NFTs are one of the fastest-growing markets and it already caught the interest of global players like eBay. The biggest NFT marketplace worldwide remains OpenSea with a yearly multi-billion Dollar revenue. There are quite a few reasons why NFTs became successful. First of all, NFT collections are fun and they are creating strong communities. But what’s even more important is that there is a variety of use-cases for non-fungible tokens involved.

It is possible to tokenize event tickets, art, music, and even digital property, just to name a few examples. Many analysts believe that NFTs will see even more growth with the adoption of the metaverse. This underlines how important NFT marketplaces are and what potential they could possibly unlock once this vision becomes reality.

LooksRare is a challenger that is not only offering an NFT marketplace with similar options as OpenSea but also its own token that completes its ecosystem.

What is LooksRare?

LooksRare is an NFT marketplace based on the Ethereum blockchain that offers similar options that OpenSea does. Users can buy and sell NFTs by making an offer, bidding during an auction, or trading NFTs at a fixed price.

One of its major advantages is the fee structure which is slightly cheaper than the fees that are collected on OpenSea. With a 2% fee on NFTs sales, LooksRare is not only cheaper but also defines itself as a community-first marketplace. This is also reflected by the fact that holders of the LOOKS token receive 100% of the trading fees when actively staking their tokens.

The platform was founded in January 2022 by two anonymous founders called “Guts” and “Zodd”. Up until this day the team and the founders operate using pseudonyms rather than being represented by a business entity. Staff is strictly paid in crypto and can choose between WETH and LOOKS. LooksRare is committed to improving the usability and options of the marketplace by extending order types on its platform. Such as the option to make an offer for a whole collection, offer to buy an NFT with a specific trait, or cancel orders in a single transaction.

LooksRare vs. OpenSea

The core product of LooksRare is its marketplace and unlike OpenSea the platform pledges to give back the trading fees to the users. This is basically done by offering the option to stake the platform’s native LOOKS token and by an extensive rewards program.

The basic idea behind LooksRare is to drive adoption by redistributing fees among active users. While the platform managed to catch a significant market share it hasn’t overcome OpenSea in terms of trading volume yet. It seems that an incentive cannot overcome the first-mover advantage and the network effect that is making OpenSea the number 1 platform worldwide. Still, LooksRare offers a couple of advantages:

The LOOKS token

The LOOKS token is the core of the platform’s program to reward users and is vital for the marketplace. The fact that the platform has its own token is the major difference between LooksRare and competitors like OpenSea. The token is rewarded to active traders of selected collections and it also offers the opportunity to stake tokens to earn more LOOKS and WETH. It is believed that the tokenomics of the marketplace will play a vital role in the future since users have a strong incentive to trade on LooksRare rather than on any other platform.

The platform uses the trading fees to reward stakers offering two options. Standard staking will reward users with WETH and LOOKS. The LOOKS compounder on the other hand offers the option to convert all rewards into LOOKS and automatically stake all rewards resulting in a higher APY than standard staking.

The rewards program is also based on LOOKS:

• Trading rewards: Users can earn LOOKS by buying or selling NFTs from selected collections.
• Listing rewards: Another option is to earn by listing NFTs from selected collections rewarding users every ten minutes for keeping their NFTs listed.
• Liquidity provider reward: This option was discontinued in February 2022 and liquidity is provided directly through the project’s treasury.

Learn more about staking LOOKS at LiteBit