17 Jan 2022
OpenSea rival LooksRare tops $578M in NFT trading volume
In the first two weeks of January, OpenSea recieved over $2B. Then launched LooksRare, topping $3.4B in Ethereum NFT trading volume a single week.
LooksRare is an NFT marketplace aiming to compete with OpenSea and issued an airdrop to raise
awareness.
Anyone with a combined 3 ETH (〜$9,560 per Jan 18th) trading volume or more on Opensea over a six-month period may claim $LOOKS tokens if they list an NFT on the LooksRare platform.
It’s a form of launch called a “vampire attack”—an attempt to tap into users of a large platform by giving them incentives in the form of tokens. A similar vampire attack occurred in DeFi in August 2020, when SushiSwap launched, seeking to attract Uniswap users in the lack of a Uniswap governance token. After a week, LooksRare already sees results.
ETH trading volume on OpenSea is down more than 50% compared to its recent hot streak. Meanwhile, LooksRare received $578m worth of ETH on Jan 17th. That’s $255m more than OpenSea’s record of $323m from Aug 29th.
However, the token economics of $LOOKS has caused a lot of wash trading, as many of this week’s top NFT sales are the same NFT trading between just a few addresses, and much higher than the floor price.
Much like the cryptocurrency market, the NFT market is notoriously volatile, and one week’s data isn’t enough to suggest a trend. But it will be interesting to see if LooksRare trading volume maintains at this level in the weeks ahead and if OpenSea continues to see diminishing results.