LooksRare NFT marketplace gunning for OpenSea’s crown?

LookRare had an attention-worthy debut on January 10, which also featured a token airdrop for some OpenSea users.

With a tagline that says, “By NFT People, For NFT People,” LooksRare presents itself as a community-focused platform. Here’s how it describes itself in a blog post; “LooksRare is the community-first NFT marketplace that actively rewards traders, collectors, and creators for participating.”

Despite being less than a week old, LooksRare is topping the daily and weekly rankings of NFT marketplaces in terms of volume traded, relegating OpenSea to second place.

Like OpenSea, LooksRare supports trading of Ethereum-based NFTs (and a few that aren’t). However, a few possible unique factors contribute to its success, despite having a fraction of OpenSea’s users.

For one, LooksRare demands a lower transaction fee than OpenSea – 2% compared to OpenSea’s 2.5%. It also rewards users in $LOOK tokens for every successful transaction.

LOOKS tokens can be staked to earn a portion of the platform’s trading fees. The tokens will also serve as governance tokens for the LooksRare DAO in the future.

With its success also comes a share of criticisms. Many have accused LooksRare of wash trading and think it is responsible for its high trading volumes. Additionally, there are doubts about the project’s transparency. For example, there is no public audit, and there are no public repositories to access their code.

Some also frown at its stance on NFT derivatives, to which the platform replied that it would condone them as long as they aren’t malicious.

OpenSea has even delisted a few of these NFT copycat projects in the past. The NFT community as a whole is still divided over the issue of NFT derivatives, though. Some believe they should be disallowed, while others support the idea.

LooksRare is in its early days, though, and it still has a lot to prove to consolidate its position in the NFT space.

Photo: LooksRare