LooksRare Has Reportedly Generated $8B in Ethereum NFT Wash Trading

LooksRare seemingly came out of nowhere to become the biggest rival yet to leading NFT marketplace OpenSea earlier this month, but there's a big asterisk on the astronomical trading figures coming out of the platform. From a report: It's marred by rampant wash trading, as users buy and sell NFTs between wallets they control in an effort to manipulate daily trading rewards. Now we have a sense of how severe the wash trading has become since LooksRare launched on January 10. NFT analytics firm CryptoSlam reported today that it has identified more than $8.3 billion worth of wash trading from LooksRare, making up the vast majority of trading volume on the marketplace to date. Most of the wash trading comes from royalty-free collections, which means that sellers don't have to pay the creators a secondary sale fee. Larva Labs' Meebits has seen the most wash trading at $4.4 billion, with Terraforms at $2.9 billion, Loot at $705 million, and CryptoPhunks (a CryptoPunks derivative project) at $251 million, plus $62 million from other projects.

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