Abstract

Pricing and sales volumes for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have seen a meteoric rise and fall in recent years. Partially because of a loss of faith in the true values of NFT assets. Wash trading has emerged to artificially inflate asset prices and trading volumes of NFTs. This not only endangers the integrity of NFT markets but also raises doubts about the authenticity of NFT values. Previous research has identified wash trading actors with techniques such as cyclical trading. Many of the presented techniques, however, can be associated with flaws concerning obviousness or feasibility with constrained capital resources. We propose a method to identify a more intricate and concealed form of wash trading called self-financed trading. Our approach identifies suspicious activities by tracking cash and asset flows between blockchain addresses. This enables us to reveal networks of wash trading designed to reap marketplace rewards or insinuate demand to drive up prices.

Paper Number

201

Comments

Track 4: Distributed Trust, Security & Privacy

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