Network
Launch Date
Consensus
Note
Sepolia
Oct 2021
PoW
Like-for-like representation of Ethereum
Görli
Jan 2019
PoA
Proof-of-Authority
Kiln
Mar 2022
PoS
Post-Merge (for ETH2), shadow fork of the mainnet
Kintsugi
Dec 2021
PoS
DEPRECATED, use Kiln; post-Merge (for ETH2)
Ropsten
Nov 2016
PoW
DEPRECATED, use Sepolia; the Merge to happen on Jun 8, 2022
Rinkeby
Apr 2017
PoA
DEPRECATED, use Görli and Görli Faucet
Kovan
Mar 2017
PoA
DEPRECATED, use Sepolia or Görli
List of active and deprecated Ethereum testnets, including Kintsugi.
Features
Optimistic rollup 
ZK-rollup 
Proof
Uses fraud proofs to prove transaction validity. 
Uses validity (zero-knowledge) proofs to prove transaction validity. 
Capital efficiency
Requires waiting through a 1-week delay (dispute period) before withdrawing funds. 
Users can withdraw funds immediately because validity proofs provide incontrovertible evidence of the authenticity of off-chain transactions. 
Data compression
Publishes full transaction data as calldata to Ethereum Mainnet, which increases rollup costs. 
Doesn't need to publish transaction data on Ethereum because ZK-SNARKs and ZK-STARKs already guarantee the accuracy of the rollup state. 
EVM compatibility
Uses a simulation of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which allows it to run arbitrary logic and support smart contracts. 
Doesn't widely support EVM computation, although a few EVM-compatible ZK-rollups have appeared. 
Rollup costs
Reduces costs since it publishes minimal data on Ethereum and doesn't have to post proofs for transactions, except in special circumstances. 
Faces higher overhead from costs involved in generating and verifying proofs for every transaction block. ZK proofs require specialized, expensive hardware to create and have high on-chain verification costs. 
Trust assumptions
Doesn't require a trusted setup. 
Requires a trusted setup to work. 
Liveness requirements
Verifiers are needed to keep tabs on the actual rollup state and the one referenced in the state root to detect fraud. 
Users don't need someone to watch the L2 chain to detect fraud. 
Security properties 
Relies on cryptoeconomic incentives to assure users of rollup security. 
Relies on cryptographic guarantees for security. 
Start building
on Alchemy.
Sign up for free
Start building on Optimism.
Sign up for free
Start building on Arbitrum.
Sign up for free
Start building on Ethereum.
Sign up for free
Start building on Polygon.
Sign up for free
Start building on Starknet.
Sign up for free
Start building on Flow.
Sign up for free
kiln faucet
Get free Kiln ETH.
Start building today
Goerli faucet
Get free Goerli ETH.
Start building today
SEPOLIA FAUCET
Get free Sepolia ETH.
Start Building Today
mumbai faucet
Get free Mumbai Matic.
Start building today
rinkeby faucet
Get free Rinkeby
ETH.
Start building today
Start building on Ethereum.
Get started for free
Start building on Ethereum.
Get started for free
Start building on Flow.
Get started for free
Start building on Polygon.
Get started for free
Start building on Starknet.
Get started for free
Start building on Optimism.
Get started for free
Start building on Solana.
Get started for free
Start building on Solana.
Sign up for beta access
Start building on Solana.
Join the waitlist
Arbitrum logo
Start building on Arbitrum.
Get started for free
Learn
Solidity at
Alchemy
University
Get started today
curl 
https://release.solana.com/v1.10.32/solana-install-init-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.exe 
--output 
C:\solana-install-tmp\solana-install-init.exe 
--create-dirs
NFTs
SPAM NFT OVERVIEW

Spam NFTs and How to Fix Them

How to Find, Label, and Filter Spam NFTs with Alchemy's NFT API
Last Updated:
August 12, 2022

This article explains what a spam NFT is, why they are problematic to NFT dApp developers and users, as well as how to filter spam NFTs using Alchemy's NFT API endpoints and getNFTs filter.

What is a spam NFT?

Spam NFTs are unsolicited Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that are sent or airdropped to your wallet address that you didn’t purchase and do not want.

Because anyone can send and receive tokens to and from a wallet address on public blockchains, unwanted NFTs will occasionally appear in your wallet.

What is the difference between a spam NFT and an airdropped NFT?

Spam NFTs are free, unwanted airdrops, while free NFTs that are airdropped to your wallet from a project that you support may not be considered spam.

To provide additional value to collectors, some generative NFT collections will create NFTs and airdrop them to collectors. While these NFTs typically have low re-sell value, they can be fun to keep in your collection as it demonstrates your participation in the community.

Why do people send spam NFTs?

People send unsolicited spam NFTs for many reasons including:

  1. To get the attention of popular NFT collectors
  2. To embarrass or annoy a wallet owner
  3. To attempt a phishing attack and steal tokens from wallet owners
  4. To market a new NFT project

With the growth of the NFT market, spam NFTs have been an increasing problem.

Why are spam NFTs a problem?

Two biggest reasons spam NFTs are problematic is that they’re often used by hackers and they promote a poor user experience for NFT collectors.  

1. Scammers

Spam NFTs can be used by scammers to lure people into sharing their private keys, signing messages, or confirming a transaction that sends funds to the hacker’s account. 

Scammers might airdrop an NFT into wallets with the hopes that the owner will follow a phishing link leading to a scam website. Scammers might then prompt the unsuspecting wallet holder to sign into their Ethereum wallet to approve this transaction and “claim” their free NFT. 

Once the wallet signs a transaction, the scammer can drain the wallet's funds and NFTs.

Some of these websites will use eth_sign, an unsafe method that allows arbitrary messages like “send your ether” to be signed and potentially hand over control of your account and assets.

While these scam sites can be incredibly convincing, they often have red flags including using odd language or making promises that seem too good to be true. 

The best way to protect your wallet is to never interact with an unknown smart contract. The safest thing to do when you find spam NFTs sitting in your wallet is to ignore them or send them to a burn address.

2. Poor User Experience

Because NFTs are tied to art, utility, and creators, showcasing a collection is something to be proud of, and having spam NFTs in the same wallet as your most valuable NFTs creates a poor user experience.

For developers building NFT analytics tools, galleries, or marketplaces, spam NFTs are also an issue because it can lead to incorrect data, and deceive unknowing users that a project is more popular than it actually is.

To make sure NFT holders and collectors have the best user experience, platforms need to use an NFT API that provides strong spam filters and custom settings.

How does Alchemy's NFT API help with Spam NFTs?

Alchemy’s NFT API can be used to filter spam NFTs using the getNFTs spam filter, the isSpamForContract, and the getSpamContracts endpoints.

The isSpamForContract NFT API endpoint checks if a particular contract has been classified as spam. You can filter for contract addresses, which means you can also look for the owners of a particular NFT and check to see if that’s the only one they own.

The getSpamContracts NFT API endpoint returns the list of all ERC 721 and ERC 1155 spam contracts on the selected chain. 

NFT developers using the Alchemy API can also add a filter using the getNFTs API endpoint to filter NFTs that have been classified as spam.

As of August, 2022, the Alchemy NFT API has marked over 5,000 smart contract addresses as spam.

How to Filter Spam NFTs with Alchemy's NFT API

Grabbing NFT metadata usually requires developers to read and parse individual smart contracts, then sort through a sea of irregular data. The Alchemy NFT API normalizes the metadata, and makes it easy to query across different projects. This metadata can then be queried using isSpamForContract and getSpamContracts to filter out spam NFTs. 

For example, if an NFT collection has been marked as spam by getSpamContracts then a developer can direct those spam NFTs to a hidden tab to avoid cluttering the user’s wallet. Similarly, if you’re browsing another user’s wallet, a flag can be created using isSpamForContract to show if a particular NFT is spam and if the user has a pattern of sending spam NFTs.

How are spam NFTs classified?

Spam classification has a wide range of criteria that includes but is not limited to emitting fake events and copying other well-known NFTs. 

Given a contract address we classify spam by looking at a few things:

  1. If this contract is ERC721, does this contract egregiously break the ERC721 standard?
  2. If this contract is ERC721, does it have any transfer during which it broke the ERC721 standard?
  3. Does this contract mint tokens mostly to honeypots? (e.g. vitalik.eth)
  4. Does this contract egregiously lie about its total supply?
  5. Is the contract metadata a copycat of another NFT collection?

Some examples of these classifications include:

  1. Does the ERC721 contract have a lot of duplicate tokens?
  2. Does the ERC721 contract transfer a token to more than one recipient?
  3. Is running totalSupply() on the contract vastly different from the empirical number of tokens in circulation?

If any of these criteria are satisfied, Alchemy will mark an NFT as spam.

If your smart contract was either incorrectly marked as spam, or if you identified a spam NFT contract address that bypassed the spam filters, please report it to the Alchemy NFT API team via Discord and we will update the NFT spam filters.

How to Burn Spam NFTs on Ethereum

To burn spam NFTs, send them to a burn address such as the "0xdead" address 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000dEaD.

ALCHEMY SUPERNODE - ETHEREUM NODE API

Scale to any size, without any errors

Alchemy Supernode finally makes it possible to scale blockchain applications without all the headaches. Plus, our legendary support will guide you every step of the way.

Get started for free
Supernode footer
NFTs
SPAM NFT OVERVIEW

Spam NFTs and How to Fix Them

How to Find, Label, and Filter Spam NFTs with Alchemy's NFT API
Last Updated:
August 12, 2022
Don't miss an update
Sign up for our newsletter to get alpha, key insights, and killer resources.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
Table of Contents

{{building-alchemy-ad}}

This article explains what a spam NFT is, why they are problematic to NFT dApp developers and users, as well as how to filter spam NFTs using Alchemy's NFT API endpoints and getNFTs filter.

What is a spam NFT?

Spam NFTs are unsolicited Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that are sent or airdropped to your wallet address that you didn’t purchase and do not want.

Because anyone can send and receive tokens to and from a wallet address on public blockchains, unwanted NFTs will occasionally appear in your wallet.

What is the difference between a spam NFT and an airdropped NFT?

Spam NFTs are free, unwanted airdrops, while free NFTs that are airdropped to your wallet from a project that you support may not be considered spam.

To provide additional value to collectors, some generative NFT collections will create NFTs and airdrop them to collectors. While these NFTs typically have low re-sell value, they can be fun to keep in your collection as it demonstrates your participation in the community.

Why do people send spam NFTs?

People send unsolicited spam NFTs for many reasons including:

  1. To get the attention of popular NFT collectors
  2. To embarrass or annoy a wallet owner
  3. To attempt a phishing attack and steal tokens from wallet owners
  4. To market a new NFT project

With the growth of the NFT market, spam NFTs have been an increasing problem.

Why are spam NFTs a problem?

Two biggest reasons spam NFTs are problematic is that they’re often used by hackers and they promote a poor user experience for NFT collectors.  

1. Scammers

Spam NFTs can be used by scammers to lure people into sharing their private keys, signing messages, or confirming a transaction that sends funds to the hacker’s account. 

Scammers might airdrop an NFT into wallets with the hopes that the owner will follow a phishing link leading to a scam website. Scammers might then prompt the unsuspecting wallet holder to sign into their Ethereum wallet to approve this transaction and “claim” their free NFT. 

Once the wallet signs a transaction, the scammer can drain the wallet's funds and NFTs.

Some of these websites will use eth_sign, an unsafe method that allows arbitrary messages like “send your ether” to be signed and potentially hand over control of your account and assets.

While these scam sites can be incredibly convincing, they often have red flags including using odd language or making promises that seem too good to be true. 

The best way to protect your wallet is to never interact with an unknown smart contract. The safest thing to do when you find spam NFTs sitting in your wallet is to ignore them or send them to a burn address.

2. Poor User Experience

Because NFTs are tied to art, utility, and creators, showcasing a collection is something to be proud of, and having spam NFTs in the same wallet as your most valuable NFTs creates a poor user experience.

For developers building NFT analytics tools, galleries, or marketplaces, spam NFTs are also an issue because it can lead to incorrect data, and deceive unknowing users that a project is more popular than it actually is.

To make sure NFT holders and collectors have the best user experience, platforms need to use an NFT API that provides strong spam filters and custom settings.

How does Alchemy's NFT API help with Spam NFTs?

Alchemy’s NFT API can be used to filter spam NFTs using the getNFTs spam filter, the isSpamForContract, and the getSpamContracts endpoints.

The isSpamForContract NFT API endpoint checks if a particular contract has been classified as spam. You can filter for contract addresses, which means you can also look for the owners of a particular NFT and check to see if that’s the only one they own.

The getSpamContracts NFT API endpoint returns the list of all ERC 721 and ERC 1155 spam contracts on the selected chain. 

NFT developers using the Alchemy API can also add a filter using the getNFTs API endpoint to filter NFTs that have been classified as spam.

As of August, 2022, the Alchemy NFT API has marked over 5,000 smart contract addresses as spam.

How to Filter Spam NFTs with Alchemy's NFT API

Grabbing NFT metadata usually requires developers to read and parse individual smart contracts, then sort through a sea of irregular data. The Alchemy NFT API normalizes the metadata, and makes it easy to query across different projects. This metadata can then be queried using isSpamForContract and getSpamContracts to filter out spam NFTs. 

For example, if an NFT collection has been marked as spam by getSpamContracts then a developer can direct those spam NFTs to a hidden tab to avoid cluttering the user’s wallet. Similarly, if you’re browsing another user’s wallet, a flag can be created using isSpamForContract to show if a particular NFT is spam and if the user has a pattern of sending spam NFTs.

How are spam NFTs classified?

Spam classification has a wide range of criteria that includes but is not limited to emitting fake events and copying other well-known NFTs. 

Given a contract address we classify spam by looking at a few things:

  1. If this contract is ERC721, does this contract egregiously break the ERC721 standard?
  2. If this contract is ERC721, does it have any transfer during which it broke the ERC721 standard?
  3. Does this contract mint tokens mostly to honeypots? (e.g. vitalik.eth)
  4. Does this contract egregiously lie about its total supply?
  5. Is the contract metadata a copycat of another NFT collection?

Some examples of these classifications include:

  1. Does the ERC721 contract have a lot of duplicate tokens?
  2. Does the ERC721 contract transfer a token to more than one recipient?
  3. Is running totalSupply() on the contract vastly different from the empirical number of tokens in circulation?

If any of these criteria are satisfied, Alchemy will mark an NFT as spam.

If your smart contract was either incorrectly marked as spam, or if you identified a spam NFT contract address that bypassed the spam filters, please report it to the Alchemy NFT API team via Discord and we will update the NFT spam filters.

How to Burn Spam NFTs on Ethereum

To burn spam NFTs, send them to a burn address such as the "0xdead" address 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000dEaD.

This article explains what a spam NFT is, why they are problematic to NFT dApp developers and users, as well as how to filter spam NFTs using Alchemy's NFT API endpoints and getNFTs filter.

What is a spam NFT?

Spam NFTs are unsolicited Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that are sent or airdropped to your wallet address that you didn’t purchase and do not want.

Because anyone can send and receive tokens to and from a wallet address on public blockchains, unwanted NFTs will occasionally appear in your wallet.

What is the difference between a spam NFT and an airdropped NFT?

Spam NFTs are free, unwanted airdrops, while free NFTs that are airdropped to your wallet from a project that you support may not be considered spam.

To provide additional value to collectors, some generative NFT collections will create NFTs and airdrop them to collectors. While these NFTs typically have low re-sell value, they can be fun to keep in your collection as it demonstrates your participation in the community.

Why do people send spam NFTs?

People send unsolicited spam NFTs for many reasons including:

  1. To get the attention of popular NFT collectors
  2. To embarrass or annoy a wallet owner
  3. To attempt a phishing attack and steal tokens from wallet owners
  4. To market a new NFT project

With the growth of the NFT market, spam NFTs have been an increasing problem.

Why are spam NFTs a problem?

Two biggest reasons spam NFTs are problematic is that they’re often used by hackers and they promote a poor user experience for NFT collectors.  

1. Scammers

Spam NFTs can be used by scammers to lure people into sharing their private keys, signing messages, or confirming a transaction that sends funds to the hacker’s account. 

Scammers might airdrop an NFT into wallets with the hopes that the owner will follow a phishing link leading to a scam website. Scammers might then prompt the unsuspecting wallet holder to sign into their Ethereum wallet to approve this transaction and “claim” their free NFT. 

Once the wallet signs a transaction, the scammer can drain the wallet's funds and NFTs.

Some of these websites will use eth_sign, an unsafe method that allows arbitrary messages like “send your ether” to be signed and potentially hand over control of your account and assets.

While these scam sites can be incredibly convincing, they often have red flags including using odd language or making promises that seem too good to be true. 

The best way to protect your wallet is to never interact with an unknown smart contract. The safest thing to do when you find spam NFTs sitting in your wallet is to ignore them or send them to a burn address.

2. Poor User Experience

Because NFTs are tied to art, utility, and creators, showcasing a collection is something to be proud of, and having spam NFTs in the same wallet as your most valuable NFTs creates a poor user experience.

For developers building NFT analytics tools, galleries, or marketplaces, spam NFTs are also an issue because it can lead to incorrect data, and deceive unknowing users that a project is more popular than it actually is.

To make sure NFT holders and collectors have the best user experience, platforms need to use an NFT API that provides strong spam filters and custom settings.

How does Alchemy's NFT API help with Spam NFTs?

Alchemy’s NFT API can be used to filter spam NFTs using the getNFTs spam filter, the isSpamForContract, and the getSpamContracts endpoints.

The isSpamForContract NFT API endpoint checks if a particular contract has been classified as spam. You can filter for contract addresses, which means you can also look for the owners of a particular NFT and check to see if that’s the only one they own.

The getSpamContracts NFT API endpoint returns the list of all ERC 721 and ERC 1155 spam contracts on the selected chain. 

NFT developers using the Alchemy API can also add a filter using the getNFTs API endpoint to filter NFTs that have been classified as spam.

As of August, 2022, the Alchemy NFT API has marked over 5,000 smart contract addresses as spam.

How to Filter Spam NFTs with Alchemy's NFT API

Grabbing NFT metadata usually requires developers to read and parse individual smart contracts, then sort through a sea of irregular data. The Alchemy NFT API normalizes the metadata, and makes it easy to query across different projects. This metadata can then be queried using isSpamForContract and getSpamContracts to filter out spam NFTs. 

For example, if an NFT collection has been marked as spam by getSpamContracts then a developer can direct those spam NFTs to a hidden tab to avoid cluttering the user’s wallet. Similarly, if you’re browsing another user’s wallet, a flag can be created using isSpamForContract to show if a particular NFT is spam and if the user has a pattern of sending spam NFTs.

How are spam NFTs classified?

Spam classification has a wide range of criteria that includes but is not limited to emitting fake events and copying other well-known NFTs. 

Given a contract address we classify spam by looking at a few things:

  1. If this contract is ERC721, does this contract egregiously break the ERC721 standard?
  2. If this contract is ERC721, does it have any transfer during which it broke the ERC721 standard?
  3. Does this contract mint tokens mostly to honeypots? (e.g. vitalik.eth)
  4. Does this contract egregiously lie about its total supply?
  5. Is the contract metadata a copycat of another NFT collection?

Some examples of these classifications include:

  1. Does the ERC721 contract have a lot of duplicate tokens?
  2. Does the ERC721 contract transfer a token to more than one recipient?
  3. Is running totalSupply() on the contract vastly different from the empirical number of tokens in circulation?

If any of these criteria are satisfied, Alchemy will mark an NFT as spam.

If your smart contract was either incorrectly marked as spam, or if you identified a spam NFT contract address that bypassed the spam filters, please report it to the Alchemy NFT API team via Discord and we will update the NFT spam filters.

How to Burn Spam NFTs on Ethereum

To burn spam NFTs, send them to a burn address such as the "0xdead" address 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000dEaD.

Build web3 with Alchemy

Alchemy combines the most powerful web3 developer products and tools with resources, community and legendary support.

 Start building