[Ethereum] Is it possible to unmint an NFT? as in, is the reversal of the tokenisation process feasible

nft

Recently an artist friend of mine got scammed on Rarible. The Scammers put up his original artwork for a reserve price after minting 22 copies of which 2 were sold. My friend came to know of this after he noticed that 2 copies had already been sold.

He is currently in the process of drafting a DMCA complaint for taking down the scammer's profile.

Since he wanted to sell the artwork in the future (by himself), he was wondering if it would be possible to UNMINT the existing NFT from the Blockchain, and somehow make it look like it never existed in the first place.

In any case, I'd love to know what can be done when awful shit like this happens.

Best Answer

Technically speaking it is possible: the opposite of minting a token is burning it, meaning that it is removed from the blockchain (only the transactions that minted and burned that token will remain there as a kind of log).

However, minting and burning functions are optional in the NFT standard definition (in your case, it is probably ERC1155 if you have multiple copies of a token).

Moreover, when we talk about collectible NFTs, such as artwork, the goal is to make them unique, so it doesn't make much sense to have a burn function in the smart contract that created them. Therefore, it is likely that you can't do anything with those couple of tokens already sold; who has the token ownership, has full control on it -and nobody else has.

I guess Rarible will be able to precise what can or can't be done. It all depends on how the smart contract to manage their NFTs are designed.

Related Solutions

NFT – Is It Possible to Mint an NFT Directly into Another User’s Wallet Without Consent?

It's depending on the minting process defined in the contract.

But in most case yes. These function often provide a "to" address argument. this mean that you can mint an NFT for another address.

No transaction will require your private key.Ever. At least not in the front end since your connecting using Metamask and they provide the connection to the wallet.

Once a NFT is Minted it is sent.

So could still mint an NFT and send it to someone after.

Without anyones consent!

To figure if an NFT was sent to someone rather than mint to someone, look at the from address.

if the from address is 0x0000... It was minted to you. If the address is not 0x0000... The token was transfered to you

You could also see who made the call to that mint function.

NFT – How to Write an NFT Contract for Minting Specified NFTs?

Yes, it can be done by creating a contract that inherits from ERC721PresetMinterPauserAutoId.sol preset. Then you can use the internal _mint(address to, uint256 tokenId) function to specify the id. If the preset is not needed, the plain ERC721 contract can also be used. Same is true for the ERC1155 standard. You can find these contract standards in the OpenZeppelin repo.

Sample code in solidity:

// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
pragma solidity >=0.4.22 <0.9.0;

import "@openzeppelin/contracts/token/ERC721/presets/ERC721PresetMinterPauserAutoId.sol";

contract NFTtest is ERC721PresetMinterPauserAutoId {

    constructor()
        ERC721PresetMinterPauserAutoId(
            "NonFungibleToken",
            "NFT",
            "https://example.com"
        )
    {}

    // Mint function with ID as an input
    function mint(uint256 _id) public {
        // Here you can add additional logic or pre-conditions.
        // _mint function already checks if the _id has been
        // used so no need to check again

        // Mint the NFT with the specified _id and set as the owner
        // the sender of the transaction
        _mint(msg.sender, _id);
    }
}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

NFT – Is It Possible to Mint an NFT Directly into Another User’s Wallet Without Consent?

NFT – How to Write an NFT Contract for Minting Specified NFTs?

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