Taiwan NFT Trading Platform Lootex Announces Cessation of Operations, 8-Year Journey to End on April 4

Taiwan’s multi-chain NFT trading platform Lootex officially announced on March 23 that it will cease operations on April 4, 2026, ending an 8-year journey. The company stated that the NFT market landscape has undergone fundamental changes over the past two years, and ultimately decided to wind down operations in an orderly manner due to the inability to maintain the expected service quality.

Starting from the Dream of “Ready Player One”

Lootex was founded in 2018 by Justine Lu and David Tseng. Inspired by the sci-fi film “Ready Player One” and its depiction of the metaverse, the core idea is: “Let game assets truly belong to players.”

The platform initially focused on game NFTs, allowing players to freely buy, sell, and trade on-chain virtual items, breaking the traditional game companies’ centralized control over assets.

In early 2022, Lootex announced a $9 million seed funding round led by Spartan Capital, Infinity Ventures Crypto, LD Capital, and Japanese gaming entertainment company Akatsuki. Participating investors included Polygon Studio, HTC, Huobi Ventures, OKEx Blockdream Ventures, as well as well-known individual investors like Kevin Lin, co-founder of Twitch, and Patrick Lee, co-founder of Rotten Tomatoes, making for a highly impressive lineup.

Multi-Chain Expansion, Milestones Worldwide

During the peak NFT market boom from 2021 to 2022, Lootex’s monthly active users exceeded 80,000, and it established partnerships with over 50 blockchain games. The platform gradually supported eight blockchains: Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Mantle, Base, and Soneium, connecting over 140,000 wallet addresses and listing more than 29,000 NFT series.

Lootex also explored cultural NFTs from a local Taiwanese perspective, collaborating with the National Palace Museum to transform ancient paintings into digital collectibles, and recreating “Along the River During the Qingming Festival” in the Sandbox metaverse. It became the designated NFT platform for Sony’s Soneium blockchain and the first NFT marketplace on the Mantle chain. In terms of infrastructure, Lootex’s auto-scaling architecture was selected by Google Cloud as a benchmark case study.

To lower the entry barrier for Web3 newcomers, Lootex later introduced the “Smart Account” feature supporting ERC-4337 account abstraction, allowing users to log in via email or social accounts.

Market Cooling and Orderly Exit

However, since the second half of 2022, the NFT market cooled rapidly, with trading volume and active users shrinking. Leading platforms like OpenSea and Blur monopolized resources and traffic, squeezing out smaller markets. Despite attempts to pivot into an “all-in-one NFT solution platform” integrating AI tools, casual games, and enterprise APIs, Lootex was unable to reverse the trend.

Closure Schedule:

• March 27: Stop new listings and minting functions
• March 31: Cease buying, selling, bidding, and other trading functions; all orders automatically canceled
• April 4: Official website taken offline, static FAQ page retained

On-chain smart contracts will continue to operate independently.

User Assets Fully Safe

Lootex emphasized that the platform always used a non-custodial architecture, never holding user assets. All NFTs remain stored in users’ own on-chain wallets and are unaffected by the shutdown. The company also recommended users revoke permissions to Lootex’s smart contracts via tools like Revoke.cash or Etherscan as a proactive security measure.

LOOT token holders can continue trading on the Gate exchange.

An Era Comes to an End

Lootex’s exit marks the end of one of Taiwan’s most representative NFT startups in the Web3 entrepreneurial wave. A platform born locally in Taiwan, driven by a player-centric philosophy, once attracted global capital and users at its peak but ultimately could not withstand structural market contraction.

The official statement concluded: “Your NFTs belong to you, always.”

This article about Taiwan NFT trading platform Lootex announcing the end of operations after 8 years on April 4 was first published on Chain News ABMedia.