A series of transactions spotted by NFT data tracker CryptoSlam show popular NFT platform Blur had $577 million in wash trading in February. It includes questionable behavior such as manipulative transactions, massive NFT coin sales.
Million dollar wash trading on the popular NFT platform
The NFT market, NFT artwork, music and videos are one of the young trends dominating the cryptocurrency market. However, a recent report by CryptoSlam highlights some of the worrying activity in the market. According to the report, CryptoSlam has identified at least $577 million worth of suspicious NFT coin transactions related to the promising Blur.io platform.
According to the report, Blur.io started airdropping its native tokens to users on Valentine’s Day, February 14. On this date, NFTs were soon found to be resold at prices close to the initial transactions of the assets. This behavior suggests that some Blur users are selling NFT to themselves using different wallets to buy Blur (BLUR) and collect points for airdrops.
https://twitter.com/cryptoslamio/status/1629213663339880449
Scott Hawkins, a data engineer at CryptoSlam, stated that there is no mechanism in Blur to prevent such activity. As a result, this activity artificially boosted sales volume for the entire NFT market in a disingenuous manner.
The report shows that some users are selling themselves NFT coins from different wallets
Data engineer Scott Hawkins says some users sell NFTs to themselves using different wallets to buy Blur and collect points for airdrops. This created an artificial volume, and according to the expert, Blur has no mechanism to prevent it:
Blur has no throttling mechanisms to prevent this – in fact, it appears that there are no royalties paid, no platform fees, no deterrent to collecting points for airdrops apart from increased Ethereum gas fees. What we have found is that it artificially supports sales volume for the entire NFT market in a very disingenuous way.
Due to the increase in NFT sales volume, Blur recently surpassed its rival OpenSea’s largest sales volume in the industry. Wash trading also pushed global volume to the highest level since January 2022, creating a misconception of a resurgent NFT market.
Blur got off to a strong start with airdrop events
The VC-backed NFT platform Blur was launched in October 2022, heralding airdrop events with an undisclosed amount of BLUR to new users. Research shows that most of the NFT trading volume, which peaks following successful airdrop launches, is fraudulent. As Kriptokoin.com, we have included another dump event from the NFT market in this article.
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