W3A PRO | $LOOKS vs. $BLUR vs. $X2Y2 Tokenomics

The Sustainability of NFT Marketplace Tokens

GM PRO DOers!

Token 👏 Incentivized 👏 NFT 👏 Marketplaces 👏

That was the theme in last week's PRO report (and in the recent NFT marketplace war).

Launch a token and pay users to use your platform. That seems to be the best way to dethrone Opensea’s dominance in the NFT marketplace war so far.

While its effectiveness is up for debate, considering the amount of wash trading and airdrop farming it creates, the next questions are…

Are these tokens sustainable? Do they accrue value from the marketplace? 

…Or are they just a short term tool used to vampire attack the NFT market? 🧛🏻‍♂️

These questions and more are what we will uncover in today's report.

We’re exploring the tokenomics of the 3 largest NFT marketplaces with tokens: LooksRare, Blur and X2Y2.

If you need a refresher on tokenomics, check out our past PRO report titled “The Greatest Tokenomic Design in Web3”

Also, if you’re a new PRO member, make sure to read last week's report for a backstory on the NFT marketplace wars.

Let’s start off with a bit of context around each token's performance since launch, just to get our feet wet.

NFT Marketplace Token Performance

$LOOKS launched first back in January 2022 and went as high as $6, as low as $0.11 and at the time of this writing sits at $0.19. 

$X2Y2 was next, launching in February 2022 and went as high as $4.14, as low as $0.028 and at the time of this writing sits at $0.074

And finally $BLUR, which launched just recently on February 14th, 2023. We don’t have much to go from here but it started as high as $5.02 and quickly fell to a low of $0.48 and currently is sitting at $0.78.

LOL. Doesn’t look too good for these tokens, does it? Maybe we should end the report here… 🤷

I’m kidding, this type of volatility is common in crypto, but even more so in tokens that start with an airdrop.

Why?

How Do You Value a Young Crypto Project?