Wash trading, wherein a seller buys and sells the same asset to generate a false impression of marketplace activity and demand, appears to be most of the action on NFT marketplace Looksrare.
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.
According to public blockchain data collected by Dune Analytics, LooksRare has amassed more than $9.5 billion in total Ethereum trading volume since its launch. If the figures from both sources—which pull data from the public Ethereum blockchain—are accurate, then about 87% of LooksRare's trading volume to date matches CryptoSlam's criteria of wash trading.
