Crypto exchange Binance has been accused of “blatantly” copying the winner of the BNB Chain hackathon after launching Bicasso — an AI-based nonfungible token (NFT) creation tool. Binance allegedly ripped off a tool created by Chatcasso just two months after awarding them first prize in a BNB Chain hackathon held in Seoul from Dec. 17–19, 2022.
On March 1, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao announced the launch of Bicasso, an artificial intelligence (AI) product that can be used to “turn your creative visions into NFTs with AI.” However, community member “ggoma” believes Binance copied and promoted the Chatcasso project as its own.
“Keep building ” – @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 hackathon https://t.co/ejc5Z7w9o1
— ggoma (@0xggoma) March 2, 2023
Binance, on the other hand, dismissed the accusations of plagiarism. Speaking to Cointelegraph, a Binance spokesperson said Bicasso is an experimental project built by a small team at Binance as a test, and that NFTs and AI are common concepts worked on by many industry players.
Chatcasso won the first prize in the BNB Chain hackathon for creating an AI-powered tool for creating NFTs, receiving $5,000 in Binance USD (BUSD).
Chatcasso won first prize at the December 2022 BNB Chain hackathon in Seoul. Source: Twitter
However, ggoma was shocked to see Binance launch a similar platform within two months, stating:
“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.”
In addition, ggoma shared screenshots of the two projects to showcase the similarities between the user interface and capabilities.
Screenshots showing similarities between Chatcasso and Bicasso platforms. Source: Twitter
Binance maintains that the similarities do not imply theft of ideas. The…
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