New OpenSea Competitor, LooksRare, Receives Some Early Backlash

By and large, most people on NFT Twitter celebrated the launch of the new OpenSea competitor, LooksRare yesterday. However, not everybody was so thrilled. As a matter of fact, many notable voices in the space voiced their reservations about the NFT marketplace’s launch.

Some People Question The Timing Of The Opensea Competitor’s Launch

One of the major sticking points for some was the fact that the new OpenSea competitor seemed to launch out of nowhere. For example, Twitter user @Crypto__Jesus_ went as far as to Tweet, “LooksRare NFT Marketplace is the most careless public launch I’ve ever seen”. They went on to post a thread highlighting what they saw as red flags around the launch.

Above all, their concern was that LooksRare does not have a public audit of their platform. To explain, smart contract audits are when trusted sources review smart contracts to confirm that they are safe for users.

By the same token, Crypto Jesus points to the fact that the LooksRare GitHub page does not have any public repositories. In other words, their code is not public for review.

The thread ends with Crypto Jesus concluding that LooksRare rushed their launch. They believe that LooksRare did this to take advantage of momentum building against their main competitor, OpenSea.

Did An 18-Hour Twitter Space From @Mec.eth Cause The Launch?

In particular, Crypto Jesus mentioned the fact that Web3 educator @mec.eth had hosted a high-profile, 18-hour Twitter Space the day before the OpenSea competitor launched.

To clarify, the title of Mec’s Twitter Space was “The Death of OpenSea: Building A Community Owned Marketplace?”

The marathon Twitter Space featured Mec and several other high-profile members of the NFT Twitter community. They discussed issues with OpenSea and if there were viable competitors to the platform.

Mec herself also believed that this was the case. She tweeted as much and voiced her skepticism on later Twitter Spaces talking about the LooksRare launch.

It’s impossible to say to what extent this may be the case. While the launch seemed sudden to many, LooksRare had announced on January 1st that they would be launching within the week. That timing would make the January 10th launch a bit late rather than early.

Others Object To LooksRare Taking Money From ColeThereum

The timing wasn’t the only problem that people had. Indeed, others took issue with the fact that ColeThereum is one of several NFT influencers who are investors in LooksRare.

Without a doubt, ColeThereum has become public enemy #1 in the NFT space. This follows his central role in the recent drama around Pudgy Penguins. NFT owners on Twitter went as far as to say that they would cash out their $LOOKS tokens and vowed not to use the OpenSea competitor as long as Cole stood to benefit from it.

To be sure, the topic is so raw that LooksRare made a point to clear the air. To that end, they tweeted, “Cole is not a member of our team. Never has been, never will be.” In light of that, some people who had an issue with LooksRare because of the Cole connection have since reversed their position.

In addition, all of the influencers who invested in LooksRare have their funds staked in the platform for a minimum of 180 days. This is to prevent them from promoting the platform and then dumping their $LOOKS tokens in the short term.

Overall, the feelings around LooksRare are still more positive than negative. Even so, there is still some suspicion around what people perceive as a rushed launch and the involvement of different NFT influencers.

All things considered, LooksRare still had a very successful launch. But the possibility of it quickly becoming the number one OpenSea competitor doesn’t feel like as much of a sure bet as it did at first.