Wash trading reduces LooksRare trading volume by 95%.

When LooksRare NFT premiered, many were excited. It gave OpenSea much-needed competition, despite suspicions of wash trading. Compare the total volume to the filtered version, which removes wash trading. LooksRare Stats The NFT sector needs additional OpenSea-competitive marketplaces.

Wash trade rumors have devastated LooksRare. LooksRare has almost 103,000 registered users, a good number for an OpenSea competitor. nnGrowing that number and keeping the present ones will be difficult.

Since May 2022, fewer people use the new NFT marketplace. OpenSea users report more activity in the past two months. Leading the non-fungible token trading platform has its rewards. LooksRare does well in transactions.

Over 262,000 trades have generated $26.17 billion. It's higher than openSea's volume since the competitor's release. In that time, OpenSea processed 22 million transactions worth $21.54 billion. LooksRare has more high-value deals than OpenSea. True, but those transactions are fuelling wash trading rumors.

Untrusted and unproven platforms can't generate such volumes with diminishing users. Turning on the trading filter Dune dashboard has a wash trading filter for these numbers. Web3 data scientist Hildobby demonstrates his filter and why the results are astonishingly different on Twitter.

This strategy isn't failsafe or 100% accurate, but it's startling. After applying the filter, LooksRare's prospects dim. Its total user count drops over 10%, indicating many users have multiple accounts. That applies to OpenSea, but LooksRare had an incentive to make plaintiffs trade wallets. Initial trading rewards would offset the 2% platform fee, making every successful transaction profitable.

After removing potential wash trading, LooksRare has $1.247 billion in "actual" trade volume and 195,170 legitimate transactions. Almost all high-value traders presumably engaged in wash trading to boost the platform's figures and make it look like a competitor to OpenSea. It's steep, but not necessarily wrong.

LooksRare struggles to produce transactions these days. With the filter on, just a few hundred trades occur. These data are more in line with market expectations, therefore it's unlikely LooksRare will rebound.