Yigit Taha OZTURK 
Onchain detective ZachXBT reached a market cap of $3.4 million with a token he unintentionally created on the Base network.
This situation arose after ZachXBT used the Zora protocol in August to issue open-edition NFTs called “243M Theft” as a free token related to his investigation into a $243 million theft. Unbeknownst to ZachXBT, the Zora protocol automatically converted these open-edition NFTs into ERC-20 tokens, allowing these tokens to be traded as memecoins on decentralized exchanges.
ZachXBT clarified that the intent behind the digital collectible was to permanently archive investigative content on the blockchain. He likened this approach to his previous articles hosted on Mirror. However, he emphasized that the Zora user interface did not clearly indicate that an ERC-20 token would be issued after the NFT minting process.
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In response to a post by crypto influencer Ansem regarding the token, ZachXBT stated, “The Zora UI currently does not inform creators that an ERC-20 token will also be launched at the end of an open edition NFT mint.” He also shared screenshots as evidence of the lack of information on this critical aspect of the user interface.
Zach minted his most recent Zora investigation using the “ERC20z” token standard, resulting in the creation of approximately 3,500 tokens on the Base network.
Zora’s automatic liquidity function is implemented through an extension of ERC-1155 called ERC20z. This standard allows NFTs to be wrapped into ERC-20 tokens or unwrapped back into ERC-1155 tokens. This enables seamless trading on decentralized exchanges like Uniswap, similar to the functionality offered by token creation platforms such as pump.fun. Apparently, Zora has made this standard the default option for all new minting processes. However, the provision of automatic liquidity led to the token being bought and sold on secondary markets, contrary to ZachXBT‘s intention.
Initially valued at nearly zero, the token’s market cap rose dramatically, reaching a total market cap of $3.4 million with a current valuation of $970 per token at the time of writing.
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