NFT Lending is Trending

A marketplace called NFTfi, which specialises in loans collateralised by NFTs, has seen a surge in lending volume over the last two months. During the weekend of 3rd July, it hit its highest level with $3.5M worth of non-fungible tokens changing hands. However, we have to look deeper to find the real story.

Richard Chen, a general partner at crypto investment firm 1confirmation, took a look at it and discovered something important. Of that $3.5m, the sum of $3.16M was borrowed by just two whale investors, although
there are many on crypto Twitter who doubt that it is two people, and suggest it is a single investor.

The ‘two’ investors borrowed 21,500 DAI against a combined collection of 147 CryptoPunk NFTs. The interest rate on the loan is set by a metaverse-based interest rate protocol called MetaStreet, which acted as sole lender for the loans.

NFTfi specialises in short-term loans, with loans lasting 33 days on average. The interest rate on that period of time is around 4%, which equates to 42% per annum. As might be expected, Bored Apes and CryptoPunks
dominate the NFTs offered as collateral.

There is now a rumour floating around that this flurry of activity on NFTfi will launch an airdrop for users. Andrew T of wallet analytics firm Nansen tweeted that NFTfi has been quietly raising funds over the last three months, equivalent to $1m in USDC. He tweeted, “Between that and
this possible airdrop farming, could be a token on the horizon.” Others aren’t so sure, with some suggesting there is a pattern at play that looks more like money laundering.

NFT Lending is Soaring

Whatever the truth of that, NFTfi as a business has been doing extraordinarily well in the NFT lending sector. Since it launched in 2020
it has facilitated 13,402 loans worth $217.6m. It even managed to buck the
downward trend of the crypto market in 2022, processing a record $48.7M worth of loans in April, although as market conditions became more strained, volume dropped, with only $15.8M worth of loans being taken out during the month of June.

NFTfi’s excellent results over two years have of course prompted other protocols to enter the market. Arcade, which raised $15M in a Series A
funding round in December is one of them and has facilitated $25m worth of loans since it went live in January this year.

The Emergence of Peer-to-Protocol Lending

Gmoney, a prolific NFT collector, says that while more protocols are coming along that offer peer-to-peer loans backed by NFTs, the next frontier for NFT lending will be “peer-to-protocol lending.” In a podcast with The Defiant, he said, “At the moment, there’s no peer-to-protocol lending, it’s more peer-to-peer. I think the issue that people are trying to solve is how do you make it a peer-to-protocol lending environment… I know a lot of teams are trying to solve this problem.” Indeed, Messari reviews JPEG’d which offers a token-integrated peer-to-protocol approach, and that because of its utility-driven tokenomics, the demand for the JPEG token is correlated with demand to “maximally utilise the platform.” It will be interesting to observe to what extent peer-to-protocol overtakes peer-to-peer NFT lending, and why.