Issue 46 🍵 That LOOKS rare
May the decentralized Metaverse have meaning.
Disclaimer: This newsletter is not financial advice. We buy what we like, and you should buy what you like. Members of Cup also got exposure to the $LOOKS token, so definitely not financial advice!
Last week, we mentioned the token airdrop from Opensea competitor, Looks Rare (claim has been extended because of Trezor issues!). And well, the new challenger has had a really good week.
Like, just look at that volume brought about by a few hundred wash-traders users.
So, wanted to tackle two things today: why $LOOKS is probably doing well, and of course, talking about Opensea.
Because at this point, of course, Opensea is the one to beat. It’s the de facto marketplace. While there are other existing marketplaces, none have quite achieved Opensea’s level of market share in the general NFT market.
And it’s not like others haven’t tried to usurp its position, right? OpenDAO launched in December, and vaguely remember another one last year that tried to do the same thing too. They just never gained traction, so can’t even remember the name right now.
The simple thing that sets LooksRare apart from everyone else thus is simply this: all of its 2% trading fees are paid out to token holders.
I mean, it's Web3. It's easy to make a token and give it away. It's easy to call something a governance token, but it's difficult to figure out what token holders should govern. (Should token holders even have more say than the team at all?)
And then there's the simpler route to validate a token: just pay token holders. $LOOKS did just that.
They gave their token away as an airdrop. Give more of their token away as trading rewards. All that volume generates fees that get distributed to their token stakers, yielding a pretty good 700-800% APR (paid partly in $LOOKS). The volume definitely isn’t fully organic, but it feeds the loop.
And of course, it would be a mistake to assume that this lasts forever. Token emissions would be reducing at some point, so it’s going to be interesting to watch if it can sustain its volumes.
Because if it doesn’t, well, people are of course just going to swing back to OpenSea. Sure, Opensea has issues, but realistically, even they weren’t completely prepared for the boom. They had to bootstrap a lot of important infrastructure, during a time when no one cared about NFTs.
And it seems like they’re aware of their faults and looking to fix some things. They’re hiring like crazy. They’ve even recently acquired a crypto wallet, Dharma, which we’re guessing will allow Opensea to support on-ramps directly with US bank accounts. (And if you were using Dharma - the wallet is shutting down in 30 days).
And here’s an interesting statement from the new CTO of Opensea:
If there’s any takeaway from $LOOKS and all the others who tried to go against Opensea, it really should be that it’s damn easy to give away a token. But giving away a token that actually plays a role in the decentralization of a project, either through participation in profits or governance or something else, is hard.
If Opensea were to decentralize, then why not do it thoughtfully? Like, sort out their privacy policy while they’re at it, get everything right, instead of just putting out another useless governance token. We’ve already got plenty of those in crypto.
P.S. If you trade NFTs and the trend of volume being splintered to different marketplaces continue, then probably bookmark Genie. As an NFT aggregator, they look for the cheapest price across markets.
Other news
🌱 Crypto-adjacent: Microsoft will be buying the game company Activision Blizzard for $70B. Blizzard is best known for games like Candy Crush and Call of Duty, so it’s a big deal. With the Facebook rebrand to Meta, this definitely feels like another big-tech attempt to try and take a stake in the nebulous Metaverse. Time to root harder for the decentralized options?
🌱 Sci-Fi NFT card game “Parallel” has been dropping a lot of announcements! Here’s a quick summary: Pack Drop III is happening this February 26. They’re auctioning off one Masterpiece with all proceeds going to Khan Academy. And an expansion to the base set (Alpha) has been announced.
🌱 Radicle has made a new protocol called “Drips”, where people can offer recurring crypto payments. One of the options people can do is to sell NFT memberships as a one-time or monthly payment.
🌱 Last week, a college student in Indonesia suddenly blew up with his selfie-a-day NFT collection. He started taking those selfies to document his college journey, so pretty wholesome, happily rooting for Ghozali. Then this week, that trend kinda continues with a series of thirst traps NFTs blowing up; here’s a video explanation from the Defiant on IreneDAO. This market, amirite?
Reading List
Feel like this is a good read in conjunction with thoughts of Opensea dropping a token or the Blizzard acquisition. Dror Poleg’s “Stalin in the Metaverse” explores the risk of new types of tyranny forming in Web3.
A long tweet thread exposing the Twitter influencer, @beaniemaxi. Like 70 tweets long, and it some some pretty insane sleuthing.
Creative Corner
Today we’re featuring Este, who is a Thai artist living in Washington, DC. Their works are too cute not to miss, and takes us back to simpler times... around the kindergarten age. If the world of Web3 gets overwhelming, Este is here to remind us that it’s okay to play.
You can check out more of their works on OpenSea, and follow them on Twitter!
Try This
SuperHi, a creative course platform, is offering a really interesting universal basic income experiment. The details:
At least 5 winners
Will receive $1000 USDC on Ethereum for 6 months, a MacBook Air or iPad Pro, and access to their courses
To apply: “We have a three-part process; the first is to let us know about yourself, the second is to give the judging panel a reason why you feel like you need the Basic Income, then the last is to verify your application with a social post to show that you’re a real person.”
There are 3 days left to apply, so check it out!
And if you would like to fund more scholarships, you can also buy an NFT for 0.1 ETH. Proceeds go to funding more people.
(And just wanna gush about how this is such a thoughtful experiment. For starters, using crypto makes this really open to anyone in the world. Sure, there may be limits if the recipient wants to cash out to fiat, but it could also be an opportunity for someone to get started in crypto.
Plus: their FAQ is just so detailed—it tackles why they’re using ETH, the environmental offsets they intend to do. Just really thoughtfully done, and we love to see it.)
Disclosure: Gian applied to be a judge for selecting winners. There’s no feedback yet regarding the application.
We’re back and running for the year, whoop whoop! Hope you’re all staying nice and healthy out there. And as always, feel free to chat us up on Twitter.