Pixels
Pixels is described as an MMORPG Pixel NFT game that allows players to engage in farming and community-building activities in a pixelated world. It promotes...
How Wash Trading Detection Works
Wash trading is the practice of artificially inflating a token’s trading volume by repeatedly buying and selling with yourself or coordinated accounts. Our detector analyzes price and volume patterns to identify suspicious activity using four independent heuristics, combined into a composite risk score from 0 (clean) to 100 (highly suspicious).
Risk Levels
0–20
Low risk
21–45
Moderate
46–70
Elevated
71–100
High risk
Volume / Market Cap Ratio
Compares 24-hour trading volume against market capitalization. Legitimate tokens typically have a volume / mcap ratio below 15%. Ratios above 100% are highly suspicious, and above 300% almost certainly indicate artificial volume.
≤15%
Score 0–10Normal
15–50%
Score 10–40Elevated
50–100%
Score 40–70Suspicious
100–300%
Score 70–90Very suspicious
>300%
Score 90–100Extreme
Tokens with market cap below $100k are excluded — ratios are naturally noisy at low caps.
Price–Volume Divergence
Detects hours where high trading volume occurs with minimal price movement. In legitimate markets, high volume causes price discovery. When volume surges but the price barely moves, it suggests the same entity is trading with itself.
Analyzes 7 days of hourly data. For each hour in the top 25% by volume, the detector checks whether the price range was “flat” — defined as below 30% of the token’s own median hourly movement. This adaptive threshold avoids false positives on large-cap tokens with naturally tight spreads.
Requires at least 12 hours of data. The flat threshold is bounded between 0.05% and 0.5%.
Volume Spike
Flags sudden volume spikes relative to the token’s 30-day average. A spike ratio above 3× is suspicious, especially if the price didn’t move. If the price actually moved more than 2%, the score is halved — the spike is more likely driven by real market activity.
≤3×
Score 0Normal
>3×
Score reduced 50%If price moved meaningfully
>5×
Score 100Flat price
Peer Comparison
Compares the token’s volume / mcap ratio against other tokens in the same categories. If a token’s ratio is significantly higher than its peers, it may be artificially inflating volume. Tokens more than 3× the peer median are flagged.
Requires at least 3 peers in the same category. Tokens without category metadata are excluded.
Composite Score
The final risk score is a weighted average of all available sub-scores. Sub-scores that lack sufficient data are excluded and their weight is redistributed. A confidence level (low / medium / high) indicates how many sub-scores contributed to the composite.
Tokens launched less than 30 days ago have their scores reduced by 30% to account for naturally volatile early trading patterns.
