LooksRare: Buy NFTs and Earn Tokens with an NFT Marketplace

Non-fungible tokens or NFTs continue to skyrocket in Q1 2022 with thousands of PFP (Profile Pictures) and NFT Gaming tokens being released every day. The all-around hysteria continues to surge and bring more and more users to the NFT community. Many celebrities such as Snoop Dogg, Eminem or Neymar, continue to endorse different projects like BAYC (Bored Ape Yacht Club) or CryptoPunks. Big companies and developers see a gap in this billion-dollar industry and gradually implement NFTs to their platforms. As of recently, Twitter is the major player which has offered to add a proof of ownership mechanism to their website for users who have NFT profile pictures. Consequently, many other platforms are thinking in various ways to implement already existing NFTs and to provide value to the web3 world and NFT Marketplaces are not falling short on this cycle of innovation.

As of early January 2022, a new NFT Marketplace launched with a massive airdrop giveaway for users who have traded more than 3 $ETH on OpenSea. LooksRare is the latest NFT Marketplace where users can buy NFTs and earn tokens. Yes, that is correct, users now have the opportunity to earn tokens while trading NFTs online. However, we will dive into this subject in more detail in the following paragraphs below.

If you are interested in ERC-721 NFT development or NFT Marketplaces, we at DCVX can help you build your own NFT Marketplace, launch a smart contract, develop an NFT project or provide you with general blockchain consulting. So if you are interested in this article or anything DeFi-related, then please make sure to send us an email, so we can discuss how the future of Web 3.0 and DeFi 2.0 can be achieved.

What is LooksRare NFT Marketplace?

That's the question you have been asking yourself if you are reading this article. In short, LooksRare is an NFT Marketplace that offers similar functionalities to OpenSea and Solanart. The main difference here is that LooksRare features its very own native token - $LOOKS. Most of all, LooksRare is the community-first NFT marketplace that actively rewards traders, collectors and creators for participating. LooksRare preaches the following saying:

"By NFT people, for NFT people."

Still not sure which are the biggest NFT Marketplaces by volume? Then, check out one of our previous articles.

The main functions of LooksRare apart from trading include being part of a community-first NFT Marketplace which provides rewards, empowers, and gives back to the platform's users and creators. Users that buy or sell NFTs from eligible collections earn LOOKS tokens. Additionally, 100% of trading fees are earned by LOOKS stakers and creators get royalty payments at the moment of sale.

LooksRare is not a fork or clone of any other NFT marketplace. Instead, LooksRare’s smart contracts are custom-built within a modular system that enables new features to be rolled out over time. In a sense without compromising security and thanks to standardized signatures that clearly define the execution scope. A distinct feature that will be rolling out soon is the Collection offer functionality. This option allows users to make an offer that covers all NFTs in a selected collection. Another feature is the Trait offer that allows for offer preparation to buy any NFT with a specific trait in a collection (e.g. BAYC w/ Gold Fur). These are just a few features whereas there are many more to be introduced throughout the year.

From a technical point of view, LooksRare utilizes some of the world’s most powerful search infra, down to implementing on-chain standards like EIP-712 and ERC-2981, LooksRare’s technical architecture (contracts, database, API, front end, search) has been designed from the floor up for scalability, speed and security using the latest and greatest tech.

Lastly, LooksRare's documentation hints that there will be upcoming bridging solutions and scaling options with Layer-2 projects.

What is $LOOKS token?

LOOKS is the native token that powers LooksRare. the community-focused NFT marketplace that actively rewards traders and creators for participating.

As discussed already, 100% of LooksRare's platform trading fees are earned by LOOKS token stakers: a rewards model created in direct response to the previous generation of NFT marketplaces whose fees mostly reward a single entity. Users can earn LOOKS tokens by trading NFTs on LooksRare, staking LOOKS (which also earns WETH fees), and more.

LooksRare's trading experience is very user-friendly and intuitive for both experienced NFT traders and beginners alike. Thus, the LOOKS token helps the community scale and grow by attracting a portion of NFT collectors and users who utilize other platforms which lack their very own tokens (e.g. OpenSea). The LOOKS token will also help foster an improved NFT community and change the concept of NFTs in general. As part of LooksRare’s initial launch, 120,000,000 LOOKS tokens (12% of total supply) were distributed to the NFT community. Users who have traded NFTs on OpenSea in the time frame listed below, can be eligible to claim LOOKS tokens on https://looksrare.org.

​Essentially, anyone with a combined 3 $ETH trading volume or more on OpenSea over a six-month period (from Ethereum Block 12642194 on 16th Jun 2021 to Block 13812868 on 16th Dec 2021) is eligible to claim LOOKS, once they list an ERC-721 or ERC-1155 NFT for sale on LooksRare. Polygon blockchain (MATIC) volume is not included. However, before listing an item, it is good to make sure you are eligible for LOOKS tokens by going to https://looksrare.org, connecting your wallet, and clicking "check now" in the big green banner at the top of the page. If it says "No tokens to claim", you don't meet the eligibility criteria. Make sure your OpenSea volume is within the specified time period.

How to claim LOOKS tokens​

Visit https://looksrare.org during the airdrop period in January.

• Connect your DeFi wallet to the site.
• Click the button in the banner at the top of the page, to check whether you’re eligible for the airdrop.
• If you’re eligible, you’ll see a message inviting you to list an NFT.
• Head to your account, view your items and list one or more of your NFTs for sale.
• Once you successfully list your item, you can claim your LOOKS via the banner on the homepage.

LOOKS Token Contract​

The official and only LOOKS Token contract address is: 0xf4d2888d29d722226fafa5d9b24f9164c092421e

NFT Marketplace Rewards

Trading rewards are a core part of LooksRare’s token economy as they seek to become the most liquid marketplace for NFTs in the world. As we hinted at the beginning of this article, LooksRare offers rewards to its community. These rewards can be characterized in a few different segments. The first type of reward is trading rewards.

Trading Rewards

By trading eligible NFTs or NFT collections on LooksRare users can earn LOOKS tokens. This is probably the most simple type. Both the buyer and seller of an item earn rewards for their trading volume (except for private sales). According to the LooksRare website, trading rewards are calculated daily and rewarded to users 2 hours after the end of each day. The entire schedule of trading reward emissions will be over 4,686,250 Ethereum blocks (or approximately 721 days, using 6,500 blocks per day), at which point all LOOKS token emissions will come to an end as the ecosystem becomes fully self-sustaining.

Any given collection that reaches 1,000 ETH in trading volume (excluding private sales) on LooksRare will be automatically added to the list of collections eligible for trading rewards. For example, if a random collection reaches 1,000 ETH in non-private sale volume at 21:00 PM (UTC) on June 11, 2022. Only sales completed after 0:00 AM (UTC) on June 12, 2022 will count towards trading rewards. The second type of reward is staking rewards.

LOOKS Staking Rewards

Staking LOOKS earns LOOKS.​ Whenever users stake LOOKS, they can also earn additional LOOKS on top of the trading fee rewards received in WETH. Staked LOOKS tokens are auto-compounded for users that wish to just leave their LOOKS tokens staked.

What is LOOKS auto-compounding?

Pending rewards are often required to be manually staked by users to increase their share of staked tokens. However, this wastes both gas and opportunity costs. As such, LooksRare has enabled auto-compounding for all users that stake LOOKS. This means that LOOKS rewards received from the staked LOOKS balance are automatically re-staked into the pool (or compounded) to increase the number of LOOKS staked.

When users unstake their LOOKS tokens, the amount of compounded rewards and the original staked amount will be withdrawn to the user’s wallet.

How to buy $LOOKS

There are a number of ways users can buy $LOOKS tokens, however, we will showcase the best method as per the information provided on the official LooksRare website. Here is a guide that showcases how to buy LOOKS tokens.

The best DEX (Decentralized Exchange) to buy LOOKS tokens is Uniswap. But before you start, please make sure that you already have a DeFi wallet such as MetaMask, have your wallet funded with $ETH for gas fees and cryptocurrency (ETH or WETH would work best). Here's a short guide on how to buy $LOOKS tokens:

1. Visit to Uniswap
2. Connect your wallet

3. If you used the link above, then your output currency will already be selected as LOOKS. If not, then click the "Select token" button and input the LOOKS contract address: 0xf4d2888d29d722226fafa5d9b24f9164c092421e, or simply search for "LOOKS".

4. The final step includes inputting the amount of ETH (or WETH) that you would like to swap for LOOKS tokens. After that, you are all done!
   

The future of NFT Marketplaces

NFTs continue to blast the web3 community with what looks to be no end in sight. As of January 14, 2022, OpenSea has reached trading volumes over $1.03 billion, and its latest rival, LooksRare emerged as the platform which is taking a piece of the pie according to data from DappRadar below:

According to the chart above, it is clear that users trading NFTs and NFT collectors alike appear to be shifting their sentiment on where they are seeing value. As of the start of 2022, there has been massive "hype" around users being rewarded for their participation. OpenSea has generated more than 3.2 billion US dollars despite many users of the NFT community starting to lose faith in the platform due to multiple ''centralized'' decisions regarding large NFT collections like Bored Apes Yacht Club. Therefore, a large proportion of Web3 users are starting to boycott the marketplace by moving their assets to web3-friendly NFT marketplaces such as LooksRare.

As such, the community-driven NFT marketplace, LooksRare and other platforms have successfully completed a digital attack, thus leaving disgruntled OpenSea users migrating away from it for not valuing and rewarding user participation. In a sense, users seem to be looking at other places which better meet their demands are reward their efforts. Perhaps, more and more NFT collectors will migrate to LooksRare and it will become the go-to NFT Marketplace in the future. This is definitely not certain yet, but we still have three quarters of the year to find out.

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