OpenSea Rival LooksRare Nears Sales of $400 Million in First 72 Hours

Amid rising numbers of NFTs entering the market every day, a new online marketplace for these digital assets have been launched, named “LooksRare.” Within just three days, the NFT marketplace has recorded a sales volume of $394 million (roughly Rs. 2,912 crore), a report by CoinTelegraph said. The platform was officially launched on January 10. Presently, OpenSea has been reigning in the NFT selling space. Reports have predicted OpenSea sales from last year to amount around $10 billion (roughly Rs. 739,225 crore).

Kicking off its operations, LooksRare offered to levy two percent fees on basic sales and no fees on private sales of NFT pieces. OpenSea, on the other hand, charges a 2.5 percent fee on every transaction, the CoinTelegraph report added.

“LooksRare is the community-first NFT marketplace that actively rewards traders, collectors and creators for participating. Why do we need another marketplace? Because the NFT community deserves better,” the platform wrote on its website.

The top NFTs that stirred interest among buyers on LooksRare are the Meebits collection, which come from LarvaLabs — the same creators behind Cryptopunks and Autoglyphs.

Some people have raised suspicions that Meebits could be potentially wash-traded on LooksRare.

The LooksRare marketplace has indexed all NFT collections on the Ethereum blockchain. “That means you can trade all the Ethereum NFTs that are available on OpenSea… and some that aren’t,” its website noted.

The platform is rewarding NFT buyers and sellers from eligible collections, with its native token called LOOKS.

NFTs are digital collectibles such as animated avatars, digitised paintings, and clips from sports and games, among other objects. These virtual assets have their ownership locked on the blockchain network.

In the third quarter of 2021, NFT sales volume surged to $25 billion (roughly Rs. 1,84,690 crore) in 202, recent data from market tracker DappRadar showed.

Surging sales and hefty prices on NFTs have baffled many but their multi-fold growth shows little or no depreciation whatsoever.