LooksRare: Will the NFT trading platform that issues tokens be better than OpenSea? ｜Project Introduction

OpenSea is experiencing unprecedented turmoil at the end of 2021, and a word from the new CFO made this unicorn fall from the altar. Although people used to have a lot of complaints about OpenSea, they always look forward to the future changes of OpenSea; and now people's complaints about OpenSea have prompted people to constantly look for a new NFT platform, looking forward to the new king defeating the old king and breaking OpenSea's influence on the market. monopoly.

Skin in the game

This is the expectation of the majority of users for Web3 applications, and it is also the reason why the majority of users are dissatisfied with OpenSea. This is an English slang term translated into Chinese as "benefit sharing". Web3 users hope that the application will be rewarded to supporters after it matures.

Taking OpenSea as an example, it is the transactions made by users one by one that allow OpenSea to earn enough handling fees and have beautiful revenue data, while OpenSea chooses IPO It means turning the fruits of the joint efforts of Web3 users into a cake that can only be eaten by Web2 residents. It is not difficult to understand why OpenSea's IPO plan will be resisted by almost all users.

Now people are no longer expecting OpenSea to transform into a real Web3 application, but looking forward to an NFT trading platform and OpenSea pull that was born in the Web3 world wrist. In the Web3 world, brands and communities are inseparable. Projects to give back to the community not only bring financial help to community members, but also tell the entire community "Thank you for your support, we should share the benefits together." Brands are no longer It is not only the object sought after by the community, but also the result of the joint construction of the community.

Will OpenSea be sucked?

A few days ago, OpenDAO "issued a token for OpenSea", they carried out SOS token airdrop based on the user's trading volume in OpenSea, and in many people's eyes This is the same vampire attack as Sushiswap issued tokens to compete for Uniswap users. The core contributors of OpenDAO even made a bold statement that they would contribute 100 million U.S. dollars to help OpenDAO build an ecology, and OpenDAO released a preview of the NFT platform shortly after the airdrop.

But is OpenSea really so easy to be sucked?

Larry Cermak, vice president of The Block Research Institute, once replied to netizens about forking OpenSea and mentioned that "forking OpenSea is impossible (Forking opensea is not possible), OpenSea is not open source, which means that the writing of smart contracts needs to start from zero, and the infrastructure construction is a huge project.

Of course you can directly grab the data on the chain and issue huge airdrops to OpenSea users, or you can copy other open source DeFi contracts to quickly deploy DeFi games such as pledge mining, but you want to make a Using a platform with a better experience, as Larry Cermak said, "it will take them months", and if it is not prepared in advance, it will take a longer development cycle.

Introduction to LooksRare

If OpenDAO is a temporary raid, LooksRare is a long-planned ambush.

As early as August 2021, LooksRare has started preparations and claimed to be a better NFT trading platform, an NFT trading platform belonging to the community. After months of dormancy, LooksRare finally unveiled its mystery.

As an NFT trading platform, LooksRare has complete basic trading functions. In addition, LooksRare also has functions that are different from OpenSea, and it is also It is these features that give LooksRare the opportunity to become a better NFT trading platform that belongs to the community.

First of all, let’s see what experiences LooksRare has beyond OpenSea.

On the whole, LooksRare is not a simple "forked product" or "imitation". LooksRare is built from scratch, which also guarantees The product can maintain the best autonomy and flexibility in subsequent update iterations.

Next, let’s learn more about the new features.

(1) Mixed payment of ETH and WETH

In OpenSea, ETH is used to pay the buyout price, WETH is used for bidding, and sometimes users need to convert the two, which will not only consume Gas fees, but also operate It's even more complicated. The mixed payment of ETH and WETH supported by LooksRare can solve this problem well.

(2) Instant Royalty

OpenSea distributes royalties to creators every two weeks, while on the LooksRare platform, every transaction will distribute royalties to creators instantly, which means It will allow creators to get more sufficient liquidity, and will also encourage more creators to publish their works on LooksRare.

(3) One-click quotation

In existing trading platforms such as OpenSea, we are very proficient in the operation of pending sell orders, but there has never been a platform that supports users with "one-click quotation". Nowadays, there are more and more projects that issue tens of thousands of NFTs at every turn. These non-homogeneous tokens are becoming more and more homogeneous. This also makes many people not care about the appearance of the NFT they bought when buying, but only care about the appearance of the NFT they bought. which series.

For example, many people want to buy a Bored Ape, they don’t care what the Bored Ape they bought looks like, as long as they have a Bored Ape That's fine. One is that it can be regarded as their investment, and they can sell it for a profit when the price rises; but if they own any one, they can join Bored Ape, an attractive community for people.

Now if you want to spend 70 ETH to buy a random Bored Ape what do you need to do? First you need to convert 70 ETH to WETH, then write a piece of code to bid on the Bored Ape in the market in batches, and finally wait for a seller to accept your offer. And if you have 140 WETH in your wallet but you only want to buy one Bored Ape, you need to cancel the order in batches immediately after one is sold, which will consume a huge gas fee. The threshold for writing code is very high. If you don’t know how to write code, you need to manually place orders one by one, and the process is extremely cumbersome.

LooksRare provides a "one-click quotation" function that everyone can easily use, and all open orders on the LooksRare platform can be canceled with one click , greatly improving the user experience.

Secondly, let's take a look at why LooksRare is an NFT trading platform belonging to the community.

As mentioned above, in the Web3 era, projects, brands and communities are inseparable, and LooksRare chooses to share the benefits with users by issuing tokens.

LooksRare will issue LOOKS tokens, 75% of which are owned by the community, and some of these tokens are retroactive airdrop rewards, and the rest are used to motivate token pledgers and platform traders. Among them, the airdrop has been opened for collection, and users can collect it on the official website before January 20.

The key to whether all this works well is whether the LOOKS token can maintain its value for a long time. For the token, it has to go through three stages: utility type-index type-currency type. In the first stage, it is necessary to add various use cases to the token so that the token has a solid value support; and rich use cases will push the token into the second stage, at this time the token will truly reflect the development of the project and whether the community is flourishing; and when the project After flourishing, the token will enter the third stage.

The most striking use case of the first phase of LOOKS is the proportional distribution of platform fee income by staking tokens. The fee income of the OpenSea platform has become a shining figure on the financial statements, while the fee income of the LooksRare platform will be fully distributed to platform users. Users can pledge LOOKS, so that they can share the platform's service fee income, and more importantly, what users get is not the platform currency, but WETH.

As the daily trading volume of LooksRare increases, users can share more and more handling fees every day, which will prompt more people to Willing to pledge LOOKS token, which further stabilizes the value of LOOKS token and enters a positive cycle.

Then, the challenge now becomes how this new platform will take the bite out of OpenSea.

LooksRare has designed an interesting mechanism. When users receive airdrop rewards, they need to complete a pending order operation. Become a "platform user", this transformation will greatly enrich the number and types of products in the initial stage of the platform. As an asset with poor liquidity, NFT will trade on which platform has a rich and complete variety of "commodities". And LooksRare has also designed a "trading mining" mechanism, users can get rewards for trading on the platform, which will also greatly motivate users to trade on LooksRare, and according to official documents, LooksRare has already done a good job of filtering wash trading Prepare to shield the perpetrators from the source.

OpenSea now occupies 97% of the NFT market, but the website crashes more and more frequently, and there are several bugs that have never been fixed. The user experience has declined due to the increase in volume, which makes people more and more look forward to a brand new NFT platform, which also gives a great opportunity for potential rookies like LooksRare. We look forward to someone who can break the monopoly and become a competitor of OpenSea. Healthy competition can create a better environment and promote the development of the entire industry.  

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia