LooksRare (LOOKS): A Community-First NFT Marketplace

Back in January 2022, LooksRare stole headlines for being the next worthy competitor to OpenSea, an NFT marketplace that’s been dominating the NFT space since early 2021. LooksRare was promoted as a community-first NFT marketplace that places emphasis on rewarding traders and creators, attracting an influx of users to its platform. This resulted in the daily volume of LooksRare exceeding $394 million. 

However, LooksRare’s platform was soon marred by rumors that it was being used as a platform for wash trading. In fact, CryptoSlam claimed that 95% of the trading activity on LooksRare comes from wash trading. This put a dent in LooksRare’s popularity and contributed to a decline in price of the LOOKS token from a high of $7.10 to a low of $1.

Although LooksRare may not have taken over OpenSea yet, its recently launched V2 may propel it back into the top five NFT marketplaces. In this article, we’ll explore LooksRare, and how V2 compares to its previous version and to OpenSea.

Key Takeaways:

• LooksRare is a decentralized, community-first NFT marketplace that actively rewards traders, token stakers, creators and collectors for participating on the platform. 
• LOOKS is the native token of LooksRare.
• LooksRare V2 was launched on Apr 6, 2023 boasting lower fees, the possibility of bulk buys, custom recipients and more.
• Bybit offers both the LOOKS/USDT Spot trading pair and LOOKSUSDT Perpetual contract for trading.

What Is LooksRare?

Two unidentified founders — going by the pseudonyms “Zodd” and “Guts” — launched the platform in January 2022, with a team of 11 members tending to the project’s development. The aim of LooksRare is to dethrone OpenSea from its number one spot in the NFT market.

What Is LOOKS?

LOOKS is the native token that powers the LooksRare NFT marketplace. It has a total supply of 1 billion and stands at a price point of $0.084595 as of May 31, 2023.

How Does LooksRare Work?

LooksRare is built on the Ethereum blockchain and allows participants to trade Ethereum NFTs. The platform used to charge a 2% sales fee, but with the launch of LooksRare V2, it now charges a 0.5% fixed fee on all NFT (excluding private) sales.

All WETH fees accumulated from sales are combined at the end of every 6,500-ETH block period (approximately 24 hours), and distributed to LOOKS token stakers per block during the next 6,500-block span.

Users can claim their WETH rewards as often as they want, but they must pay gas fees on each withdrawal. If they forget to claim their WETH, or prefer to wait until gas fees are lower, their WETH will continue to accumulate as long as their LOOKS tokens remain staked.

As a community-first project, 100% of the revenue generated by LooksRare is distributed to stakers of LOOKS tokens. The team doesn’t gain revenue directly from the project, and is rewarded only if the project does well.

Key Features of LooksRare

The following are the key features of the LooksRare platform.

Community-First NFT Marketplace

LooksRare puts its users first by distributing rewards, a feature that OpenSea doesn’t offer. Below is a chart showing the jump in trading volume from Jan 10–16, 2022.

Source: Dune Analytics

LooksRare Rewards

Trading Rewards

From staking to trading, LooksRare’s community has developed a reward system to attract users to its platform. 

Both the buyer and the seller of an NFT earn incentives for their trading volume (other than for private sales), known as Trading Rewards. Trading Rewards are computed daily, and are distributed two hours after the end of the day. They’re calculated according to each user’s trade volume on LooksRare, as a proportion of the total platform transaction volume (excluding private sales).

Protocol Rewards

LooksRare users can stake their LOOKS tokens on the platform and be rewarded with WETH and additional LOOKS tokens simultaneously, with rewards reaching up to 39.31% APY.

For those looking to commit their LOOKS tokens long-term, LooksRare has an auto-compounding feature that automatically commits users’ LOOKS Protocol Rewards to increase their total share. This way, users don’t have to manually commit pending rewards and pay additional gas fees. 

Royalties

LooksRare was previously known for offering creator royalties. The best part about the NFT marketplace was that its royalty payments were paid instantly to creators once a sale was made, eliminating any delay in settlement.

However, on Oct 27, 2022, LooksRare announced that it was making a change to its royalty payments system. Instead of offering royalties to all creators, LooksRare now directs 25% of protocol fees paid by sellers to creators. Of course, buyers who would like to support creators can still choose to pay optional royalties at checkout.

Distribution of Trading Fees

The platform promises to distribute 100% of the platform fees as rewards to LOOKS token stakers to encourage active participation from the LooksRare community.

LooksRare V2

On Apr 6, 2023, LooksRare unveiled LooksRare V2, a foundational layer that enables the team to bring more functionality and benefits to the platform's users.

Here are the new benefits that users can look forward to:

• Platform fees have decreased from 2% to 0.5%
• Gas fees on LooksRare are now 50% cheaper compared to other marketplaces like Blur, and 30% cheaper than V1
• Instead of receiving WETH, sellers now receive ETH, but exceptions do apply
• Bulk buys are now possible, allowing you to purchase multiple NFTs in one transaction
• Reusable signatures
• Custom recipients

With the introduction of V2, it’s now easier for the LooksRare team to integrate new features, with plans to implement the following:

• Upgraded Collection Offer: Users can make an offer that includes all NFTs in a selected collection
• Trait Offer: Users can buy any NFT with a specific trait from a collection
• Order Flexibility
• Affiliate Program
• Fixed price listings in USD
• Listings relative to floor price

LooksRare Raffles

On May 16, 2023, LooksRare announced the start of its LooksRare Raffles, which gives users the chance to win NFTs from highly-coveted collections for 0.01 ETH or less. The NFTs will be from either BAYC, Azuki or another blue-chip NFT, and will be accompanied by LOOKS rewards. 

Users interested in learning more can either view LooksRare’s blog post or keep up with the LooksRare Twitter page.

LooksRare vs. OpenSea

LooksRare is different from OpenSea in a few key respects:

• LooksRare has a transaction fee of 0.5%, lower than OpenSea’s fee of 2.5%
• LooksRare promises to give back 100% of all its platform fees to users who’ve staked LOOKS tokens
• LooksRare has stated that it will not withhold or take down the “verified” status of derivative projects — as long as their actions aren’t malicious. OpenSea, on the other hand, has taken down derivatives of high-profile NFT projects in the past.

LOOKS Tokenomics

The total supply of LOOKS tokens is 1 billion coins, distributed as follows:

• 44.1%: Volume rewards
• 18.9%: Staking rewards
• 12%: Airdrop
• 10%: Founding team
• 10%: Treasury
• 3.3%: Strategic sale
• 1.7%: Liquidity management

Is LooksRare a Good Investment?

Over the past two weeks, LOOKS has surged in price by 8.1%, reaching a high of $0.109353 on May 18, 2023. This price surge is likely due to the announcement of the start of LooksRare Raffles on May 16. 

As LooksRare gains more attention over its new features, it’s likely that there will be more price surges to come. Furthermore, the LooksRare platform has filled the gaps created by OpenSea, since it rewards, empowers and gives back to its loyal and active user base. However, on the flip side, LooksRare has a long way to go before it matches OpenSea’s platform development and level of services offered.

Analysts at PricePrediction believe that LOOKS has the potential to reach $0.13 by the end of 2023 and increase to $0.26 by 2025, $0.57 by 2027 and $1.65 by 2030. Those at DigitalCoinPrice have similar sentiments, with LOOKS’ price forecast to reach $0.20 by the end of 2023, $0.33 by 2025, $0.41 by 2027 and $0.95 by 2030.

Of course, this is just speculation, and users are advised to do their own research before investing any of their savings in cryptocurrencies.

Where to Buy LOOKS

The LooksRare token, LOOKS, can’t be purchased directly using fiat currency, but you can buy USDT tokens with fiat currency and then swap them for LOOKS tokens.

Interested in trading LOOKS tokens? Simply sign up for a Bybit account, fund it with cryptocurrency and head over to the LOOKS/USDT Spot trading page to get started! Alternatively, you can choose to trade LOOKSUSDT Perpetual contracts on the Bybit Derivatives trading platform.

Closing Thoughts

LooksRare is worth keeping an eye on if you want to buy or sell NFTs in the near future. As a community-first NFT trading platform, LooksRare has a solid rewards system that benefits everyone, from platform traders to token stakers. Although OpenSea has gained significant headway on other marketplaces so far, LooksRare V2 is likely to catch up, following through on its promise of rewards for its users, offering lower fees and serving as a viable alternative.

As long as there’s active interest in the NFT market, LooksRare has plenty of potential to grow. That said, we recommend you assess your portfolio and determine the risks you’re willing to take before joining the LooksRare platform.

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