The NFT work by Time magazine sold out in less than a minute, raising over $1.4 million in ETH
Short-term rushes have once again raised questions about the fairness of robot manipulation.Author: Richard Lee
At noon on September 23, Eastern Time, the "TIMEPieces" series NFTs released by TIME magazine went on sale, with 4,676 NFTs selling out in one minute, causing Ethereum gas fees to briefly exceed 10,000 Gwei. Meanwhile, this release also sparked questions about robot purchasing.
The series of NFTs consists of 37 limited edition works created by over 40 artists, sold in a random blind box format, where users can only view the NFT after purchasing and minting it. Each NFT is priced at 0.1 ETH, with a maximum purchase limit of 10 per address. According to TIME, buyers enjoy unlimited access to the official website during the 100th anniversary of TIME magazine in 2023, as well as exclusive event invitations.
According to The Block, approximately 700 addresses successfully purchased the NFTs during the initial sale, totaling 4,676 pieces. At a unit price of 0.1 ETH, TIME magazine raised over $1.4 million worth of ETH. This sale also drove up Ethereum gas prices. The Etherscan browser shows that the gas price peaked at 10,032 Gwei on that day.
However, the brief rush to buy has once again raised questions about the fairness of robot manipulation. According to TIME, the purpose of issuing TIMEPieces is to cultivate community and loyalty to expand digital subscription users. However, Anish Agnihotri, a researcher at investment firm Paradigm, analyzed on Twitter that many people were aware of the Ethereum deployment contract for the TIME sale page in advance and had prepared scripts for robot purchasing.
This is not the first time questions have been raised about fairness in the NFT market. Agnihotri pointed out that due to publicly available on-chain or off-chain information, any "first-come, first-served" NFT sale event will attract such manipulation and drive up gas fees. Solutions to these issues include limiting the minting quantity per wallet address, using different unlinked addresses for deployment, and not implementing "first-come, first-served" auction rules.
According to TIME, the NFTs from this sale can be resold on secondary markets like Opensea. Opensea shows that the current floor price for the TIMEPieces series is 1.4 ETH, which is a 14-fold increase, with 1,900 holding addresses.
