What is it?!
LooksRare airdropped its governance tokens just a couple of days ago and then launched their NFT marketplace the following day! OpenSea has been the giant in the room when it came to NFT marketplaces on the Ethereum blockchain and LooksRare took a targeted approach to try and get the big users of OpenSea to their marketplace. The reason why I say that is if you had spent more than 3 ETH between June and December 21st, 2021 then you were eligible for the tokens! $LOOKS, the governance token for LooksRare, brings to life many features which OpenSea users have called out for. By holding the token you are eligible for a cut of the fees that LooksRare charges. Like OpenSea it charges a fee (theirs is 2% as opposed to OpenSea 2.5% fee) however where OpenSea keeps the whole fee for itself LooksRare distributes it to its token hodlers!
The Website
When I got on the website this afternoon it was a little bit buggy and the images of the NFTs did not always load. I am chalking this up to the amount of attention and traffic that the site is getting though. In its first day alone over $111 million in NFT sales was done! A number that prior to its launch I do not think anyone would have thought possible for a brand new NFT marketplace! Not being able to see the images of some NFTs though did bother me. Like OpenSea they do check to see if a project is the authentic one. I am a huge baseball fan so I checked to see if they had any MLB Champions and while they did and the price was low I was unable to tell what it was that was up for sale.
LooksRare offers some amazing features though and the biggest and probably the most talked about one is the ability to place an offer for an NFT that you want. Once you place this offer anyone who has that NFT can fulfill it and the transaction is completed! This would be a great feature to have on OpenSea but they do not have it. Also when you are connecting a wallet to LooksRare you actually have the option to connect your Coinbase account! If you were having to purchase crypto for the transaction this would be a really nice thing to be able to do to make sure you snag that NFT you are after!
As you would expect with this being on the Etherum chain you do pay in Ether. However, you have the ability to pay in either wETH or regular ETH giving you flexibility if you had just wrapped most of your ETH! Since I do not often dabble in Etherium NFTs I am not too sure how common this is but it is a feature LooksRare offers and is extremely beneficial for those buying or selling!
$LOOKS Token
Finally, let's look more in-depth at the $LOOKS governance token. At 9 pm EST this evening another 2,866,500 LOOKS will be distributed to those who have bought or sold NFTs on the platform today! Below are the ways that you can earn additional $LOOKS! All of these options are available right on the website itself!
As stated on the token page the marketplace has not fully been turned over to the token holders yet as they continue to distribute them to those who are using the platform. It makes sense to allow those who were not part of the airdrop to acquire some tokens and thus some say in the future of the project. Staking on the site caught my attention since it gets you the trading fees and extra $LOOKS! While you probably will not get the same amount of $LOOKS as the Uniswap LP pool you are still getting some!
One Issue That Has Arisen Already
While there has been a ton of good news out of LooksRare so far one issue that has arisen and that has not been addressed is people wash selling their NFTs back and forth to generate more participation on the marketplace and then get more $LOOKS at the next drop. I personally do not know how I would address this issue and while I think it is wrong at the same time these people are having to pay fees with each and every transaction so it is not like they are doing it for free. How much this hurts the project again I am not sure but it is something to keep an eye on and see how it further develops. Maybe the team will implement a patch but so far they seem to just be standing pat and generating ETH from the fees.
Please know I am not a financial advisor I am just someone who picked up on a trend and wanted to express it! Makes sure you always do your own research and never invest money you cannot afford to lose! If you enjoyed this article and would like to further support me below are a couple of referral links that if you used when signing up I would appreciate it! Also, follow me on Twitter @Cje95_
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