What Is LooksRare? How the NFT Marketplace, Fees and LOOKS Work

LooksRare went live in January 2022. It was built by a team of nine led by two pseudonymous founders ¹. Anyone who had traded more than 3 ETH on OpenSea between June 16 and December 16, 2021 could claim LOOKS. Trading eligible NFTs on LooksRare earned more tokens ¹. Media at the time called it a "vampire attack" on OpenSea ¹. The launch fee was 2% of every sale, passed to LOOKS stakers ¹.

In October 2022, LooksRare drew criticism for dropping enforced creator royalties ². On April 6, 2023, it launched V2, which cut the fee to 0.5%, lowered gas costs and added bulk orders. The V1 contracts were disabled on April 13, 2023 ². Trading rewards ended in October 2023 ⁸. In 2024 the team expanded into games, some running on Arbitrum and on Blast ⁸.

You connect a wallet, such as MetaMask, and trade directly through LooksRare's smart contracts. The marketplace does not hold your NFTs or funds ³⁷.

• Listing. You sign an order off-chain and approve LooksRare's transfer manager to move that NFT when it sells. Several listings can be signed at once ²³.
• Buying. You pay in ETH or an approved token. Collection offers let you bid on any item in a collection ³.
• Standards. The protocol supports ERC-721 and ERC-1155 NFTs ³.

Approvals stay active until you revoke them. Fake marketplace sites and phishing signature requests are the main way NFT traders lose assets. Check every URL and every signature. See crypto phishing and how NFT marketplaces work.

The V2 docs, last updated in January 2024, say affiliates can receive a share of the protocol fee ³. Collection creators should not assume royalties are enforced on LooksRare. The docs describe a 0% creator fee by default ³.

LOOKS has a fixed supply of 1 billion. The largest allocations went to trading-volume rewards (44.1%), staking rewards (18.9%) and the airdrop (12%). The founding team and the treasury got 10% each ⁵. The docs say token governance is "coming in the future" ⁵.

Under the documented design, staked LOOKS earned two things. Stakers received a daily share of protocol fees, paid in WETH, plus newly issued LOOKS. Rewards compound automatically ⁴. The staking contract changed in November 2023, and stakers were asked to migrate ⁸. In 2024, LOOKS stakers could also claim YOLO tokens ⁸. These docs date from January 2024. Check the current reward rate and status on looksrare.org before staking. Staking rewards are variable, and LOOKS can fall in value.

LooksRare's contracts were audited by Trail of Bits, PeckShield and Spearbit. Spearbit reviewed V2 ⁶. The docs do not date these audits, and an audit is not a guarantee. The main V2 exchange contract on Ethereum is 0x0000000000E655fAe4d56241588680F86E3b2377 ⁷. LooksRare runs a public status page. On October 23, 2026 it showed all systems operational and no incidents in the previous two weeks ⁹.