Donald Trump NFTs under fire for internal minting, design plagiarism

The Donald Trump-branded NFT trading card project has come under fire after it was revealed that the project minted 1000 NFTs internally — 68 of which were considered the rarest in the collection.

The rare NFTs included 47 of 179 1/1 ‘s and 21 of 70 autographed NFTs.

Super Rare NFTs minted internally

On-chain analyst, OKHotshot (@NFTherder) reported on Dec. 17 that 1000 Donald Trump NFT trading cards were minted and then sent to a Gnosis vault wallet (Gnosis safe) created on Dec. 14 — just a day before the project launched.

OKHotshot claimed that a total of 26% of the 1/1 NFTs and 28% of the autographed NFTs were minted and sent to the Gnosis safe. These highly rare NFT traits are found in just 0.40% and 0.16% of all cards respectively. The Gnosis safe holdings can be reviewed on Opensea.

The internally minted 1000 NFTs can be accounted for in the FAQs of the official website, which states:

“Only 45,000 Trump Digital Trading Cards will be created in this initial series. 44,000 of them will be made available for sale”

However, it was not stated explicitly that over 25% of both the rarest trait NFTs would be internally minted and sent to — what seems to be — a team-owned Gnosis safe.

Donald Trump does not own the project

The Donald Trump NFT project is not owned by Donald Trump but instead owned by NFT International LLC., as stated in the official website’s footnotes:

“NFT INT LLC is not owned, managed or controlled by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization, CIC Digital LLC or any of their respective principals or affiliates. NFT INT LLC uses Donald J. Trump’s name, likeness and image under paid license from CIC Digital LLC, which license may be terminated or revoked according to its terms.”

However, ownership of the project is obfuscated in the official website’s statement on the landing page that states:

“For the first time ever, collect your own rare digital collectible Trading Card by President Trump.”

Furthermore, Trump’s post on Truth Social on Dec. 15 — prior to the launch — added further ambiguity to the matter:

Design copywriting issues

Claims that the Donald Trump NFT trading cards designs were taken from Shutterstock and other images have been circulating on Twitter.

Matthew Sheffield, National Correspondent at The Young Turks digital media, created a thread on Dec. 16 revealing several alleged examples of stock images used for the Donald Trump NFT trading card designs.

Centralized and stored off-chain

OKHotshot also identified that all metadata and artwork was being stored off-chain. This means that anyone with access to that storage and domain has the ability to change the properties and artwork without revealing the changes on the blockchain for user verification.

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Source: https://cryptoslate.com/donald-trump-nfts-under-fire-for-internal-minting-design-plagiarism/