OpenSea Faces New Competition to NFT Marketplace Dominance
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Popular non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea faces mounting competition as NFTs continue to grow in popularity.
OpenSea, the leading NFT marketplace in terms of trading volume, now faces an increasing amount of competitors to it’s dominance over the NFT market. One of the leading contenders in the battle for control over NFT trading volume is LooksRare, which was launched on Monday and aims to position itself as a major rival to OpenSea’s NFT supremacy. LooksRare claims to be made “by NFT people, for NFT people,” and in its launch announcement stated that it is “tired of the de-platforming of creators, and the decision-makers who value business over community, seeking IPO instead of benefiting the communities that got them there.” This can be interpreted as the group indirectly calling out OpenSea, which has hinted at a possible IPO in a December Bloomberg interview with CFO Brian Roberts.
While the LooksRare marketplace is still considered in it’s infancy, it has already garnered a considerable amount of interest. According to Dune Analytics, in the two days that LooksRare has gone live it has seen a total trading volume of $565,838,342. In the same time period (2 days) OpenSea has only recorded a total trading volume of $137,764,846.
In terms of user count, LooksRare has seen atleast 4,184 users register with the platform. This figure trails OpenSea’s total user count of 5,451 since LookRare’s release, but these statistics could change as the platform continues to make a name for itself.
OpenSea continues to dominate total NFT transactions as well, registering 87,940 transactions in the past two days compared to LooksRare’s 6,156 transactions.
OpenSea is still currently on track to break its own record for monthly sales on Ethereum and reach $6 billion for the month of January alone, but competitors such as LooksRare and the highly anticipated Coinbase NFT marketplace may erode OpenSea’s authority in the NFT space.