New NFT Marketplace LooksRare Launches as OpenSea Competitor

Upstart NFT platform LooksRare launched this week in the hope of providing an alternative to OpenSea. The project is built around the LOOKS token, which is being granted to big NFT spenders.

The LooksRare platform went live on January 10 as more and more marketplaces come together to try to take on the current market leader of NFT platforms. OpenSea saw massive growth in 2021, upping its value by 880 percent from 2020 following its latest fundraising round.  

Launched by two pseudonymous co-founders, Zodd and Guts, LooksRare claims to be a community-focused marketplace that aims to develop new features based on what its users want. According to a blog post by the marketplace, it indexes all NFTs that exist on the Ethereum blockchain so they can be traded right away. Offers can already be made on the NFTs. LooksRare also allows its users to buy and sell NFTs with ether or wrapped ether, or a mix of both.

Vampire Attack on OpenSea

LooksRare is built around its newly launched LOOKS token, which it is now using to reward users of the platform and attract existing users from OpenSea, in a practice known in the crypto world as a “vampire attack”. LOOKS is currently being exchanged on Uniswap and hit an all-time high of US$4.71 before dropping to its current price of US$3.49, according to data from CoinGecko.

In the past 24 hours, the price of LOOKS is up 56.5 percent.

The Marketplace That Rewards Big Spenders

With the help of its LOOKS token, the new marketplace is hoping to attract NFT big spenders who have already used OpenSea by allowing them to claim LOOKS tokens for free. According to LooksRare, anyone who traded more than three ETH (US$9,400) on OpenSea between June 16 and December 16, 2021, can claim a portion of the tokens.

The vampire attack takes a similar approach to last week’s SOS airdrop from OpenDAO. The airdrop allowed users who have spent money on OpenSea to claim the Ethereum token SOS, as determined by the amount spent on the marketplace.

When users buy and sell NFTs from eligible collections, they will also receive LOOKS tokens. LooksRare additionally charges a 2 percent fee on all trades, which is then handed on to those staking LOOKS tokens.

As it stands, the platform is offering a jaw-dropping 649 percent APR to those who stake LOOKS.