People have said that Binance “blatantly” copied the winner of the BNB Chain hackathon when it released Bicasso, an AI-based tool for making nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Binance is accused of stealing a Chatcasso tool just two months after awarding them first place in a BNB Chain hackathon conducted in Seoul from December 17-19, 2022.
On March 1, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao announced the release of Bicasso, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that can “convert your creative ideas into NFTs with AI.” But “ggoma,” a member of the community, says that Binance stole and lied about the Chatcasso project.
"Keep building
— ggoma" – @cz_binance said.
What he DIDN'T say – "If you guys build it well, we'll blatantly copy it and ship it as our product!"
Story of Binance stealing our project we won 1st place at the BNB Chain hackathonhttps://t.co/ejc5Z7w9o1
(@0xggoma) March 2, 2023
Binance, on the other hand, refuted the plagiarism allegations. A spokeswoman for Binance told Cointelegraph that Bicasso is a test project made by a small team at Binance, and that NFTs and AI are common ideas that are being worked on by many players in the industry.
As the winner of the BNB Chain hackathon, Chatcasso got $5,000 in Binance USD for making an AI-powered tool for making NFTs.
ggoma, on the other hand, was surprised to see Binance launch a similar platform within two months, saying:
“A big company like Binance copying everything down to the name? It’s not only unethical, but it’s also confusing for users. The names are so similar that it’s hard to tell them apart.”
ggoma also gave screenshots of both projects to show how the user interfaces and functions are similar.
Binance says that the similarities don’t mean that they stole the idea. The exchange’s spokesman said:
“Despite the similarities, after conducting an internal review, we’re confident that Bicasso was designed and developed independently more than two weeks before the BNB hackathon.”
Also, the spokesman said that Binance and BNB Chain work separately and that the Binance development team doesn’t participate in BNB Chain hackathons.
Binance said that the name Bicasso was based on the OpenAI tool “Dall-E,” which is named after the artist Salvador Dali. “our team loved this concept,” Binance said.
Because of the whole thing, ggoma is now hesitant to join future hackathons because he is worried that a market leader might rebrand breakthrough ideas in the future. “We hope that Binance realizes the impact of their actions and takes steps to right their wrongs,” ggoma added while warning builders that “there are companies out there who will try to take advantage of your hard work.”
The NFT generator on Binance’s Bicasso, which is powered by AI and can make 10,000 mints in 2.5 hours, quickly became popular with NFT investors.
CZ recently told investors that a fake image with false information was making the rounds on China’s social media network, WeChat.
Someone photoshoped this, and it got spread widely on WeChat in china. It says I got shot by the FBI, whom our team work with closely…
4. pic.twitter.com/2Iz7c1QgA8
Content Source: cointelegraph.com
— CZBinance (@cz_binance) March 3, 2023
