LooksRare NFT Marketplace Upgrades to Version 2, Reducing Fees by 75%

LooksRare, a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace, has announced an upgrade to version 2. The company revealed that the new platform would reduce fees by 75% and implement several other features. The previous version, LooksRare v1, charged 2% per trade, but this has now been reduced to 0.5% in version 2. In addition, the new version has more gas-efficient contracts, allowing users to save approximately 30% on gas fees versus the previous version of the app.

The LooksRare team explained that in version 2, sellers receive Ether (ETH) instead of Wrapped Ether (WETH) for most sales. The smart contracts also allow for bulk buying and selling orders if a user wants to place multiple trades simultaneously. Furthermore, aggregators can now implement custom recipients, allowing users to buy an NFT with one wallet but send it to another.

Sellers can now list their NFTs for sale in token prices instead of ETH. This includes the option to list an NFT for a fixed U.S. dollar price to be paid in equivalent ETH.

LooksRare v1 will be sunsetted, according to the team's separate April 7 post. On April 12, the app's front end will no longer allow users to post version 1 auctions through the public API. All current v1 auctions will be removed from the website at 10:00 am UTC on April 13, and the smart contracts themselves will be disabled through an admin function at 11:00 am UTC.

The announcement of the upgrade has received mostly positive reactions, as many LooksRare users believe the new features will provide a strong challenge to competitors such as OpenSea and Blur. However, some users have expressed doubts that v2 will be enough of a change to attract users from other platforms. These users have cited the lack of good token incentives and the inability to list enough collections as potential issues.

Despite some controversy in October when the company decided to eliminate creator royalties, LooksRare has benefited from the recent boom in NFT prices. The company's latest upgrade to version 2 shows its commitment to providing users with an efficient and cost-effective NFT marketplace.