How to Use LooksRare NFT Marketplace

LooksRare is one of the leading NFT marketplaces on the Ethereum blockchain today for non-fungible token (NFT) trading. Whether you want NFT community favourites like Bored Apes or NFTs fresh out of the oven, the LooksRare platform has it all. Thanks to its many reward mechanisms, such as the LooksRare listing rewards, the platform is a major OpenSea contender as well. It also has a slew of features, including the LoosRare token, making it an attractive choice for investors. 

So, what exactly is the LooksRare NFT Marketplace? In this guide, we also answer: What are the top LooksRare features? Can you get free LOOKS tokens? LookRare vs OpenSea: Which is better? How to mint, buy, and sell NFTs on the LooksRare platform? 

So, let’s dive right in!

What is LooksRare NFT Marketplace?

Based on the Ethereum network, LooksRare is an NFT marketplace that rewards users for buying and selling NFTs on its platform. As a community-first platform, LooksRare rewards all its creators, collectors, and traders with its native utility token, LOOKS. True to its motto—“By NFT People, For NFT People”, the platform emphasises giving back to the NFT community. 

Currently, LooksRare charges a 2% sales fee on NFT sales. Already, it offers several attractive features such as trading rewards, staking rewards, trait offers, and more. Furthermore, it has adopted a modular framework for its smart contract, which facilitates the addition of new features in the future. 

Who Created LooksRare NFT?

Anonymous co-founders, “Zodd” and “Guts” launched LooksRare in January 2022 as an OpenSea competitor. At the time, the duo announced their plans to introduce several features to attract users, most of which revolved around its LOOKS token rewards. However, early media reports suggest that most of the platform’s trading volume was from “wash sales”. To explain, in this scenario, users sell tokens to themselves to reap more token rewards.

How to Buy NFTs On LooksRare NFT Marketplace

If the LooksRare NFT marketplace interests you, then you might want to look at how to buy NFTs on the platform. Here are the steps:

• First, go to LooksRare’s homepage and click the “Connect” button to connect your wallet. Currently, the platform supports MetaMask, WalletConnect, and Coinbase Wallet. Whichever wallet you choose, make sure you have enough crypto to buy NFTs.
• Next, go to the “Explore” or “Collections” tab to search for NFTs you like. You can search using their token ID or name. Alternatively, you can use different filters, such as price range, to look for NFTs. 
• Once you find an NFT you like, you can make an offer, either with ETH or wETH. Additionally, if you are interested in an NFT collection, but don’t have a preference for a particular NFT, you can make a “Collections Offer”. 
• Finally, for fixed-price NFTs, you can click the “Buy Now” button to purchase it immediately. 

How to Mint NFTs on LooksRare

If you are an NFT creator who wants to mint NFTs directly on LooksRare, you can do that as well. For this, the marketplace provides the third-party service, Manifold Studio. Once you connect your wallet to the website, simply look for the “Manifold” tab after clicking the “Create a Collection” option. Now, you can use Manifold to import files to create an NFT before listing it on LooksRare.

How to Sell NFTs on LooksRare

If you already have an NFT, here are the steps to sell it on the LooksRare NFT marketplace:

• As always, first, connect your crypto wallet to the website.
• Next, click on the “List an NFT” button. This will take you to a page with all the NFTs in your wallet.
• Select the NFT you want to sell and click on the “Sell” option.
• Finally, set the price of the NFT and the number of days you want to keep the sale active.

It is also worth noting that LooksRare has an added feature called “Conditional Listing”. Essentially, it allows users to list two items for sale. However, there’s a catch—when one item is sold, the other listing gets cancelled. This feature is useful for creators who want to sell one NFT but don’t mind which one. 

What is LOOKS Token?

The LooksRare token (aka LOOKS) is the marketplace’s native ERC-20 token based on the Ethereum blockchain. The fact that LooksRare has its own token sets it apart from other major NFT marketplaces like OpenSea. With a total supply of 1 billion, the LOOKS token is currently trading at $0.28 (at the time of writing). 

Indeed, LOOKS is at the heart of LookRare’s various rewards programs. Typically, LooksRare users can stake the taken for rewards. Besides, the platform rewards active traders for listing select NFT collections for sale. Users can also get trading rewards for buying and selling NFTs from select collections. 

Listing Rewards on LooksRare

As previously mentioned, LooksRare has several features in place to attract users with rewards. Among these, a popular one is “listing rewards”.  To explain, the listing rewards program rewards NFT collectors and traders with LOOKS tokens merely for listing NFTs for sale on the platform. Every 10 minutes, sellers receive points for all their eligible listings.

Naturally, it begs the question: what makes a listing eligible for reward points? Firstly, the NFT must belong to one of the top 5 eligible NFT collections by 24-hour trading volume. The listing should be active, with a price not more than 1.4x the global collection floor price. Furthermore, the item must be on sale for at least 10 minutes, must be within the maximum limit of 200 eligible listings per collection, and should not expire before 1 hour of each snapshot.  

LooksRare will count each day’s points from 9:00 AM UTC until 9:00 AM UTC the next day, with 144 snapshots every 10 minutes. At the end of this period, each user will be allocated LOOKS tokens based on their total points for the day. If you want to know more, make sure to read LooksRare’s details white paper on listing rewards.

How to stake LOOKS tokens

One of the key features of LooksRare is LOOKS token staking. Put simply, users can stake their LOOKS tokens to earn an income in the form of wETH or LOOKS. In fact, the platform offers two types of staking:

• Active staking: Under this, the users can unlock all their LOOKS immediately. They get both wETH and LOOKS as staking rewards.
• Passive staking: Here, the participants only get wETH and do not earn extra LOOKS for staking. Furthermore, their LOOKS are locked, preventing them from trading.
  

To start staking, head to LooksRare’s homepage and click the “Rewards” tab. You can either do “standard staking” or auto-compound your tokens. In the former, you stake the amount of tokens you want for rewards. Conversely, in the latter, your staking rewards will be automatically re-staked.

The rewards you receive are calculated at the end of each period and depend on a number of factors. This includes the daily average trading volume and whether you compound your tokens, among others. Finally, when you unstake your tokens, your final rewards and the originally staked tokens will be added to your wallet. 

LooksRare vs OpenSea: Which NFT Marketplace is better?

All things considered, LooksRare is one of the biggest OpenSea competitors. At the time of writing, OpenSea took the top spot for NFT marketplaces by all-time trading volume (approximately $34.5 billion), followed by LooksRare at the fifth position ($1.7 billion). But which marketplace is really better?

Let’s take a look at some key differences between the two:

• As previously mentioned, one of the main factors that differentiate LooksRare from OpenSea is that it has its own token. This makes it possible for the marketplace to offer different reward mechanisms to users. 
• LooksRare’s transaction fee is 2%, slightly lower than OpenSea’s 2.5%.
• While OpenSea keeps its platform fees, LooksRare claims to return 100% of it as a reward to those who stake LOOKS. 
• While LooksRare supports only three wallets at the moment, OpenSea supports a wide range of wallets. The list includes Coinbase, MetaMask, Mintbase, and Bitski, to name a few. 
• LooksRare only accepts ETH and wETH as payment. OpenSea, on the other hand, supports over 150 currencies. 

At the end of the day, the NFT marketplace you choose will depend entirely on your preferences. As OpenSea has been around for longer, many NFT users tend to prefer it over newcomers. Alternatively, those who wish to earn rewards and enjoy LooksRare’s additional feature, opt it over OpenSea. Nonetheless, whichever platform you choose, it is essential to do your own due diligence. 

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