CheckNFT.iO, Data-Driven BI Service for NFT Ecosystem

CheckNFT.iO

An intelligent solution to analyze NFT collectibles, detect fraudulent activities and minimize risks

About the client

Vasiliy Karpitski and Alexei Dulub are entrepreneurs and blockchain enthusiasts with more than 30 years of joint experience in technology and software development. After analyzing the market potential as well as challenges associated with NFT investment, the technology evangelists decided to join hands to develop a smart solution that would help NFT investors make informed decisions.

Details

The PixelPlex team has delivered a smart platform that provides users with actionable data on NFT collectibles, their provenance and ownership, thus enabling NFT enthusiasts to reduce risks and earn revenue. It also addresses the needs of businesses and analytics firms that can quickly access a large array of structured data and the results generated by ML models for analytical purposes.

Team: 15+

  • Blockchain developer
  • Solutions architect
  • Full-stack developer
  • Data analyst
  • Data engineer
  • Data scientists
  • DevSecOps
  • Project manager
  • Business analyst
  • UI/UX designer

Business opportunity

The exponential growth of NFTs has attracted many creators, businesses, and NFT enthusiasts, willing to invest in the NFT market. In 2021, the sales of NFTs hit $17,6 billion with most of them occurring on secondary markets. NFT collectibles have turned into one of the most profitable capital investments. At the same time, the huge growth of the NFT sphere has eventually resulted in an increasing number of scams and frauds like blacklists, wash trades, duplicates, and more. Therefore, NFT buyers, creators, and businesses are now struggling to make quality investment decisions and avoid risks.

Project goals

To help NFT enthusiasts and investors avoid fraud, evaluate risks, make better decisions, and earn yield, the startup decided to build CheckNFT.iO — a platform that would collect and analyze large amounts of data from the blockchain network and ML models. The platform would allow anyone interested in the NFT industry to easily verify NFT collectibles, find gems, and tackle scams while delivering tangible benefits for enterprise customers and analytical firms by providing them with easy access to up-to-date NFT data. The PixelPlex team was assigned to build the CheckNFT.iO solution and accomplish the following goals:

  • 1

    Create a platform that would allow users to browse, compare, and analyze data behind NFT collectibles

  • 2

    Equip the solution with an AI engine that analyzes NFT’s history on blockchain and monitors newly created blocks in real time to provide users with potential copies or IP exploits

  • 3

    Add advanced analytics tools like marketplace analytics, top NFT gems, etc.

  • 4

    Prevent scams, blacklists, price pumps, wash trading, and other financial manipulations with the help of AI algorithm that detects the fraudulent smart contract creations, mints, and other suspicious activities, thus enabling users to invest in a much safer way

  • 5

    Ensure intuitive navigation so that both NFT newbies and professionals in the field could easily use the service

Work done

  • Sophisticated, intelligent platform that pulls data from multiple sources (blockchain, marketplace, metadata standards, etc.) for NFT analysis

  • Data intelligence and analytics tools that leverage AI-enriched data to track trends and deliver actionable data

  • Risk analysis tools that make use of AI to evaluate various scenarios like the ability to change the number of tokens or metadata in a project

  • Trained and deployed ML models that find fakes through image and text analysis and help users prevent losses

  • Browser extension for top marketplaces like OpenSea, Rarible, SuperRare, Nifty Gateway, MakersPlace, and Foundation to ensure seamless user experience

  • Intuitive UI/UX for users of all levels

Solution

PixelPlex delivered CheckNFT.iO — an all-in-one platform that allows users to search and analyze NFT collectibles, compare several tokens, evaluate risks, receive notifications about their favorite collections, and get data on top gems.
CheckNFT.iO currently has the largest and richest database with tens of millions of ERC-721/ERC-1155 tokens. The platform is capable of performing a high-quality analysis in just a few seconds, which makes it a perfect solution not only for NFT investors, but also creators, businesses in the NFT field, and analytics agencies.
The UI of the ID.me verification page of Patientory mobile app

Project features at a glance

A pile of coins icon

The largest database of tokens and NFT collections

An infographic icon

NFT performance indicators and value projection forecasts

A microscheme icon

AI-based NFT analysis

A two block swap icon

ML models to compare NFTs and find fakes

An attention icon

Risk alerts and notifications on fraudulent activities

A block with a checkmark icon

NFT side-by-side comparison

A convenience store icon

Support of top existing marketplaces

A crown icon

Statistics on top NFT gems and collectibles

Collectibles search

The platform allows users to search for specific NFTs and NFT collections based on different parameters, including:
  • Collectible name
  • Creator ID
  • Transaction hash
  • Contract address
We also plan to implement search by image by adding the possibility to search for NFTs based on the uploaded images.
The UI of the ID.me verification page of Patientory mobile app

Got an idea? Let’s work together

Collectibles data

Basic information

The CheckNFT.iO service has all relevant data that users need to make a decision on a specific NFT. It contains some basic information, such as NFT category, collection address, creation date, rarity, pay-out royalties, edition, date of the first sale, and more.
The UI of the ID.me verification page of Patientory mobile app

NFT performance indicators

To provide users with unique insights, the platform showcases charts and diagrams with NFT performance indicators, namely floor price info, sales volume, sales info per period, price growth diagram, the total number of sales and their frequency, entry vs last sale price, collectible sales vs creator sales vs editions sales, and more.
The UI of the ID.me verification page of Patientory mobile app

Browser plugin

Users can also access this data via the CheckNFT browser plugin and view key stats and risk summary right on the page of a marketplace.
The UI of the ID.me verification page of Patientory mobile app

NFT activity history

The platform offers an up-to-date diagram on NFT activity history, which includes data on all NFT offers and bids, batch sales, auction cancel date, etc. The CheckNFT.iO service continually checks and processes new events on a marketplace, so in case there is a new activity associated with a specific token, e.g. a new bid, it automatically pulls this data to the platform. As a result, users always receive relevant data on each NFT.
The UI of the ID.me verification page of Patientory mobile app

Value projection forecast

Users can request a detailed value projection forecast of the collectible to make an informed decision before the purchase. To do this, the platform will apply the ML model that will evaluate NFT floor price trends.
CheckNFT.iO can also recommend users on the best listing price at a required time interval. For example, the ML model finds out that the floor price is 10 ETH, which means that the liquidity is high. Therefore, it can offer a user to set up a price 12 ETH to find a buyer within 3 days or 16 ETH to find a buyer within a month.
The UI of the ID.me verification page of Patientory mobile app

Risks analysis

To help users avoid fraud and scams, we implemented a risk analysis module that provides a summary on critical, middle, and minor risks. The module applies the AI engine to detect fraudulent and suspicious activities and uses ML models to detect scams and find fakes through image analysis. CheckNFT.iO contains the following risk parameters:

Artifact storage as one of the risk parameters available for monitoring on checkNFT.iO
Tampering with artifact storage

Risks associated with the data being modified or deleted by a centralized service.

Editable Metadata as one of the risk parameters available for monitoring on checkNFT.iO
Tampering with token metadata

Risks associated with changing the metadata URL or changing/deleting the metadata itself.

Creator Royalty as one of the risk parameters available for monitoring on checkNFT.iO
Royalty distribution

Potential abuses of royalty implementations. A high royalty percentage is inherent to cash grab projects.

Metadata storage as one of the risk parameters available for monitoring on checkNFT.iO
Collection storage

There are high risks of storing NFTs on the Storefront marketplace contract. Successful projects use separate contracts for full control and autonomy.

Collection sales as one of the risk parameters available for monitoring on checkNFT.iO
Collection trading

A low number of sales indicates low liquidity of the collection meaning that there will be problems with selling the user’s NFT.

The number of unique owners as one of the risk parameters available for monitoring on checkNFT.iO
Allocation of unique owners

A low allocation percentage indicates that the project is controlled by a group of people that can manipulate it. It also indicates fraud/copycat projects.

Token type as one of the risk parameters available for monitoring on checkNFT.iO
Token standards

The token standard defines its use cases. ERC-721 tokens are unique and are standard for most NFT projects. ERC-1155 tokens are semi-fungible and can have multiple copies.

To help users avoid trading malpractices like blacklists, wash trades, and price pumps, the platform will also inform them on price manipulation, dump sale, IPR infringement, and duplicates risks.

AI & data intelligence service

Our team equipped the CheckNFT.iO service with data intelligence and artificial intelligence algorithms that benefit both NFT artists and businesses. The service continually evaluates NFT’s history on blockchain and monitors newly created blocks in real time, thus providing users with actionable data. We also built the functionality that allows the platform to send IP violation notifications to NFT artists and project creators, thus helping them protect their artwork from fraud. The service is also beneficial for businesses touching NFTs by providing them with alerts on fraud detection, wallets analysis and profiling, and more.

Data sources

To help businesses and NFT enthusiasts get a complete picture of each collectible at a glance, the data intelligence service collects information from multiple sources, including blockchain, metadata standards, and marketplace.

Blockchain

By literally decomposing each block into atoms through a custom-built Ethereum node, the platform receives data on token basic information, token creation transaction, history of token transfers, and token metadata address.

Metadata standards

The platform collects such metadata as token name and description, token URL, and additional attributes from multiple sources while being able to pull data from broken links through its IPFS service.

Marketplace

Token listing price is the only information that is requested directly from a marketplace as it is not stored on the blockchain. We stick to the immutable source of truth, therefore the platform collects all other information from the blockchain network.

Top NFT gems and collectibles

To empower NFT enthusiasts to easily find most prominent NFTs, the platform’s ML algorithm forms Top Collectible Sales along with gems from Top Volume Collections, which can be filtered by day, week, and month. The platform also showcases the following useful stats:

  • Top 10 Collectible Sales
  • Top 10 Newly Minted Collections
  • Top 10 Volume Collections
  • Top 10 Volume Growing Collections

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NFTs side-by-side comparison

We’ve also added an NFT side-by-side comparison option for users to make quick decisions on their favorite NFTs. A user can compare up to 5 NFTs at once, having all the NFT parameters at a glance.
The UI of the ID.me verification page of Patientory mobile app

Browser extension

To create an Uber-like experience and enable users to immediately analyze NFT collections and identify fraud right on a marketplace they browse, the PixelPlex team has built a CheckNFT.iO Chrome plugin. The plugin doesn’t require any approval from a marketplace and fits seamlessly with its interface.
The browser extension allows users to get unique insights on NFT’s performance, compare NFT collectibles, and check risk alerts to make better decisions. This way users can get actionable data right away, without the need to browse various services and search for market insights.
At present, the CheckNFT.iO plugin supports the following marketplaces:
OpenSea
Rarible
SuperRare
MakersPlace
Nifty Gateway
Foundation
The UI of the ID.me verification page of Patientory mobile app

Technologies & tools

CheckNFT.iO is built on top of the Nest.js and Next.js frameworks leveraging TypeScript, JavaScript, and Go. To ensure increased scalability and flexibility, the platform is built using a microservices architecture and ETL process. As a result, adding new marketplaces, blockchains or preparing data for ML models does not require making any changes to the core of the platform, which significantly reduces development time.

JavaScript
TypeScript
React
React Native
Node.js
Express
Fastify
Solidity
Go
PostgreSQL

CheckNFT.iO backend components

The CheckNFT.iO platform comprises the following system components:

API service

The service is responsible for handling API requests.

Token processor

The service connects CheckNFT.iO with CryptoAPI on top of which the platform is built. The CryptoAPI is responsible for working with blockchain raw data, which is further processed and enriched by the CheckNFT.iO platform.

BC Connectors

Each blockchain has its separate blockchain connection process.

MP Connectors

Each marketplace has its separate blockchain connection process, which provides for the unification of requests and data processing.

MetaData Connector

The service responsible for handling data on the contract’s metadata was also designed as a separate module to unload the processes of the main services.

BC Watchers

The service is responsible for finding new contracts. It monitors new blocks, identifies transactions in which a new contract was created, and tries to determine whether the contract is an NFT contract.

MP Watchers

Each marketplace should have a separate service launched. The service is responsible for detecting new events and, if such found, informs the Token processor about them.

ML models

CheckNFT.iO also applies ML models that continuously process input data while being retrained and optimized. Currently, the platform uses 3 different ML models, which:

1

Compare the names of the tokens to ensure that there are no manipulations with symbols or replaced letters

2

Search for similar images by building embeddings with convolutional neural networks and then finding the closest image using the nearest neighbor algorithm

3

Analyze and detect wash trading activities by connecting interacting groups and identifying unusual patterns

Results

Within the first month since its launch (as of June 2022), CheckNFT.iO boasts the following results:

  • 71M

    tokens are processed on Ethereum

  • 134M+

    events processed (sales, transfer, minting)

  • 176k+

    NFT collections in total