NFT fraud fighters Optic raise $11 million in seed funding round

NFT authentication company Optic today announced an $11 million seed funding round, led by early-stage VC fund Kleiner Perkins and Pantera Capital.

Greylock Partners, Lattice Capital, OpenSea, Circle, Polygon, CoinDCX, Neon DAO and Flamingo DAO were also among the investors.

Optic plans to use the proceeds from this round to invest in building core AI infrastructure and defining a decentralized protocol, as well as for recruitment. It will also release new tools NFT creators, collectors, as well as a public API for web3 developers.

Founded in March this year by a former director of product at Google, Andrey Doronichev, and AI researchers Roman Doronin and Vlad Vinogradov, Optic is developing an AI engine for NFT content recognition. In a statement, the company said it processes millions of newly minted NFTs each day and matches the content against authentic collections to assess their originality. Its automated monitoring tools notify marketplaces, brands and media IP owners of the results.

Copymints are an ongoing problem in the NFT space. Collections are frequently published based on popular brands, often with minor changes such as flipping the image or changing the size and colour. Some, such as Ryder Ripps’ RR BAYC collection, have also gained a following in their own right.

Taking down those collections on marketplaces is proving a challenge. Typing “Bored Ape” into OpenSea, for example, returns numerous knock-offs of the authentic collection. This is despite the fact that OpenSea brought in anti-fraud measures in May. On June 8, OpenSea co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer said the marketplace would redouble efforts to curb fraud and plagiarism on the platform.

Optic itself processes 2TB of new NFTs coming to the site every day and offers tools for moderators to review match results and turn policies into automated actions.