Removing LooksRare's USD 8.3B in Wash-Trades, OpenSea is Still the Dominant NFT Marketplace
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) data aggregator CryptoSlam has identified more than USD 8.3bn worth of wash trading on LooksRare, a new NFT marketplace. Subtracting this volume, it turns out that major NFT marketplace OpenSea is still the dominant player in the field.
As per data by Dune Analytics, LooksRare has exceeded USD 10.9 bn in trading volume since its official launch on January 10. During the same span of time, OpenSea has recorded a volume of USD 3.9bn.
Notably, at the time of writing, LooksRare has 25,220 users while OpenSea has 447,442.
However, subtracting the USD 8.3bn in reported wash-trades, LooksRare's real trading volume is around USD 2.6bn.
Launched as a "community-first" NFT marketplace, LooksRare received a warm welcome from NFT traders — at least it appeared so. In fact, in an attempt to bolster its position as a popular trading platform, it tried a so-called “vampire attack” on OpenSea, which is a term in decentralized finance (DeFi) suggesting that a competitor aims to entice users by offering superior incentives.
To lure OpenSea traders, LooksRare decided to airdrop LOOKS tokens to anyone with a combined ETH 3 trading volume or more on OpenSea over a six-month period between June and December 2021), according to LooksRare Docs.
The marketplace, which also has a better fee structure compared to rival OpenSea, claims that "100% of LooksRare’s trading fees are redistributed proportionally to LOOKS stakers." It also offers token rewards for users who buy and sell NFTs on the site, which appears to have resulted in an aggressive amount of wash-trades.
Notably, per CryptoSlam, most of the wash trading comes from royalty-free NFT projects that don't take a cut of the trades in secondary marketplaces. One such
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