Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been making waves in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space lately, and now the NFT lending platform Astaria is going public after a long beta test period. Astaria’s co-founder and former SushiSwap CTO Joseph Delong built the platform with the goal of pumping liquidity into the Ethereum-based NFT ecosystem. Astaria aims to allow NFT holders to lease their assets to traders who may not be able to afford a blue-chip NFT in a single purchase or for those who seek to borrow them for other purposes. By supporting over 300,000 NFTs, Astaria hopes to be a prominent player in the internet of the future, also known the Web3.
Upshot, an NFT appraisal service, serves as the “strategist” that helps liquidity providers enter the market and borrowers lease NFT assets. Astaria chose to implement a three-actor model as it’s difficult to scale the peer-to-peer lending model without complications. As stated by Astaria CEO and co-founder Justin Bram, “there’s sort of this bid and ask process that happens offline in Discord, where users are negotiating different rates for loans – it’s really cumbersome, you have to have capital and knowledge to lend out and as a borrower, and you don’t know what you’re getting” Bram said. Unlike many other NFT lending platforms, Astaria focuses on protecting both lenders and borrowers’ interests. Astaria does not force liquidate anyone, you get fixed terms, and only get liquidated to pay what you owe—no surprises.
Astaria has a pre-funded vault that Upshot manages to control the flow of capital within the protocol. In June 2022, Astaria raised $8 million in seed funding, helping to deliver robust NFT lending infrastructure to the lending market. The project spent time in beta mode providing more features to the platform before it went public.
Since the launch of the NFT marketplace Blend from Blur, NFT lending has been on the rise. According to platform Dune Analytics, the marketplace has already loaned out 46,472 ETH, worth around $83.7 million. Binance launched an NFT loan feature, which highlights the significance of NFT lending’s potential.
Astaria aims to make this process seamless while protecting the interests of lenders and borrowers while providing immense liquidity in the NFT ecosystem.
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According to https://www.coindesk.com/web3/2023/05/25/ex-sushi-cto-led-nft-lending-platform-astaria-rolls-out-to-public/
The material in this article is written on the basis of another article.