LooksRare Outperforms OpenSea NFT Volume with 20x Fewer Users

LooksRare, a novel non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace, has exceeded USD 931.33m in trading volume since its official launch on January 10. During the same span of time, the major NFT marketplace OpenSea has recorded a volume of USD 219.2m, according to Dune Analytics data.

LooksRare has onboarded a total of 7,964 users since its launch, while 165,177 users have interacted with OpenSea since January 10. 

Therefore, it can be inferred that LooksRare has outdone OpenSea by 4.25x in terms of trading volume with 20x fewer users.

This warm welcome may suggest that OpenSea, which has been the dominant shareholder of the NFT market, might have eventually found a worthy and arguably more decentralized competitor.

Meanwhile, LooksRare, which describes itself as “the community-first NFT marketplace,” has tried a so-called “vampire attack” on OpenSea, which is a term in decentralized finance (DeFi) suggesting that a competitor aims to entice users by offering superior incentives.

Unlike OpenSea, LooksRare rewards users with its native LOOKS token for participating. In fact, it claims that “100% of LooksRare’s trading fees are redistributed proportionally to LOOKS stakers.” This is in addition to staking rewards, which would be in the form of LOOKS tokens.

“We, the NFT community, are tired of not being taken seriously by market leaders. We’re tired of the de-platforming of creators, and the decision makers who value business over community, seeking IPO [initial public offering] instead of benefiting the communities that got them there. So we’re building something better. Something that rewards, empowers and gives back to you — the platform’s users and creators,” LooksRare said in a blog post.

The platform also has a better fee structure compared to rival OpenSea, offering 2% fees on basic sales and no fees on private sales. On the contrary, OpenSea has a flat fee of 2.5% on every transaction.

Notably, LooksRare’s trading volume has made some to suspect wash trading. Journalist Colin Wu argued that because of the mechanism of transaction mining, LooksRare has a large number of repeated false transactions. “Transaction volume of Meebits has reached 52,771 ETH. Whales are constantly repeating transactions to obtain Tokens.”

However, the platform argues that the total amount of LOOKS earned as trading rewards each day is fixed, and that that makes it very expensive to wash trade. “Wash traders won’t have any guarantee over the amount of rewards they’ll receive, and will also need to pay at least a 2% fee on every trade, so it’s not going to be an effective strategy,” said the team. 

At 11.25 UTC, LooksRare’s native token LOOKS is trading at USD 4.52, up by 19.3% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.

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