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.  

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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.

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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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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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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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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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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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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Mask Network is a protocol that allows its users to send encrypted messages over Twitter and Facebook. It essentially acts as a bridge between the internet and a decentralized network running on top.

Mask Network was initially launched in July 2019, with its first use case of allowing Facebook and Twitter users to encrypt posts on the social media platforms. It then raised $2 million in a funding round in November 2020, co-led by HashKey and Hash Global, and a further $3 million funding round in February 2021 with participation from Digital Currency Group and Fundamental Labs.

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It does this by providing a full EVM implementation, a Web3-compatible API, and bridges that connect Moonriver to existing Ethereum networks.

This allows developers to deploy existing Solidity smart contracts and DApp frontends to Moonriver with minimal changes.

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HIGH Token (Highstreet) is a native token of a decentralized commerce-centric play-to-earn metaverse built with virtual reality (VR) support. Apart from realizing a two-way currency flow within physical and virtual worlds, Highstreet (HIGH) introduces a market where in-game items can be redeemed for real-life products. During gameplay, users have an opportunity to explore the metaverse, fight monsters and complete quests all the while acquiring goods that have both digital and real-world utility.

The project aims to define the new generation of retail and offers an effortless, secure and entertaining way of making online purchases.

Apart from HIGH, the game features a utility token STREET, acquired through completing various tasks in the game. While HIGH is considered a governance heavy token, giving gamers an opportunity to vote on major decisions on the platform, profit through stacking and buy products on the marketplace, STREET serves as the primary currency facilitating the commerce in the game and can be used to buy armor, weapons, heals, travel tickets and hotel stays. HIGH is paid to owners of properties in taxes and is also obtainable through participation in metaverse’s special events.

As stated in the official sources, the token first went live in October 2021. The company’s twitter feed reports that the game is currently as of November 2021 in private alpha testing with the public beta testing coming towards the end of the year. Highstreet market is already accessible to users via browser.

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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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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.

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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.