Yes, We Actually Made $120k

Debunking a defamatory claim based on blatant misunderstandings of OpenSea data.

Following our profile in CNBC, a number of utterly ridiculous conspiracy theories have formed around the project based on people’s poor understanding around how crypto works. One of the most pernicious of these seems based around thinking that “volume traded” on OpenSea, a popular NFT marketplace, represents our revenue on the project, even though the CNBC article itself makes clear reference to those being secondary sales.

The 4.7 ETH volume traded here does not reflect our initial sales of the ducks.

Many people without the technical savvy who get into selling NFTs simply upload images and other various bits of data to go on the token to the “Create NFT” form on sites like OpenSea. Thus the creators are made the initial holders of the token and their sales of them are reflected in the volume traded.

However, Dastardly Ducks used a custom smart contract with minting on our site. None of the $120,000 in revenue cited came through sales on OpenSea — though we do get 5% of all resales there. The 10,000 ducks were originally sold directly by us with tokens that were minted at the time of purchase with gas fees paid by the buyer.

What is great about blockchain technology is this was all recorded using tamper-proof records on the night that it happened. The contract is available on Etherscan showing myself (ExistentialEnso.eth) as the creator with a revenue of 38.1456 ETH within 6 hours of launch, records of all of the mints in the transaction history, and my withdrawal of those funds. 

On Etherscan, under Analytics > Ether Transfers, one can easily see the total money flow in and out of the contract on the 19th.

Furthermore, the collection is also listed for secondary sales on sites other than OpenSea, such as LooksRare. Given OpenSea’s much higher popularity, it shows far higher volume traded — because far more secondary sales have happened on there.

The volume is different on LooksRare, since fewer secondary duck sales happened on it.

CNBC expected us to provide all of this information, and, thankfully, their reporter understands this technology better than the average Twitter user looking for reasons to launch a witch-hunt against marginalized creators.