Today's article covers the battle of the NFT marketplace, comparing two of the most trending platforms: OpenSea and LookRare. This article covers everything from how these platforms came about to how they differ now, as well as the latest vampire attack in town.
OpenSea's Origin
Opensea was founded by two software engineers, Alex Atallah and Devin Finzer, who saw the potential in NFTs that would enable true ownership of digital items. However, OpenSea's active number of users was below average in the early days of NFTs, but the platform started putting up crazy numbers in February 2021, with over a billion dollars in monthly transaction volume.LookRare's Launch and Vampire Attack
In 2022, LookRare came into the scene in a headline-grabbing fashion. In January 2022, LookRare used a vampire attack to suck users out of OpenSea, by offering an airdrop of their token known as "looks" to NFT traders who had traded at least 3/8ths worth of NFTs on OpenSea over the prior six months. This strategy proved effective in the short run, and LookRare saw a spike in daily trading volume, leading to the price of "looks" token shooting up to nearly 6 around the 20th of January, just 10 days after launch.Differences between OpenSea and LookRare
One of the biggest differences between the two platforms is that LookRare tries to conform to the Web 3 ethos by delivering a community-first NFT market, whereas OpenSea takes a different approach as it has a typical traditional business model. LookRare redistributes 100% of generated platform fees among the stakers, while OpenSea has faced criticism due to its plan of going public instead of releasing a token to encourage decentralization.Dominant Platform based on Statistics
Comparing the trading volume metrics of the two platforms, LookRare's total trading volume since launch is over 25 billion dollars compared to OpenSea's 19 billion dollars in the same period. However, when factoring in the number of users of each platform and excluding wash trading, OpenSea emerges as the winner by far with over a million users compared to LookRare's 78,000 during the same period.Conclusion In conclusion, OpenSea and LookRare are two different NFT marketplaces with different approaches, business models, and strategies. While LookRare's trading volume may seem to be dominating, OpenSea still has a larger user base and a more traditional business model. Ultimately, the success of these platforms will depend on how they cater to the needs of their users and the NFT market as a whole.
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