Rarible Launches Tool to Block 'Risky' Ethereum NFT Sale Orders on OpenSea

NFT marketplace Rarible announced on Tuesday that it has launched an order management tool that allows Rarible users to identify and cancel questionable sale orders from leading NFT marketplace OpenSea.

The announcement comes following news of an exploit on OpenSea that could lead to valuable NFTs, such as those from the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection, being sold for far less than the owner actually intended.

Rarible says it received several complaints from customers of irregularities in the price of NFTs shown on Rarible that the site aggregated from OpenSea. Some users complained that certain NFTs would, for example, show up as "available" on Rarible but not on OpenSea.

Rarible says it began to aggregate sale orders from OpenSea early last year in order to increase liquidity on its own multi-chain NFT marketplace. Rarible.com co-founder Alex Salnikov tells Decrypt that Rarible users have had access to OpenSea data through Rarible's activity tab for the last few months.

"We started to aggregate not only activity, but also orders from other marketplaces, and OpenSea comes first," Salnikov tells Decrypt. "So basically allowing you to fulfill your orders from other marketplaces through the Rarible front end." Salnikov says the idea is to create the “most liquid” NFT marketplace around.

Launched November 2019 by co-founders Salnikov, Alexei Falin, and Ilya Komolkin, Rarible is a popular NFT marketplace with a current all-time NFT trading volume of $277.9 million since launch, according to DappRadar.

How the order management tool works

As the company explained in a Twitter thread, NFT collectors can now go to orders.rarible.com, where after connecting their wallet they can see and cancel what Rarible calls "risky sale orders" on the order manager page, like an NFT showing at a different (and potentially lower) price than the seller intended, or NFTs that may appear as “for sale” on Rarible but not on OpenSea.

Rarible says the issue arose when Rarible users would attempt to purchase the NFT they saw, but it had already been purchased or removed from the platform where the NFT was originally listed—in this case, OpenSea.

"These orders were old orders that are supposed to be canceled but were not," Salnikov says. "That's why some of the people were able to buy some Bored Apes [and other NFTs] below the floor price." Salnikov is referring to situations like that explained by Twitter user Nate Rivers:

“An m2 serum (32 ETH floor) just sold for 11.55 ETH. How?” Rivers wrote. “The buyer made an 11.55 ETH listing two months ago and just purchased an m2 on market. His original listing still shows on Rarible and so it was bought.” M2 Serum is how Bored Ape NFTs are converted into Mutant Bored Apes, and though these serums were originally airdropped to Bored Apes owners for free, they have themselves become highly sought after and valuable NFTs.

Salnikov says that Rarible determined that the "risky sale" problem came from orders not being properly canceled on-chain.

"So the users thought the orders are canceled," he said. "But in reality, they were just hidden from the OpenSea front-end and they weren't all canceled on-chain."

Salnikov says Rarible disabled the integration, and users can only cancel orders with the tool for the time being as a move to keep them safe.

"The feedback is absolutely positive," he added. "I think what really helped is the fact that we explain how this works, actually."

Rarible's Twitter account says the OpenSea orders will be reinstated after the fix is implemented.