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Hello, everyone. The response to our previous long-form was overwhelmingly positive and we hit over 1,000 views in less than a day! All of us are absolutely humbled by this and we hope that the content we put together provides you at least as much value as your support makes us happy!
But enough with the melodramatic stuff, let’s jump right into it.
For those of you who’ve been following the cryptocurrency space throughout 2021, the statement that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) made a killing should be of absolutely no surprise. While many believe NFTs are a bubble, the field continues to thrive and to onboard more and more people on the crypto bandwagon.
One of the most important platforms in this regard has undoubtedly been OPENSEA – the marketplace where users are able to mint, buy, and sell NFTs relatively seamlessly. However, when there’s demand, there will also be supply. And the demand for NFTs is tremendous.
Enters LooksRare – a prime competitor to OpenSea.
What is LooksRare?
Just like OpenSea, LooksRare is a marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) but unlike OpenSea, it touts the idea of being “community-first.” What does this mean? Well, through a system of features, the platform promises to put its community first. It was officially launched on January 10th and it quickly started gaining attention.
It’s also worth noting, though, that DappRadar came out with a indicating that LooksRare has been hit by a wave of wash trading.
The above concerns aside, LooksRare quickly rose to fame, becoming one of the most popular NFT marketplaces by means of traded volume. The way the team behind it did, though, is very interesting because it takes us back all the way back in 2020 when SushiSwap launched with a native token and siphoned hundreds of millions worth of liquidity from Uniswap.
So, how did LooksRare do it? Well, first off, they decreased the fees. OpenSea charges a flat 2.5% fee on all sales, including private sales. LooksRare charges only 2% on public sales.
And this is where things get interesting. 100% of the trading fees are earned by the LOOKs stakers in proportion to the amount they stake.
The LOOKS Token: The Heart of LooksRare’s Ecosystem
This is the crux of the entire market share acquisition strategy of LooksRare. See, OpenSea doesn’t have a native token and its users get absolutely nothing for using the platform other than the ability to use it, of course.
LooksRare launched the LOOKS token. And in the spirit of fair launches – it airdropped it to OpenSea members who had at least 3 ETH in trading volumes within a 6-month period. Those who had traded more than 3 ETH on OpenSea received more LOOKS. Here’s the tier table:
The thing to consider here is that LooksRare didn’t just airdrop a token – it provided users with a mechanism to make money passively by staking their LOOKS tokens for various three-digit APYs.
Things to Consider
Right off the bat, it’s important to consider that there’s inherent protocol risk associated with LooksRare and its smart contracts are yet to be publicly audited. At the time of this writing, an audit hasn’t been published.
On the other hand, comes the potential opportunity. Airdrop tokens for bluechip platforms (which LooksRare may or may not become) have historically performed very well (see Uniswap, 1inch). Moreover, with the massive turnover that NFT marketplaces see and could continue seeing, there’s an opportunity for LOOKS holders to harvest transaction fees – something that’s impossible for OpenSea users.
Holding LOOKS is essentially having a stake in the platform’s revenue generation and if the NFT hype is to continue, in theory, there will always be a place for more marketplaces. Just see how fragmented the cryptocurrency exchange field is. There are multiple A-list exchanges that do billions of daily turnover – why wouldn’t that be the case for NFTs? From this regard, LOOKS offers an opportunity to have a stake in a platform that might be at the forefront of further NFT expansion.
For a full documentation stack, you can check the official website
How to Buy LOOKS?
is essentially the native cryptocurrency of the LooksRare platform and the main differentiating factor with most of its competitors.
You can buy LOOKS from one of the world’s leading altcoin exchanges – MEXC. It’s a secure exchange with years of provable records which is doing a lot to abide by the increasing regulations across the world. They also recently rebranded and launched a new interface.
You can buy LOOKS on the spot exchange but you can also trade the LOOKS/USDT pair on the MEXC Futures Exchange where you can use leverage of up to 20x. This carries significant risk, though, and should only be practiced by people with sufficient trading experience.
To get a 10% discount on your trading fees when using MEXC (for all pairs, not just LOOKS), please use this link. It also helps us keep this up.
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