With the rising popularity of NFTs and blockchain technology, it has become extremely important for NFT owners to protect their digital assets from theft or hackers.
Below are a few tips you can follow to protect your NFT collection:
- Never disclose the private key or seed phrase of your wallets
When you buy an NFT it resides in your wallet. Wallets like Metamask have a seed phrase and each account in it has a private key. Both of them should be kept secret and should not be shared with anyone. Sharing these will give the control of your wallet to the other and they can easily transfer your digital assets/NFTs to their wallets.
- Keep your digital assets/NFTs in multiple wallets
In case you hold a large number of NFTs, another way to protect them is to keep them in different wallets. You can use a wallet to purchase the NFTs from different marketplaces and after that you can transfer them to another wallet which you haven’t connected with any marketplace. By spreading your NFTs across different wallets, you can minimise the chance of losing all your NFTs as there is less chance of all your wallets getting hacked together. But this comes at a cost, you will have to bear the transaction charges for the wallet to wallet transfers.
- Use hardware wallets
Hardware wallets are another excellent option to protect your Digital Assets. Although it comes at a cost but is one of the safest options to secure your assets.
Ledger and Trezor are two most popular options for hardware wallets. These wallets keep the private key offline and thus provide an extra layer of security.
- Beware of Scammers
With NFT marketplaces becoming more popular with the rise in crypto trading, there is also an increase in the number of scammers on these platforms. The most common way of scamming is through Discord DMs saying you have won an NFT from a popular NFT project. Before clicking on any such links you should double check with the NFT Project’s site or with any other community members. It’s better not to trust any links which you receive in Twitter, Discord etc from people you don’t actually know.
- Increase your knowledge about NFTs and Marketplaces
Whenever you buy an NFT, spend some time to gain knowledge about that NFT project and its future roadmap. You should increase your knowledge about the NFT marketplaces so that you don’t fall into the trap of scammers. For example, Opensea shows a blue checkmark next to verified projects. Likewise each platform will have its own way to show authentic NFTs. Self educating is the best way to identify scammers and to be safe from them.
Follow the guidelines above to ensure you are able to robustly safeguard your NFTs. Your digital assets are as important and valuable as your physical ones and need an equal level of protection.
