Arcade, a platform that enables users to use non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as collateral for loans, raised $ 15 million in a Series A funding round involving Pantera Capital.
In an announcement made on Wednesday, Arcade said Pantera, Castle Island Ventures, Franklin Templeton Blockchain Fund, Golden Tree Asset Management, Eniac Ventures, Protofund, Probably Nothing Capital and Lemniscap, as well as angel investors BlockFi CEO Zac Prince and Quantstamp CEO Richard Ma stood behind the investment to create a connection NFT-secured lending with the decentralized finance area. The platform also emerges from a private release with a total loan volume of $ 3.3 million, backed by a total of $ 10 million in assets.
Arcade co-founder Gabe Frank said NFTs make up a significant portion of the ever-growing DeFi market that is right now worth over $ 250 billion in terms of total locked value. “However, the lack of infrastructure in DeFi prevents NFT owners from getting liquidity on their holdings despite massive market capitalization,” he said.
Arcade’s LinkedIn page features at least 10 US-based employees, with the company currently hiring for a variety of positions including a senior software engineer, a senior talent specialist, and a team coordinator. Lauren Stephanian, director at Pantera Capital, said the platform’s NFT collateralisation has the potential to incentivize the participation of “institutional lenders, high net worth individuals, DAOs, companies with NFTs on their balance sheets and NFT collectors”.
Related: Nexo is partnering with Three Arrows Capital to launch an NFT loan and art finance service
Other platforms have already introduced services or are in the process of enabling loans against NFTs, including ETNA Network and the Lithuania-based loan platform Drops. In March, Teller Finance credit protocol announced that some of its users would be able to Take out a loan without depositing collateral, accessible via special NFTs.
