NFT Scams to Avoid: Fake Mints, Phishing Links and Wash Trading

It's 11pm. A post from what looks like your favourite collection's X account announces a surprise mint for existing holders, open for 30 minutes only. The link works. The site looks exactly like the project's. Your wallet pops up and you tap "Sign".

Two minutes later, your NFTs and your stablecoins are in someone else's wallet.

Nothing was hacked. You signed. A lot of NFT theft works this way, which is good news in one sense: most of your defence is knowing when to slow down. Here are the scams to know, and the habits that beat them.

Fake mint sites

How it works. Scammers build a copy of a project's mint page on a lookalike web address (one extra letter, a different ending) and push it through sponsored search results, replies under the real project's posts, or a hacked account. "Stealth mint", "surprise mint" and "holders only, 30 minutes" are favourite hooks, because urgency stops people checking. The page asks for a transaction or an approval that drains your wallet instead of minting anything.

How to beat it. Bookmark a project's official website when you first find it, and open mint links only from there. Cross-check any announcement on more than one official channel. Genuine projects usually announce mints well in advance. A countdown timer on a link you weren't expecting is a reason to close the tab.

Phishing in your DMs

Discord and X are where many of the approaches happen. Watch for:

• "Congratulations, you've won a whitelist spot. Claim it here."
• A "moderator" telling you your wallet has been flagged and needs to be "verified" or "synced".
• "Support" replying to your public complaint and moving you to DMs.
• A free NFT that turns up in your wallet with a link to "claim" something.
• Anyone asking for your recovery phrase, for any reason.

That last one is always a scam. Your recovery phrase never goes into a website, a form or a chat. Our guide to the seed phrase explains why it's the master key to everything in the wallet.

Official accounts and Discord servers do get hacked, so even a link from the "real" channel deserves a second look when it's sudden and urgent. Turn off DMs from server members, and remember that genuine moderators don't message you first.

Signatures that drain wallets

This is the part worth learning properly. Your wallet asks for different kinds of permission, and some are far more powerful than they look.

What your wallet asks	What it can allow	When it's normal
Connect	The site sees your address	Almost any NFT site; harmless on its own
Sign a plain-language message	Proves you own the address	Logging in to a marketplace
Approve, or "set approval for all"	Another address can move your tokens, or every NFT you hold in a collection	Listing on a marketplace you opened yourself
Sign typed data full of numbers and addresses	Can authorise a transfer or a sale without a separate transaction	Some genuine apps, and many drainers
Send a transaction	Moves funds now	Paying a mint price you expected

Two things to remember. First, "no gas fee" doesn't mean safe. Some of the most damaging requests are free signatures that list your NFTs for sale at zero, or permit someone to spend your tokens later. Second, if your wallet shows a warning, read it. If you can't tell what a request will do, reject it. Missing a genuine mint costs you nothing; signing the wrong thing can cost you the whole wallet.

Approvals you gave months ago can still be used today. Our guide to wallet drainers and token approvals shows how to review and revoke them.

Wash-traded floor prices

How it works. A small group of wallets buy and sell the same NFTs between themselves, over and over. Volume looks busy and the floor price climbs. Sometimes the aim is to farm marketplace rewards; sometimes it's to convince outsiders that a collection is hot. You buy at the "floor" and discover there's no one on the other side when you want to sell.

How to spot it:

• Compare the number of unique holders with the number of items. A big collection held by a handful of wallets is a warning.
• Open the sales history. The same pairs of wallets trading back and forth, often at round prices, is a classic sign.
• Look for volume spikes with no matching buzz from real people.
• On a block explorer, check whether the busiest wallets were all funded from the same source.

Copycat collections

Scammers copy a popular collection's name and art, sometimes adding "Official" or "V2", and list it on the same marketplaces. To check:

1. Get the contract address from the project's official website.
2. Compare it with the contract on the listing you're about to buy from.
3. Look at the collection's creation date, item count and number of holders.

Marketplace verification badges help, but the contract address is the real test. More checks before buying are in our guide on what to know before you buy NFTs.

A wallet setup that limits the damage

• Keep two wallets. A "vault" wallet holds anything valuable and never connects to new sites. A separate wallet holds only what you need for minting and experimenting. Our guide to Web3 gaming wallet safety explains the same idea for games.
• Use a hardware wallet for the vault if your holdings justify it.
• Don't park money you'll need for rent or school fees in a wallet you use to mint.

If it's already happened

1. Revoke approvals on the affected wallet first, because any approval left in place can still be used.
2. Move whatever is left to a fresh wallet that has its own recovery phrase. If you typed your phrase anywhere, treat the old wallet as permanently compromised.
3. Report the fake site and accounts to the marketplace and the platform where you found them.
4. Ignore anyone offering to recover your NFTs for a fee. They can't, and they'll take more.

Turning NFT sales into naira

If you've sold an NFT and you're holding ETH or SOL, you can sell it for naira on KWIQ with zero fees: see how to sell Ethereum for naira or sell Solana for naira. Open the coin's wallet in the app, copy the deposit address and send on the network the app shows.

Keep your minting wallet for minting and your naira plans somewhere simpler. Download the KWIQ app to cash out the coins you've earned, and see the naira amount before you confirm.