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