nightshades
2 years agoNft's and their traps / What to check
What you have to remember is that a Non-Fungible-Token will always exist on a blockchain (Where the decentralized assets exist) however there are malicious actor that also abuse of this fact.
For example you could lure your entire "user base" to make them collect their NFT's on a "Side Chain", A side chain is simply an internal blockchain implemented on a personnal server or VPS, it is usually not CONNECTED ON OFFICIAL BLOCKCHAIN which mean that the decentralized aspect is immitated, as you can have a dashboard that show the transaction and the address while you can imagine that anyone can host this on a personnal dedicated server and make a quick website using NextJS / VueJS / Nuxt framework.
To avoid this kind of trap, on any project you visit, first of all never spend your money without doing your own research, If for what you collect there is no wallet connection operation or there is no "MINT" required when collecting a so called-asset or so called NFT, Then this is clearly not a NFT but a virtual asset stored on a server that you are collecting, So ultimately you have no ownership, one ban and that's it.
Always verify that the asset exist on a real blockchain, if for example the project in question is said to MINT on Polygon, Then go on the official polygon explorer and check for your transaction, if they tell you that there is no "web 3 interaction with the wallet" because its running on their blockchain, Then it prove to be a risky project since from one day to another they run away, your assets will be completely lost, only NFT's that officialy exist on official blockchain network are those who will live forever.
Also about the NFT's Metadata (the rarity etc, you know, the properties you see on OpenSea), If they are not hosted on a IPFS decentralized server, this mean that the creator could change the properties of the NFT at anytime, You would not want to buy a "Legendary" NFT for a game, and the week later, that it was suddenly downgraded to a common, or even deleted ! Yes, If the metadata is hosted on a server and that the file is deleted, On OpenSea you'll see an empty NFT with no image, nothing ! Basically it would be worthless.
Tl;DR
A Real NFT will always exist on a real blockchain, If there is no interaction asked for 'collecting' a so called NFT, Then my friend, You are simply collecting a virtual asset hosted on a website or it only reside on the personnal mini-blockchain of the project creator, which mean that there is an high risk to loose ownership.
Also a very good starting ressource for those who begin in web3 is to learn at
https://academy.binance.com they are well written articles and with them you will most likely be in a good shape to avoid any sort of fraud.