Digital Assets
Arcade Raises $15M to Expand NFT Lending Platform
The NFT lending platform Arcade has announced that it closed a $15 million Series A funding round. The platform allows users to borrow against their NFTs as collateral, connecting the two important spaces of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized finance (DeFi) together.
The round was led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Castle Island Ventures, Franklin Templeton Blockchain Fund, Golden Tree Asset Management, Eniac Ventures, Protofound, Probably Nothing Capital, and Lemniscap.
The round was also joined by angel investors BlockFi CEO Zac Prine and Quantstamp CEO Richard Ma.
The equity funding round will go towards Arcade’s mission in expanding its team, taking the platform public, and reaching a wider audience. The company currently has 13 employees, and it’s looking to expand in the areas of product, business development, marketing, and engineering.
The Arcade Platform
The Arcade NFT lending platform is currently in private beta, with the aim of opening to the public in the first quarter of 2022. The startup has also announced that it facilitated the largest loan of $800,000 and its total loan volume has been $3.3 million to date.
The platform supports Ethereum-based NFTs, which can be put up as collateral for loans in all ERC-20 tokens. The company has also indicated that it is exploring other blockchains and Layer 2 networks, with support possibly coming in 2022.
The platform is targeted at institutional lenders and high-net-worth retail inventors, and it takes a small percentage of every transaction.
“Arcade’s collateralization of this new asset class will incentivize the participation of new entities from both the traditional and digital art and finance worlds, including institutional lenders, high-net-worth individuals, DAOs, companies with NFTs on their balance sheets and NFT collectors and creators,” said Pantera Capital principal Lauren Stephanian.
The new funding comes as an increasing number of individuals are owning NFTs, causing an increase in demand for DeFi applications. The Arcade platform is looking to fill this new space.
