- LooksRare has seen trading volumes fall after confirmation that developers withdrew over 30 million in wrapped ETH
- OpenSea suffered a phishing attack over the weekend that resulted in 1.7 million in NFT sales by the attacker
The NFT marketplace space has been busy in recent days. The two main players, LooksRare and OpenSea, have each made headlines for different reasons.
Trouble at LooksRare
Problems at LooksRare began after reports last week indicated that the platform’s developers had withdrawn at least $30 million in ETH rewards. Although a member of the LooksRare team clarified that the funds were intended to compensate unpaid work and reimburse the team’s prior investment during project development, the marketplace appears to have taken a significant hit.
LooksRare had capitalized on momentum following its initial challenge to OpenSea, pushing its trading volumes far above OpenSea’s for nearly a month. However, after reports of the developer withdrawals, trading volumes dropped by at least 52%, falling from $476 million to about $226 million in a single day on February 9.
Analytics data indicate that OpenSea’s daily volume has largely remained above LooksRare’s since the reversal.
Observers in the crypto community have suggested that LooksRare’s previously high volumes did not necessarily reflect genuine increased activity. Pointing to the large disparity in user counts between the platforms, they raised concerns about wash trading, theorizing that a small group of traders may have been exploiting LooksRare’s reward mechanism to boost reported volume.
The OpenSea Phishing Attack
While OpenSea’s volumes stayed relatively stable during LooksRare’s turmoil, the marketplace was not without problems.
On Saturday, OpenSea confirmed that a small number of users were targeted in a phishing attack that led to the loss of NFTs. Early reports estimated the stolen NFTs’ value at $200 million, but CEO Devin Finzer clarified that the attacker had converted only about $1.7 million by selling some of the stolen NFTs.
Since then, some of the stolen NFTs have been returned. OpenSea has confirmed the incident was isolated and unrelated to an email breach. The marketplace also said the attacker has been inactive and revised the number of affected users downward to 17, rather than the 32 initially reported.
“We have narrowed the list of affected people to 17, rather than the 32 mentioned earlier. Our original count included anyone who *interacted* with the attacker, instead of only those who were victims of the phishing attack,” OpenSea tweeted.
At the time of writing, DappRadar reports that OpenSea’s seven-day trading volume is $660.82 million, while LooksRare’s seven-day volume is $645.4 million. The 24-hour figures for OpenSea and LooksRare are $99.37 million and $91.36 million, respectively, according to DappRadar data.