Deciphering the Metaverse: The Convergence of Gaming Paradigms

At its core, crypto jeopardizes business models that disproportionately benefit gatekeepers. The fundamental crypto ethos espoused by many evangelists has inculcated the idea of bypassing these middlemen, through shared ownership, in its proponents. What started as a philosophical thought experiment has since percolated through to a variety of application domains. In essence, this shared ownership model provides a blank slate for technical ingenuity, devoid of many limitations imposed by the old paradigm. Most importantly, it has instrumentalized financial incentives to motivate individuals to act in concert and collectively rally behind a shared vision without the need for centralized, top-down control.

Amidst the ongoing tug-of-war between NFT marketplaces, LooksRare has harnessed the power of this shared ownership model by making it a cornerstone of its protocol design. Last week, the platform doubled down on this approach by adding a listing reward feature to its growing stack of liquidity incentivization measures. In sum, this program compensates NFT traders who list eligible NFTs within 1.5x of the global floor price – which refers to the lowest floor price on LooksRare or OpenSea – with corresponding points accruing on a 10-minute cadence, which are exchanged for LOOKS rewards once a day.