Beware Copyminters!

author: chilltulpa

In the spirit of keeping artists and collectors alike safe, we'd like to share a little about what a copyminter is and how to navigate what to do on Hicetnunc if you think you’ve encountered one.

First, a copyminter is simply someone who is minting an artists work which is not theirs, nor do they have the right/blessing to do so. With the advent of a truly decentralized art community, such things are inevitable - but education and being vocal about such things is key to protecting our blossoming environment.

When on an artists page, if you see no social links what so ever - no searchable names of said artist on descriptions in their pieces - no tags on the art to potentially search by (such as the artists name, or the name of the piece) - no collection name incase they’ve dropped a cohesive collection that is part of a series - if multiple sources pop up from right clicking and “google searching image” (this may not work for gif’s) in this scenario you can then reach out to the artist personally if you can link their name to the piece - if multiple of these situations seem highly suspicious to you, it is recommended to avoid purchasing from such accounts until you can follow a potential trail and verify their work.

Here's a list of red flags to look after to be save from copyminters:

• A work has no hint to a social profile (not on the single OBJKT and not on the profile page)
• A profile has social accounts, but those accounts never tweeted or posted about minting on hicetnunc
• A work of a known artist like John Karel, is offered at a very low price
• The account is relatively new (you can check it's transaction history by pasting the address into tzstats.com)
• Use reverse search (in Chrome that would be right click on picture and search image in Google) to see who the original creator is. If it's a widespread gif or picture, it's pretty sure that it was stolen

If you come across such an account with multiple red flags & have done these things in order to authenticate, and have determined it is most likely a copyminter - please report this abuse to the Hicetnunc Discord where one of the moderators will move swiftly to remove such addresses.

We are one of the most fastest moving inclusive platforms to arise in this current era of art, and it takes all of us together to uphold what makes Hicetnunc so great in the first place. Thank you in advance for your contribution and happy discovering!

If anyone would like to add to this or thinks of another example in order to verify a work please let us know in the discord.

PS. A profile (those made on tzkt.io and displayed on the account page of HEN is NO verification. tzkt.io does not verify the authenticity of the information or the ownership of the social accoounts.