NFT marketplace LooksRare debuts with an airdrop of LOOKS tokens

LooksRare NFT marketplace announces its official debut and an airdrop of LOOKS token to users on the condition that they traded 3ETH or more on OpenSea from June 16th to December 16th, 2021. According to the launch post, LOOKS stakers can earn 100% of the transaction fees on the NFT marketplace [all NFT transactions have a 2% standard fee]. The platform which touts itself as the next generation NFT market, explained in the blog post that it indexes all NFTs that exist on the Ethereum blockchain in order to let users all the Ethereum NFTs that are available in OpenSea and others.

In addition to that, it also enables users to trade in these digital assets with Ether or Wrapped Ether [WETH], or a mixture of both, and make offers using WETH. LooksRare was started by two anonymous co-founders, known as Zodd and Guts backed by a small team consisting of nine individuals, most of whom engineers.

The LOOKS token which is being utilized to reward as well as draw users from larger rival OpenSea went live at 8:15 UTC this morning and is being traded on the decentralized exchange Uniswap. The asset saw a peak price of $4.71 before dropping to its press time price at $1.82. Currently, the platform is offering an extremely high rate of 30,400% APR to those staking the token.

LooksRare Vampire style attack on OpenSea

By enabling users to claim LOOKS tokens for free, the new marketplace is looking to entice NFT big spenders who are regular on OpenSea. This kind of attempt in the crypto sector is known as a “vampire attack” as one protocol tries to steal a competing platform’s user base. Back in September 2020, SushiSwap performed the infamous vampire attack that led to about $1.5 billion moving from Uniswap to SushiSwap.

Interestingly this is OpenSea’s second vampire attack, the first being inflicted by the then-newly launched NFT marketplace Infinity. This targeted the former’s user base with a similar airdrop on 8th October 2021. Having said that, one can also check the claim stats for the new NFT marketplace’s LOOKS token in the DuneAnalytics dashboard provided by hildobby.

Lipika Deka: Lipika is a crypto-journalist at TWJ. A graduate in economics and finance, she has a keen interest in the political and socio-economic facets of blockchain technology and the cryptocurrency industry.