LooksRare VS OpenSea: Key Differences

• Neeti
• December 29, 2022

NFT was introduced in 2021, but it already feels like we’re just getting started. Few users are aware that OpenSea, currently the most popular NFT marketplace, began operations in 2017. The NFT market went mainstream in 2021, and OpenSea emerged as a winner thanks to its user-friendly design, continuous addition of new features, and interaction with many blockchains. It quickly became the platform of choice for establishing and purchasing/selling NFTs. But there is constantly a need for alternatives, as we’ve seen with Binance Vs. FTX, and that’s where LooksRare comes into the equation.

The article walks readers through the distinctions between OpenSea and LooksRare. So let’s get started.

An overview on OpenSea vs Looksrare

At its core, the OpenSea marketplace facilitates various OpenSea NFTs, including art, photography, antiques, and music. Alex Atallah and Devin Finzer were the company’s founders, which began in 2017. Throughout nine rounds of investment, OpenSea has collected $427.2 million, according to Crunchbase. Series C financing was received in January of 2022. There was an addition of a staggering $13.3 billion to the company’s value. As a result, roughly a ninefold increase over the previous six-month valuation.

The widely utilized NFT market supports over 150 coins as payment choices, and cross-blockchain compatibility helps grow the gas-free market. OpenSea now supports the Ethereum side-chain Polygon, allowing cheaper and faster transactions than Ethereum. Another is Klaytn, a blockchain created by Kakao, a Korean internet corporation. Every transaction on OpenSea incurs a 2.5% commission fee. Initialisation fees depend on the price of gas on the Ethereum network. These fees are one-time and their charges are through a smart contract.

The newest entry, LooksRare NFT marketplace, is getting a lot of attention, even though it hasn’t made its debut yet. The decentralized NFT marketplace, LooksRare has been running neck-to-neck with OpenSea since January 2022. To facilitate immediate trading of NFTs, the initiative, which calls itself a community marketplace, indexes all of the tokens. Currently, LooksRare is rewarding buyers and sellers on its platform with 2.8 million LOOKS tokens every day for a month, and it is offering free tokens to OpenSea users who have exchanged more than 3 ETH. The Looksrare NFT platform is emerging as a tough competitor to OpenSea and other top players in the space.

About LooksRare

LookingRare, the NFT platform, has been in existence since the beginning of January 2022. Guts and Zodd are the names of the platform’s creators. Its goal was to create a market that valued its customers by paying them for using the service.

According to Dune Analytics, the transaction volume on LooksRare was more than twice as high as the volume on OpenSea, which dominated the market last year. To take advantage of the LooksRare reward scheme, many users may transfer to a secondary account they already possess to make trades.

Users will earn LOOKS tokens for the first two years of the platform’s establishment whenever they make a deal. Further they may then sell or stake these tokens. As a result of these advantages and the fact that trading costs on the new marketplace are just 2%, many investors are eager to make the switch. It has a nickname as the “vampire strike” since LooksRare directly targets the NFT OpenSea marketplace’s top spot.

As a result of the improved incentives and cheaper fees, users might choose LooksRare over OpenSea. Hence, the Looksrare nft platform can potentially become a place to sell their valued goods (such as Meebits or Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs).

About OpenSea

The launch of OpenSea, the first DeFi NFT market, was in the year 2017. The founders, Atallah and Finzer did need a venue where users can purchase and trade non-fungible token aficionados without fear of being scammed while setting up their collection.

OpenSea.io was born due to the time the two spent in early Discord groups learning about what users want and need from a NFT platform and NFT projects. OpenSea dominated the NFT crypto market, performing more daily trading volume than all other exchanges combined until the launch of LooksRare. Despite this, they are still the most popular in the NFT community, with more than 300,000 members.

OpenSea is based on Ethereum smart contracts and the Wyvern Protocol, making it simple for users to exchange their digital assets and non-fungible tokens with one another.

Over 34 million images, GIFs, films, and other digital assets may be found in the platform’s NFT collection. Its cryptographic art’s categorization and search features simplify finding what you’re looking for. Each art form’s cryptocurrency support is included for users to use in their search. The platform supports Ethereum blockchain, Polygon, and Klatyn.

If you are seeking more information about OpenSea NFT platform then it is advised to contact a reliable NFT expert if possible to learn about the platform in-depth. Also, you can explore all the essential information about creation, collection and trading of non-fungible tokens through the available courses on NFT, learn its underlying technology as well as market potentials.

Differences between LooksRare and OpenSea

Audience

There has been a lot of support for LooksRare, even though they’ve only been there for a short time. Users receive LOOKS tokens for every transaction they make at this popular platform. Further users can stake those tokens to generate even more money in the future via transactions, purchases or airdrops.

Besides being the biggest NFT platform in trade volume, OpenSea also has the longest operating history. So, many of its users in the NFT community stick with it even when new NFT markets emerge. OpenSea uses Klatyn and Polygon in addition to Ethereum’s non-fungible tokens. However, both systems operate with non-fungible tokens (Cardano).

Some people don’t want to invest in Ethereum NFTs because of environmental concerns, which may push them to continue working with Cardano-based NFTs instead.

Supporting Currencies

LooksRare exclusively accepts Ether (ETH) as payment on the Ethereum network. They also accept WETH as payment (and stakers will receive additional LOOKS tokens for their investment). One cannot use Bitcoin (BTC), fiat cash of any type (USD, GBP, AUD, etc.), or credit cards to buy assets on either platform. As mentioned earlier, users of LooksRare get incentives in LOOKS, the company’s own money. For now, however, many individuals have been reaping the benefits of “savings” already amassed on this site.

Besides being the biggest NFT platform in trade volume, OpenSea also has the longest operating history. So, many of its users in the NFT community stick with it even when new NFT markets emerge. OpenSea uses Klatyn and Polygon in addition to Ethereum’s non-fungible tokens. However, both systems operate with non-fungible tokens (Cardano). Some people don’t want to invest in Ethereum NFTs because of environmental concerns, which may push them to continue working with Cardano-based NFTs instead. OpenSea supports Ethereum, DAI and more than 150 other currencies, including REVV, MANA, and UNI.

Wallets that Work

LooksRare also supports MetaMask, which the company recommends for PC users. On the other hand, Wallet Connect and Coinbase Wallet are options for storing your funds on the platform. LooksRare highly recommends wallet Connect for mobile users. Take up an NFT course to learn how you can leverage these wallets. OpenSea offers MetaMask as a dApp browser plugin for its users. The web wallets supported by the platform are Bitski, Arkane Network, Coinbase, Dapper, Ethereum, Torus, and Fortmatic. You can learn about each of these wallets by joining an NFT training program.

Other differences between LooksRare and OpenSea

There will be several variances between each of these platforms. OpenSea and LooksRare vary in the following ways:
Both platforms charge low transaction fees (as some take 15 per cent of direct sales). OpenSea charges a transaction fee of 2.5 per cent, while LooksRare charges a cost of 2% on every sale. In the case of high-value NFTs like BAYC, the additional savings on LooksRare will be noticeable (not to mention that they will receive LOOKS tokens).

There will be non-fungible tokens accessible on both platforms that are not available on the other platforms. In contrast to OpenSea, which will display the majority of the Ethereum-minted NFTs and those from Polygon and Klatyn, LooksRare will only show the most recent NFTs.

To mint new NFTs on LooksRare, you must be a service member. OpenSea does enable users to mint NFTs on their platform using the “lazy minting” procedure, which means they will only be charging gas costs if the NFTs they mint are successful. It is important to note that gas costs are levied every time an asset’s price changes.

Who’s actually in the lead?

Since August 2020, OpenSea’s volume has steadily increased, peaking two years later. However, NFT activity has picked up again since December, reaching a daily Ethereum blockchain volume of $200 million on January 9. The platform’s transaction volume grew more than 600-fold last year, according to CEO Finzer.

The NFT expert group states that OpenSea’s high transaction volumes have made it the Ethereum network’s greatest gas guzzler, using more than 11.6% of the total Ether consumed (1.64 million ETH). Currently, OpenSea is on track to burn through more than 200k ETH in gas expenses every month, according to NFT developer professionals.

OpenSea’s monthly volume surpassed $3.4 billion in August 2021 in January 2022 and is presently approaching $4 billion, according to statistics given by Dune Analytics, before the month has even ended.

Despite these enormous quantities, OpenSea’s market NFT share has dropped from 99% at the beginning of 2022 to around 30%. OpenSea’s market share rose from 35% to 95% in the first half of 2021. After LooksRare entered the market, OpenSea’s market share dropped from 78.3 per cent to 69.6 per cent, a significant decline from its high of 78.3 per cent only a week after its inception.

Even though the amount of activity on LooksRare is still more than on OpenSea, the latter’s volume is steadily decreasing. LooksRare hasn’t had more than 30k transactions, whereas OpenSea has more than 2 million. Also, OpenSea has 17 times as many total users compared to LooksRare. OpenSea attracts 40k-75k users per day, whereas LooksRare only draws 1k-3k users daily.

According to TokenTerminal, on a 30-day basis, LooksRare has OpenSea beat with $165.9 million in income, while the latter hauled in $106.1 million. After Ethereum ($6.1 billion) and Axie Infinity ($1 billion), OpenSea has made $431.1 million in revenue in the previous six months. OpenSea does not have a token, but a fresh new user-centric NFT platform’s token LOOKS, which has a maximum supply of 1 billion LOOKS, is now trading at $3.84, down over 45 per cent from its all-time high of $7.10 on January 20. Just 175 million LOOKS are in circulation at any one time.

As compensation for trading, staking and providing liquidity, the token is a major component in user adoption. CEXs FTX, Huobi, Gate.io, Bybit, and DEX Uniswap all have the token accessible right now.

Conclusion: OpenSea vs. LooksRare

Neither LooksRare nor OpenSea is difficult to use. OpenSea users who have been using the platform for years might not prefer switching, yet fresh NFT collectors may choose to utilize LooksRare. In addition to decreased costs, your payment might be in tokens for your transactions. If you want to mint on a platform, you’ll have to use OpenSea, Rarible, or another NFT marketplace since such features aren’t accessible on LooksRare just yet.

As previously said, OpenSea is a well-known NFT marketplace with a large following and a sizable budget for growth and improvement. Many different sorts of digital assets are available for purchase on the marketplace. However, one must emphasize that the platform does not currently allow fiat currency.

Several platforms have attempted to challenge OpenSea and get access to its user base in the last year as its popularity has grown. However, these efforts have been unsuccessful. When compared to LooksRare’s reward and stacking structure, which gives its members attractive prospects, OpenSea, on the other hand, charges much more for its services. This money goes to the LOOKS stakers, letting everyone profit from the marketplace earnings, unlike OpenSea, where the team only benefits.

LooksRare, a decentralized NFT marketplace, is challenging OpenSea for market dominance. Nevertheless, NFTs are still in the early stages of their development and have a long way to go before people start using them for anything other than art and collectives. There will be additional markets with stronger incentives for their consumers as the field expands.

Check out the NFTically to learn in detail how to buy NFT on OpenSea and LooksRare without any hassle or confusion. Here you can explore various credible NFT certification programs to enhance your knowledge on NFT trading and staking.