Arcade, a platform that allows users to use non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as collateral for loans, has raised $ 15 million in a Series A funding round with participation from Pantera Capital.
In a Wednesday ad, Arcade saying Pantera, Castle Island Ventures, Franklin Templeton Blockchain Fund, Golden Tree Asset Management, Eniac Ventures, Protofund, Probably Nothing Capital, and Lemniscap, plus angel investors, BlockFi CEO Zac Prince, and Quantstamp CEO Richard Ma, were behind the investment in an effort to connect NFT secured loans with the decentralized financial space. The platform is also emerging from a private launch with $ 3.3 million in total secured loan volume over a total of $ 10 million in assets.
Arcade co-founder Gabe Frank said that NFTs represent a significant part of the growing DeFi market, which is currently value more than $ 250 billion in terms of total locked value. "However, the lack of infrastructure in DeFi prevents NFT holders from achieving liquidity in their holdings despite huge market capitalizations," he said.
Arcade's LinkedIn page lists at least 10 US-based employees, and the company is currently hiring for various roles, including a senior software engineer, a lead talent specialist, and a team coordinator. Lauren Stephanian, a principal at Pantera Capital, said the NFT platform collateral had the potential to incentivize participation by "institutional lenders, high-net-worth individuals, DAOs, companies with NFTs on their balance sheets, and NFT collectors."
Related: Nexo Partners with Three Arrows Capital to Launch Art Financing and Loan Service NFT
Other platforms have already launched or are in the process of launching services to facilitate loans against NFT, including ETNA Network and the Lithuanian-based loan platform Drops. In March, the Teller Finance loan protocol announced that some of its users could get credit without posting collateral, accessible through special NFTs.
Post navigation
