LooksRare Team Cashes Out $30M in WETH, Faces Community Anger

LooksRare, a nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace considered to be the "OpenSea killer," became the buzz of the NFT world after its founders cashed out millions of dollars in Ether (ETH).

The core team of LooksRare NFT marketplace confirmed it has cashed out 10,500 WETH worth $30 million from the unattributed staked native token LOOKS on the popular crypto mixing tool Tornado Cash. Thus, the unattributed $LOOKS tokens were exchanged for Ether.

The native token was intended to pay platform fees and was also given to users who sold their NFT on the site as incentives. 

Once the news became public, the team got a storm of criticism on Twitter, and the price of the native token $LOOKS plummeted by more than 15% on the day. However, one of the team members defended the withdrawal on Twitter, claiming that the team's earning of wrapped Ethereum incentives was never a secret.

One of the founding members, Zodd, stated that the LooksRare team had been working on the platform for over six months without receiving any monetary remuneration and had paid the seven-figure fee up front before the launch.

Zodd responded to a tweet that stated the team had cashed out approximately $73 million in WETH, claiming the actual amount was around $30 million. The staff member also shot down rumors of a possible rug pull, claiming that they aren't going anywhere and that the platform's future is bright.

According to LooksRare team, the withdrawn WETH represents a minor percentage of the trading costs, and no LOOKS token has been sold. They further added that in the last 30 days, 80,000 WETH has been dispersed across LOOKS stakeholders. And just recently, the team added 4,061,055 $LOOKS/2,028 $ETH as liquidity to @Uniswap V3.

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