What Is LooksRare (LOOKS)?

Weekly Roundup: What Happened in Play2Earn Games and NFTs This Week? [Jan. 14, 2022]

## What Is LooksRare (LOOKS)? 

[LooksRare](https://looksrare.org) is a decentralized, community-first NFT marketplace. The protocol was released on the [Ethereum blockchain](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/an-intro-to-ethereum-eth) with an ERC-20 utility token — LOOKS — in January 2022.

The LooksRare platform enables individuals to trade non-fungible tokens, with an emphasis on rewarding users for their participation.

The LOOKS token serves a handful of functions within the LooksRare ecosystem:

* 100% of trading fees are earned by users who ‘commit’ their LOOKS in the form of Protocol Rewards
* Every (non-private) trade incurs a [Trading Reward](https://docs.looksrare.org/about/rewards/trading-rewards), which acts as a LOOKS rebate for the fee paid on LooksRare trades (currently 0.5%, collected in ETH)
* It can be used to participate in exclusive drops and other token-gated applications

## Who Founded LooksRare?

LooksRare was launched by pseudonymous founders Guts and Zodd as a decentralized alternative to OpenSea. 

## How Many LOOKS Tokens Are There?

LOOKS has a maximum supply of 1,000,000,000 tokens. Over 90% now form part of the circulating supply.

Upon launch, 75% of the maximum supply was earmarked for the community:

* 12% was issued in an airdrop
* 18.9% was reserved for those who commit LOOKS
* 44.1% was reserved for volume rewards — incentivizing participation on the platform

According to its [emission schedule](https://docs.looksrare.org/about/looks-tokenomics), LOOKS will reach its maximum supply two years from its release. The platform collects a 0.5% transaction fee in [WETH](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/weth/) on all NFT sales. Each 6,500 Ethereum blocks (approximately 24 hours), the collected fees are linearly redistributed to LOOKS committers over the next 6,500 blocks.  

LooksRare

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Welcome to LooksRare's Community channel aggregated by CoinMarketCap.

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Moonbeam is an Ethereum-compatible smart contract parachain on Polkadot. Moonbeam makes it easy to use popular Ethereum developer tools to build or redeploy Solidity projects in a Substrate-based environment.

Moonbeam is much more than just an EVM implementation: it’s a highly specialized parachain that mirrors Ethereum’s Web3 RPC, accounts, keys, subscriptions, logs, and more. The Moonbeam platform extends the base Ethereum feature set with additional features such as on-chain governance, staking, and cross-chain integrations.

Moonbeam’s Ethereum compatibility is unmatched:

Minimal Changes: developers can use existing Solidity smart contracts right away, with no need to rewrite or reconfigure

Use Existing Developer Tools: connect popular tools like MetaMask, Hardhat, Waffle, Remix, and Truffle via a complete set of Web3 RPC endpoints. Use well-known Javascript libraries such as Web3.Js or Ethers.Js.

Unified Accounts, Addresses, and Signatures: use your existing Ethereum H160 accounts & ECDSA signatures to interact with Moonbeam

Tap into the Most Integrations on Polkadot: use existing oracles, bridges, wallets, and other tools that are already building on Moonbeam

Moonbeam provides integration and connectivity between Polkadot Parachains as well as with other chains such as Ethereum and Bitcoin via bridges. Moonbeam was started in 2019 by Derek Yoo of Pure Stake.

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Yield Guild Games (YGG) is the world’s first and biggest web3 gaming guild where players can find their community, discover games and level up together. Its mission is to become the leading community-based user acquisition platform in web3 gaming.

As a network of gaming guilds focused on web3 games, YGG is committed to providing opportunities for its members to achieve success in web3 gaming through questing initiatives such as Superquests and the Guild Advancement Program (GAP). These enable members to build their on-chain identity through its achievement-based reputation system.

From its roots in the Philippines to its global network of regional guilds and partnerships with over 80 blockchain games and infrastructure projects, YGG caters to an ever-expanding community of gamers and blockchain enthusiasts.

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ApeCoin is an ERC-20 governance and utility token used within the APE Ecosystem to empower and incentivize a decentralized community building at the forefront of web3.

ApeCoin holders govern themselves via the decentralized governance framework controlling the ApeCoin DAO, and vote on how the ApeCoin DAO Ecosystem Fund should be used. The APE Foundation administers proposals agreed upon by ApeCoin holders.

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MAGIC is the utility token that connects gaming communities in the Treasure Metaverse: a decentralized NFT ecosystem which sits on Arbitrum, one of Ethereum’s Layer 2 scaling solutions.

MAGIC is a cross-game currency that connects games, players, metaverses, and communities, all within Web 3.0. The token was launched in September 2021 so its community could buy and sell in-game NFTs on Treasure. It also acts as a reserve currency for Treasure’s metaverse.

Players can earn MAGIC tokens by gaming, mining, and participating in Bridgeworld, Treasure’s flagship game. Treasure now hosts twelve other games on its platform, some of which allow you to use and generate MAGIC tokens like in Bridgeworld. These include Beacon, a free-to-play fantasy action rogue-lite RPG; and Realm, a world-building and exploration game.

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Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is a distributed, open, and extensible naming system based on the Ethereum blockchain. ENS converts human-readable Ethereum addresses like john.eth into the machine-readable alphanumeric codes you know from wallets like Metamask. The reverse conversion -- associating metadata and machine-readable addresses with human-readable Ethereum addresses -- is also possible.

The goal of Ethereum Name Service is to make the Ethereum-based web easier to access and comprehend for humans - similar to how the Internet’s Domain Name Service makes the internet more accessible. Like DNS, ENS also uses a system of dot-separated hierarchical names called domains with domain owners fully controlling their subdomains.

ENS launched with a highly successful retroactive airdrop in November 2021 that rewarded users who had registered addresses before the project launched its token. However, in February 2022, it faced criticism over apparently homophobic tweets by its director of operations.

Ethereum Name Service

Stargate Finance (STG) is an omnichain-native asset bridge designed to solve the blockchain trilemma, which says that no blockchain can be decentralized, secure, and fast simultaneously. It does this by simplifying cross-chain DeFi transactions, which lets users transfer and swap their assets between different blockchains, layer-2 networks, and decentralized applications (dApps) almost instantly.

Stargate users can also move their assets between different liquidity pools on various decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and dApps. The protocol supports transfers between eight chains: Ethereum, Avalanche, Polygon, Metis, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Optimism and Fantom.

The platform offers several other, profit-making features: users can supply liquidity pools, stake assets, and farm tokens. When users stake their assets, they can help govern the Stargate Finance Exchange.

Stargate Finance

Ethereum-based DYDX ($ethDYDX) is a governance token that allows the dYdX community to truly govern the dYdX Layer 2 Protocol built on Ethereum ("dYdX v3"). ethDYDX is currently undergoing a migration from Ethereum to the dYdX Chain. More information is available here. If you want to migrate ethDYDX to dYdX Chain DYDX, to enable staking, security and governance of the dYdX Chain you can follow the how-to-bridge guide here.

If you want to read about the new token utility for dYdX Chain DYDX you can read the blog here

ethDYDX (dYdX) is the governance token for the layer 2 protocol built on Ethereum. By enabling shared control of dYdX v3, ethDYDX allows traders, liquidity providers, and partners of dYdX to work collectively towards an enhanced dYdX v3.

Built on StarkWare’s StarkEx scalability engine, layer 2 is used for trading of cross-margined perpetuals on the platform. The scaling solution allows dYdX to increase transaction speed, eliminate gas costs, reduce trading fees and lower​​ minimum trade sizes on the protocol.

A total of 1,000,000,000 ethDYDX have been minted, and started to become accessible over five (5) years, on August 3rd, 2021, at 15:00:00 UTC.

dYdX (ethDYDX)

BLUR is the native governance token of Blur, a unique non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace and aggregator platform that offers advanced features such as real-time price feeds, portfolio management and multi-marketplace NFT comparisons. It claims to have faster NFT sweeps, and a more intuitive interface than other comparable platforms.

As a result, many professional NFT traders increasingly prefer to use Blur for their trading activities — although it may be due to incentives like the recent airdrop of 360 million BLUR tokens — worth around $355M at the time of writing. It is an Ethereum-based platform that has raised over $14m from world class investors and traders including Paradigm, 6529, Cozomo Medici, dhof, Bharat Krymo, Zeneca, OSF, MoonOverlord, icebergy, Deeze, Andy8052, Keyboard Monkey and many more.

BLUR came to prominence after launching in October 2022, when it promised airdrops of BLUR tokens to the top platform users.

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The Frax Protocol is the first fractional-algorithmic stablecoin system. Frax is open-source, permissionless, and entirely on-chain – currently implemented on Ethereum (with possible cross chain implementations in the future). The end goal of the Frax protocol is to provide a highly scalable, decentralized, algorithmic money in place of fixed-supply digital assets like BTC. The protocol incorporates the following concepts:

Fractional-Algorithmic – Frax is a unique stablecoin with parts of its supply backed by collateral and parts of the supply algorithmic. The ratio of collateralized and algorithmic depends on the market's pricing of the FRAX stablecoin. If FRAX is trading at above $1, the protocol decreases the collateral ratio. If FRAX is trading at under $1, the protocol increases the collateral ratio.

Decentralized & Governance-minimized – Community governed and emphasizing a highly autonomous, algorithmic approach with no active management.

Fully on-chain oracles – Frax v1 uses Uniswap (ETH, USDT, USDC time-weighted average prices) and Chainlink (USD price) oracles.

Two Tokens – FRAX is the stablecoin targeting a tight band around $1/coin. Frax Shares (FXS) is the governance token which accrues fees, seigniorage revenue, and excess collateral value.

Before Frax, stablecoins were divided into three different categories: fiat collateralized, overcollateralized with cryptocurrency, and algorithmic with no collateral. Frax is the first kind of decentralized stablecoin to classify itself as fractional-algorithmic ushering in the 4th and most unique category.

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Immutable positions itself as the first layer-two scaling solution for NFTs on Ethereum. According to Immutable, its blockchain does away with Ethereum’s limitations like low scalability, a poor user experience, illiquidity, and a slow developer experience. Instead, users benefit from instant trading and massive scalability while enjoying zero gas fees for minting and trading NFTs without compromising user or asset security.

Thanks to this technology, users will be able to create and distribute assets like ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens on a massive scale. Chris Clay, the game Director of Gods Unchained, a project already building on Immutable, stated that Immutable allows Gods Unchained to implement a new meta-system that was previously impossible. In this fashion, Immutable aims to create a world-class experience for users and developers alike.

Immutable

Convex Finance is a DeFi protocol that allows Curve liquidity providersto earn a share of trading fees on Curve without staking liquidity there. Instead, LPs can stake with Convex and receive boosted CRV and liquidity mining rewards. This provides CRV stakers with better capital efficiency and positions Convex Finance as an important player in the Curve wars.

Convex has entered a competitive race to obtain as much control as possible of the Curve Finance stablecoin exchange. The more CRV tokens a protocol has, the more influence it has over interest rates on Curve, which is the largest DEX in the world by TVL. Consequently, the “Curve wars” are an ongoing race for influence over what is probably the most important protocol in DeFi.

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GMX is a decentralized exchange (DEX) for trading perpetual cryptocurrency futures with up to 50X leverage on popular cryptocurrencies like BTC, ETH and more. The platform launched in September 2021 as Gambit Exchange. To date, GMX has a total trading volume of over $130B and 283K total users, making it the leading derivatives DEX on Arbitrum and Avalanche.

GMX runs on the Arbitrum and the Avalanche blockchain. These ecosystems are connected to the exchange via Synapse — a cross-chain bridge.

Illuvium is an open-world fantasy battle game built on the Ethereum blockchain. Often touted as the first AAA game on Ethereum, Illuvium looks to provide a source of entertainment to both casual gamers and hardcore DeFi fans through a range of collecting and trading features.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Illuvium.

The world of Illuvium is inhabited by creatures known as Illuvials, who can be captured by players that best them in battle and nurse them back to health. From then on, they become a loyal part of the player’s collection and can be used when battling other adventurers as part of Illuvium’s auto battler gameplay.

The game is a fusion between an open-world exploration game and a PVP battle game. Players can spend their time exploring the expanses of the game world or building up their team of powerful beasts.

Illuvium has been in development since 2020, and is being built by a worldwide team of more than 40 individuals, including the co-founders; serial entrepreneur and early cryptocurrency adopter Kieran Warwick, and experienced game designer Aaron Warwick, who are brothers. (And who are coincidentally also the brothers of Kain Warwick, the co-founder of DeFi platform Synthetix).

The ILV token has a number of uses within the Illuvium ecosystem. It’s the main token used to reward players for their in-game achievements, entitles players to their share of the Illuvium Vault and is used for participating in the governance of the game via the Illuvium decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).

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Curve is a decentralized exchange for stablecoins that uses an automated market maker (AMM) to manage liquidity.

Launched in January 2020, Curve is now synonymous with the decentralized finance (DeFi) phenomenon, and has seen significant growth in the second half of 2020.

In August, Curve launched a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), with CRV as its in-house token. The DAO uses Ethereum-based creation tool Aragon to connect multiple smart contracts used for users’ deposited liquidity. Issues such as governance, however, differ from Aragon in their weighting and other respects.

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Secret (SCRT) is a privacy-oriented blockchain built on Cosmos. Its smart contracts are called Secret Contracts and allow DApps to use private data on Secret, similar to how smart contracts operate on other blockchains. However, Secret Contracts transfer encrypted inputs into encrypted outputs without exposing data. This is made possible thanks to the encrypted contract states during the execution.

Data privacy is guaranteed by combining encryption protocols and key management within a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). This allows Secret Contracts to compete for several privacy-related use cases that traditional blockchains have found difficult to accommodate. For instance, private voting mechanisms or credit scoring applications become possible since they do not expose sensitive user data on-chain with Secret.

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Arweave is a decentralized storage network that seeks to offer a platform for the indefinite storage of data. Describing itself as "a collectively owned hard drive that never forgets," the network primarily hosts "the permaweb" — a permanent, decentralized web with a number of community-driven applications and platforms.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Arweave.

The Arweave network uses a native cryptocurrency, AR, to pay "miners" to indefinitely store the network's information.

The project was first announced as Archain in August 2017, later rebranding to Arweave in February 2018 and officially launching in June 2018.

Arweave

Founded in 2018, SuperRare is the leading curated marketplace for onchain art with more than US$300M in total sales and US$180M earned by artists. As one of the earliest champions of perpetual artist royalties, SuperRare is working to improve discovery while decentralising the art market. Core to SuperRare is $RARE, a token offering utility as a currency on the marketplace, a staking based reputation system, and DAO governance rights.

SuperRare is governed by $RARE token holders through RareDAO and sits atop Rare Protocol, an ecosystem focused on unifying the currently fragmented NFT landscape to supercharge the industry’s ability to revolutionise the economics of human creativity through onchain innovation.

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JOE (JOE) is the native token of Trader Joe, a decentralized exchange (DEX) on the Avalanche (AVAX) blockchain that offers DeFi services, including swapping, staking and yield farming. The exchange has been growing rapidly, attracting over $4 billion in total value locked (TVL) since it was launched in June 2021. Trader Joe claims to take a community-first approach, and to prioritize innovation, speed and safety. It aims to provide a one-stop-shop DeFi experience and to integrate new products without compromising on security. To achieve this, Trader Joe has outlined an ambitious roadmap that focuses on token-holder growth. It plans to have improved staking, non-fungible-token (NFT) exchange listings, the collateralization of the JOE token, and leveraged trading –– all during 2021.

Lido DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) which provides staking infrastructure for multiple blockchain networks.

Most notably, the platform provides a liquid staking solution for Ethereum, allowing users to stake their ETH and receive stETH (Lido staked ETH) tokens in exchange, which represent the user's staked ETH and staking rewards.

Lido DAO is secured by a mix of decentralized governance, audited code and smart contracts. The Lido protocol runs on Ethereum with help from smart contracts that process user deposits and distribute staking rewards, among other functions. Several third-party security firms have audited Lido’s smart contracts in order to identify and address potential vulnerabilities.

The platform’s native token is LDO - which also serves as the governance token for Lido DAO. Holders can participate in governance proposals and vote on key decisions such as board adjustments, new integrations and platform updates. LDO holders have the right to determine the development and operation of the platform.

Lido currently supports staking for Ethereum and Polygon only with the recent sunsetting of Solana.