Metaverse & NFT Security Should Never Be Ignored
The recent rise of NFTs is both the natural result of the continued development of Internet and blockchain technology and also the response to an urgent need for more convenient ways of authenticating and circulating artworks.
Based on blockchain, NFTs have their obvious benefits; they’re tamper-proof, open, transparent, and traceable — but they’re also unique. Their inherent properties as collectibles are what allow them to be linked to the art world in the first place; but they can also map physical objects such as property, cars, and even virtual assets. An example of the space in which these physical objects can be mapped is the trendy Metaverse that has gone viral recently. It is safe to say at this point that NFTs can authenticate everything; and everything can be “NFT’ed”.
Security Issues After the Emergence of NFTs
’NFT everything’ will create a whole new world, but the development of any new technology comes with a period of familiarization and fine-tuning. Already, security issues such as copyright infringements, repeat sales, theft and the question of storage have already emerged.
1. Copyright
In a world of networking, the ease of access to resources and the ability to deploy smart contracts on blockchains make infringement prevalent, such as the case of Swedish illustrator Simon Stålenhag’s unauthorized work being made into an NFT. One consequence of this ‘freedom’ on the blockchain is that if the creator of an NFT is not the creator of the physical artwork from which it is derived, then there is a high probability of a copyright dispute breaking out.
2. Repeat Sales
Although most NFTs are currently deployed on Ethereum networks, these are not the only public chains where NFT smart contracts can be deployed. As such, there is currently no way to prevent a creator from deploying the same mapping on different public chains. From this thought, an important question emerges: If two different buyers purchase two NFTs with the same mapping but on different chains, which one is the original?
3. Theft
Like much cryptocurrency theft on the blockchain, NFT’s theft problem is largely due to the theft of keys and mnemonic phrases. The NFT boom has attracted not only collectors and investors, but also hackers. Hackers steal private keys by implanting Trojan viruses into computers, using malware to record keyboard input and screenshots. Losing your private key almost always means you will lose your cryptocurrency, so it is recommended to have a physical back-up for your private keys and mnemonics, such as copying them down with pen and paper, and keeping them in a safe. It’s also recommended to take care when taking screenshots or photos, and recommended that you don’t store them in any internet-connected environment so as to prevent theft.
4. Storage
NFTs provide a new way to transfer value, but whether this value can be saved permanently has previously not been seriously considered by most users. As such, data loss cases have begun occurring in the short time since NFTs have emerged. Musician 3LAU sold an NFT album for $11 million on NiftyGateway in early March, and the NFT was lost not long afterwards.
The cause for this problem is that most NFT tokens are currently stored separately from metadata and media data. Although the tokens themselves are stored on the blockchain, NFTs store actual content as a simple URI string in the metadata which is stored on a centralized node. This is a sub-optimal solution for Ethereum network congestion and its high cost of storage. With this approach, metadata and media data can be lost or replaced at any time, and if lost, the NFT becomes worthless even though the token is still stored on the chain.
NFT Storage Solutions
Storage is the most critical of the four security issues mentioned above. The problems of copyright, repeat sales, and theft, while important to buyers or collectors, do not affect the existence of NFTs, but only how they exist and to whom the ownership belongs.
For the entire NFT market and, by extension, the whole collectibles market, however, storage is a solution to the long-standing or even permanent problems of NFTs, which is where the true meaning of NFT value lies.
As we can see from the media data loss case mentioned above, the root cause of the storage problem is that a program which seeks to decentralize is using a centralized storage approach.
To solve this problem, decentralized storage and multiple backups are the best solutions.
1. Decentralized Storage
At present, most NFT trading platforms do not specify how tokens are stored. Most platforms actually use centralized storage methods, while a few other platforms recommend decentralized storage. Decentralized storage is still a new phenomenon relative to centralized cloud storage. Filecoin, Arweave, Storj and MEMO are some examples of projects which deal with blockchain-based decentralized storage. They work by dispersing data and storing fragments on edge nodes around the world, using blockchain decentralization technology to achieve data integrity and storage reliability. Importantly, the failure of any single edge node won’t cause data loss, making this method of storage far more reliable than centralized storage.
2. IPFS Decentralized Storage Network
IPFS is by far the most widely recommended decentralized network and is itself a storage tier for Filecoin, with powerful features that give it the potential to replace HTTP. IPFS is a protocol that addresses contents by integrating existing technologies (BitTorrent, DHT, Git, and SFS) to create a peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol that seeks to create a faster, safer, and more open next-generation Internet and enable a global file storage system where data is permanently available and can also be stored permanently.
This is the approach recommended by many NFT trading platforms, including the likes of Opensea. The famous digital platform Hashmask, which is known for its mask styles, store its NFTs with IPFS. While the platform CryptoPunks does not currently announce how its NFTs are stored, but all 10,000 NFT images in its SubstraPunks game are stored on IPFS.
3. A Better Solution: Metastorage
Although IPFS is one of the few solutions, it is not perfect. Its advantage is content addressing, but there are still deficiencies in storage. The essence of IPFS is that, if there is a link, there is a “Content ID” (CID) — as long as the data exists, the data can be found; but if the data does not exist, then the link refers to a blank. From this perspective, IPFS is more like a system that “processes data but does not store data”.
Metastorage (www.metastorage.org) is a storage project developed based on MEMO (memolabs.org) and for empowering the Metaverse & NFTs. Its storage method is “IPFS+MEFS.” MEFS is a file system built upon MEMO, and MEMO is a blockchain-based distributed storage project established in 2017 which is known for its high availability, security and reliability.
MEMO aimed at high availability since the very beginning of its design stage — it improves its storage performance from three aspects: space utilization, data verification speed, and data repair performance. And it has found the best balance between security, reliability, and availability. Its innovative data layering mechanism can effectively improve the efficiency of storage space, providing verification certification within just one second. Moreover, the original RAFI technology can significantly improve the data repair capability.
Metastorage leverages the advantages of both the IPFS and MEFS systems to create a double cycle storage. With just a single click, it is linked to both the IPFS system and the MEFS system, realizing decentralized reliable storage and double backups at the same time.
Therefore Metastorage with the combination of “IPFS+MEFS” has excellent storage performance and should be paid attention to and used by most of the NFT trading platforms and digital creators.
In this digital age, storage is the ultimate problem that needs to be solved continuously, and this holds even more true for the world of NFTs which has high expectations regarding permanent storage. Storing NFT metadata and media data on a decentralized network and making multiple backups will eliminate the embarrassing possibility of losing data while retaining ownership. With decentralized storage and multiple backups it will be possible to NFT everything.
