MechMind sells its NFT for 125,000 ETH to generate traction
MechMinds, a platform integrating AI and blockchain, has sold its #7689 NFT for 125,000 ETH, making it the highest-paid NFT in the industry. The platform has since revealed that it used flash loans and OpenSea’s zero-fee transaction to enable the trade, highlight wash-trading, and gain attention.
Gaining the market’s attention
MechMinds NFT developers organized the resale of its NFT, whose price was 125,000 ETH. The sale made it the largest deal in NFT history. The announcement was shared on their Twitter page, confirming they coordinated the purchase for publicity and attention to the project.
MechMinds explains that the sale was stirred by the 2021 $500m Cryptopunk sale, which generated traction for the project.
The project received a flash loan and used the OpenSea NFT marketplace zero-fee transactions. Notably, OpenSea has eliminated transactional commissions to compete with Blur, another NFT marketplace that recently overtook its trading volume. The platform collected the flash loan in the tokenized ether-wrapped ether (wETH).
MechMinds insisted they made the deal also to highlight a project on trending or top of OpenSea or another marketplace; they hope to bring attention to such an attack vector. It could use the method to orchestrate wash-trading at much lower volumes, which could appear as “organic” volume and hence be harder to detect.
A call to improve mechanisms
MechMinds also made a call to top marketplaces, Blur, OpenSea, X2Y2, and Rarible, to work on their mechanisms for top-selling ranking to disclose fabricated deals.
The call comes after several reports on a rise in laundering trade between addresses on these marketplaces. Blur, as part of an airdrop, an ethereum wallet registered “high activity” and received about $2 million in BLUR tokens. On LooksRare, in April 2022, reports found that almost 95% of the activity was laundering trade.
Laundering trade manipulates the asset by raising its value to induce demand. In addition, the platform accumulates commissions from every transaction, hence gathering more revenue.
Meanwhile, the MechMinds (MM) floor price has risen 326.4% to 0.0512 ETH. In addition, the market cap is at 355.9936 ETH, which is a 315.7% rise.
