NFTs & Web3 Will Be Hot in 2022: Mike Novogratz

Galaxy Digital’s founder and CEO Mike Novogratz is an NFT advocate who expressed his enthusiasm for the industry in a public speech. Mike has a strong belief that NFT will be the unquestionable leader in 2022.

Novogratz stated in a post earlier this month that NFTs will be the focus of crypto and Web 3.0. The creator is a huge proponent of cryptocurrency, having invested 85 percent of his net worth in the industry.

He made some valid points. Since mid-2021, NFTs and the Metaverse concept as a whole have swept the Internet by storm. It became a talking point that drew widespread attention from the tech-savvy to the general public.

Novogratz Sees The Trends

Tech behemoths are also incorporating NFTs into their operations, while celebrities and public figures continue to spread the word by starting their own NFT collectibles or investing millions of dollars to acquire some.

Recently, Justin Bieber made another purchase of 166 ETH for a Bored Ape NFT. This is the second NFT that was bought. Previously, the “Peaches” singer paid $1.3 million worth of ETH for an NFT in the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection.

According to statistics from The Block, there was an increase in NFT trading volume in January, surpassing six billion dollars.

The report detailed,

“Monthly NFT volume grew 129% in January relative to December. Much of the increase was due to the latest contender in the NFT marketplace scene, called LookRare, which accumulated nearly $2 billion in volume after its launch on January 10.“

Massive Gains in the Sector

Bored Ape Yacht Club is one of the largest and most popular NFT collections right now. Inspired by Crypto Punks, the collection consists of 10.000 NFTs, formed under apes images minted on Ethereum blockchain.

Since its release, the collection has generated over $750 million worth of trading volume, with a multitude of celebrities joining the owner’s force such as Paris Hilton, Snoop Dogs, and Justin Bieber.

The world’s largest NFT collection, however, has shown some vulnerable points. Data published from its mining smart contract showed that the owner that controls the wallet associated with the contract has the ability to mint a limitless number of NFT pieces at this time.

In theory, instead of setting “some Bored Apes side,” the “reserveApes” function in the contract practically permits minting of up to 30 apes at a time without even paying network costs of 0.08 ETH. But this is not the worst part – this bug allows the indefinite minting of the collection.

Still a Growing Asset Class

The code was most likely mistakenly left open and there should be another method that prevents the “reserveApes” function from being repeated by the owner.

According to the on-chain data, the account with the last letter “EE4D03” is still operational and has the potential to mint additional apes. The continuous action could devalue the floor price of the entire collection, leading to a potential ruin.

The wallet has the authority to modify the metadata associated with each non-fungible token currently in circulation inside that collection.

So even Mike’s point of view makes a great sense, there are a couple of things that the NFT ecosystem needs to overcome before leading the crypto space and obviously, Web3.

Previously, numerous NFT-related exploits took place in the space where the largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea.

It experienced a technical problem with their API that allowed a user to buy and sell non-fungibles at lower prices and then sell them at a higher price than the market price, among other things.

Hacker attacks are always the major issue. The recent case also took place on OpenSea.

By exploiting the flaw again, hackers had no obstacle stealing eight NFT pieces from the platform, worth $117,000 at the time. The stolen pieces reportedly belonged to well-known collections such as Cool Cat and Bored Ape Yacht Club, among others.