- Last year’s BNB Chain hackathon winner has accused Binance of stealing their AI-based NFT creator idea
- The winner said that the exchange used their idea to build Bicasso
- Binance said an “internal review” shows that Bicasso isn’t a replica of Chatcasso
Leading crypto exchange Binance has been accused of copying Chatcasso, an artificial intelligence-powered NFT generator tool, to build its NFT generator, Bicasso. Chatcasso won the recent BNB Chain hackathon held in December last year, and according to a Chatcasso team member, ggoma, Bicasso is a blatant copy of their project that has been marketed as an original idea.
“Binance had other Plans”
A post on BNB Chain’s Twitter page on January 13 announced Chatcasso has the hackathon’s winner, adding that the project uses AI to turn “text input” into digital artworks.
In a Twitter thread, ggoma detailed the similarities between the two projects, lamenting that they thought the hackathon provided a strong launchpad for their project “but it seems like Binance had other plans.”
4/
We were ecstatic, to say the least. We thought our hard work paid off, and that we had a great product foundation we could keep building on.
But it seems like Binance had other plans.
— ggoma 🍌 (@0xggoma) March 2, 2023
Binance has refuted plagiarism claims, maintaining that Bicasso is an original idea. Speaking to Cointelegraph, the exchange said that its AI-based NFT creator, which recently churned out 10,000 NFTs in 2.5 hours, is a test project by an in-house team. Binance added that ggoma’s claims lack weight since many entities are exploring the intersection of collectibles and AI.
Bicasso Developed Before Hackathon, Says Binance
Although many entities are looking into NFTs and AI, ggoma was surprised to see Binance launch their project shortly after the hackathon, picking an almost-similar name for their project and employing an identical interface. However, Binance claimed that it developed Bicasso two weeks before the coding competition, and “an internal review” shows no traces of plagiarism. The claims come two weeks after Yuga Labs changed the logo of its Bored Ape Kernel Club (BAKC) project due to an intellectual property (IP) theft accusation.
With Binance refuting claims it didn’t copy Chatcasso despite glaring similarities, it’s yet to be seen whether the NFT community will support ggoma’s claims and boycott Bicasso.
