The year 2022 has come to an end and we are still in deep bear market - but that’s exactly where the opportunities can be found! One particular opportunity that I’m personally eyeing:

True blue-chip NFTs will eventually recover, but not just that, these NFTs will thrive and outperform ETH in the next bull run. Some consider blue-chip NFTs as ETH on leverage without liquidation risk.

Now you might say: But blue-chip NFTs are still out of reach for most individual investors - unless for the OG’s, but those might have minted blue-chip NFTs for almost free or bought in when NFTs have still been affordable…

Well, true. But same can be said about Bitcoin, no? Frankly speaking, today most individual investors can’t afford to buy (many) Bitcoins, but they can instead buy just fractions of a $BTC.

When looking to Ethereum, today most investors might not be able to afford 32 ETH required to stake for a node and hence miss out on the native (relative low risk) yield the Ethereum Blockchain offers. But luckily innovative web3 builders have created solutions (and continue to do so) - to lower the barrier to entry for wannabe stakers.

And the same innovation process is recently happening with regard to blue-chip NFTs: lots of creative new projects are trying to lower the barrier for regular retail investors to access the opportunities these NFTs can offer.

One idea could be collectively investing as a group. Either by directly acquiring NFTs via multi-signer Safe or with the help of dApps that manage collective investing via trustless smart contracts - today both solutions make it possible to get access to even high priced ticket items like Crypto Punks.

Another opportunity is to trade derivatives of blue-chip NFTs without owning the underlying. This is particularly interesting as the NFTs themselves are mostly illiquid, while derivatives allow instant trading just like with regular fungible tokens (ERC-20).

But more on the the dApps which enable collective ownership, derivative trading and more later in this article. Let’s now identify the best opportunities within the blue-chip NFT space in detail…

I selected interesting NFTs for this article according to the following criteria:

• Blue-chip NFT based on the time of first mint: I skipped newer mints, as those would still have be proven over time, therefore considering only mints pre market crash in May 2022.

• Blue-chip NFT based on consistent high trading volume over time: I considered only NFT collections scoring decently on 7 day, 30 day and 1 year timeframe.

• Below value buy: newer mints are still jumping multiples in price even at current market sentiment, while the blue-chip collections are down 50% or more from ATH

• Roadmap: preferably NFT collections with an ambitious roadmap, where the team hasn’t left the project right after the mint

• Last but not least, the collection in question would not (yet) have released a token (ERC_20), in combination with VC investment, which could probably end up in an airdrop to NFT holders - on top of aimed gains from price increases.

• As the reader might notice: some of the highest ranking and most successful NFT collections in terms of trading volume are missing in this article. The reason being that particular collections have jumped in price considerably at the time of writing the article or are missing reputable investors backing the long term development.

• Disclaimer: I own none of the NFTs mentioned in this article (apart from fractions of no more then 1% and an inexpensive Art Blocks NFT). I tried to assess this research in completely unbiased manner, as someone who is looking to acquire (parts of) a blue-chip NFT which has the best chances of making it long term.

To select the best suited NFTs based on the above criteria I used the DUNE dashboard “Top NFT Collections” from CryptusChrist:

https://dune.com/cryptuschrist/Top-100-NFT-Projects?undefined=&Time_e2eee8=1+Year

Crypto Punks is the most exclusive OG community in the NFT space, the NFTs are probably a safe bet for a long term hold. While BAYC (Bored Ape Yacht Club) NFTs were able to flip Punks in terms of the most expensive floor price, Punk holders are arguably more respected. Crypto Punks community consists mostly of web3 natives vs BAYC community members mostly being from the likes of social media influencers and celebrities.

Noteworthy also for BAYC NFTs are the literally hundreds of incidents of stolen Apes, resulted mostly from the NFT owners poor knowledge of managing self custodial web3 wallets - and while that’s already casting a bad light onto BAYC as a desirable asset (at least from the perspective of web3 natives), even worse is the fact, that BAYC PFPs have been commonly used by scammers.

From an investment perspective it’s also well worth considering potential airdrops to NFT holders, as well as WL or discounted mints of derivative NFT collections. Crypto Punks holders definitely could receive such in future, while BAYC exhausted all additional value-add to their NFT holders already: they released multiple derivative collections, airdropped $APE ERC-20 token and created merchandise products.

Crypto Punks have just recently been acquired by YUGA Labs, the parent company owning the BAYC brand, probably another indication that Crypto Punks might follow the path of BAYC to potentially airdrop an ERC-20 token to holders.

https://mirror.xyz/0xEc9f53fA69682833FBd760C104B5D61aE29221E0/Km81y6Mc3O5LzS0wnrghVIV0HnZgLOd4wsnfcGw3_2I

But there is an actual downside for Crypto Punks NFTs as well: since those have been created ahead of the ERC-721 standard, the interoperability with dApps is very limited, e.g. at the moment it’s almost impossible to buy Crypto Punks as a collective, other than acquiring already existing fractionalized token shares.

Crypto Punks DUNE dashboard by courtesy of catherine:

https://dune.com/cat/cryptopunks

As stated on their website: “Art Blocks is dedicated to bringing compelling works of contemporary generative art to life. Art Blocks connects artists, blockchain technology, and creative coding into one extraordinary experience.”

Art Blocks are generated by an algorithm provided by the artist and while all the NFTs will be completely unique, they still have enough similarities to be positioned in the same project. The artwork will be generated only after the user initiated the mint process and therefore they won't know exactly what the NFT looks like until after the mint is completed.

Art Blocks was founded by Erick Calderon, an artist and NFT OG since Crypto Punks back in 2017. Calderon, better known as “Snowfro” was in fact the first artist on Art Blocks with his project Chromie Squiggle, which has since been the logo of the Art Blocks brand.

New projects on Art Blocks launch weekly and follow a Dutch action with the starting price and resting price set by the artist. This method guarantees a completely different experience than the usual NFT mints following a FCFS or WL model. Art connoisseurs will decide to pay top Dollars (ETH) if the mint experiences lot of buys and they value a project or artist accordingly, or in other cases there might not be minted all editions available and the remaining will be burned after the action ends.

Art Blocks recently introduced some changes to their product collections, grouping the projects into two distinct categories:

• Art Block's Present's - which includes all projects from artists with succesful applications and merged from the previous categories “Playground” and “Factory”

• Art Block's Curated - only the most innovative projects that gain approval from a board of judges.

The curated collections are highly sought after and there seems to not exist a bear market for these remarkable art pieces, among the most well known are Chromie Squiggle by Snowfro, Fidenza by Tyler Hobbs, Ringers by Dmitri Cherniak, Gazers by Matt Kane , Archetype by Kjetil Golid.

Overview of Art Blocks projects by courtesy of catherine:

https://dune.com/cat/art-blocks

While the most expensive Art Blocks sold at 2.100 ETH, there are also available lots of very affordable pieces on secondary markets for below 0.1 ETH currently. Owning any Art Blocks NFT would have made you eligible to mint 2 free Friendship Bracelets by Alexis André and it’s probably not the last time that Art Blocks holders will get similar opportunities, even the release of a governance token for the collection is rumoured.

Last but not least and interesting with regard to a possible governance token, Art Blocks has raised (more likely a symbolic) amount of $6M from investors, including True Ventures, Galaxy Interactive, Collab Currency, Libertus, Flamingo DAO, The LAO.

Art Blocks Raises $6M From True Ventures, Galaxy on Strength of Generative NFTs

In an interview on CoinDesk's "Opinionated" podcast, founder Erick Calderon explained how a crypto side hustle grew into a leading digital art project.

https://www.coindesk.com

Created by parent PROOF Collective,** Moonbirds **is a 10k PFP NFT collection and spearheaded by CEO and co-founder Kevin Rose, a highly respected personality in the startup scene, serial entrepreneur, investor and partner at VC firm True Ventures.

CPO and and co-founder Justin Mazzell is nothing short of references as well: renowned as illustrator and designer for Disney, Google and Meta. Both co-founders are actively involved in the community and host weekly calls.

Moonbirds don’t fall short in technical specifications, contracts are open source and under CC0 licence, which means the Moonbirds artworks are public domain and can be freely used even for commercial purposes.

The NFT attributes are stored in-chain and re-created by their innovative rendering smart-contract and therefore not dependent on external storage for the imaged. Another advantage of the “in-chain” method is that the NFT attributes can improve in rarity, e.g. if the Moonbird is nested over a long period of time. TL;DR, explained best by PROOF collective’s own smart contract engineers here:

The parent PROOF Collective has raised $10 Million Seed funding and another $50 Million in Series A funding from renowned VC firms a16z, True Ventures, 776, Flamingo DAO, Collab + Currency, SV Angel among others.

The roadmap for Q1 2023 includes the derivative NFT Moonbirds Mythics, with a total supply of 20k, which will be released slowly at a rate of 25 mints per day, both nested (staked) Moonbirds or burning Oddities NFT (the first Moonbirds derivative NFT) give a chance to mint the new derivative. The Roadmap also includes a confirmed $PROOF token, details are expected to be released in Q1 2023.

Moonbirds DUNE dashboard by courtesy of CryptusChrist:

https://dune.com/cryptuschrist/Moonbirds-NFT

Doodles NFTs are definitely advancing as a blue-chip collection: a 10k PFP collection with strategic VC investment lead by 776 - the venture-capital firm from by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Doodles has raised $54 million at a $704 million valuation, at a time when both the crypto market in general and NFTs specifically have been in a downwards spiral.

Reddit's Ohanian Leads $54 Million Doodles Capital Raise

Creator of colorful NFT profile pictures, blossoming despite crypto winter, seeks to branch out.

https://www.forbes.com

Doodles probably have convinced the investors with their extensive roadmap, focused on strong community and a widely recognisable brand. Doodles long term vision is to become one of the world’s leading producers of media and entertainment. There have been talks of licensing Doodles from holders for IRL products and events like comic books, TV shows, and music videos etc.

The probability that Doodle holders might get airdropped an official ERC-20 token are in our opinion quite likely. Additional value-add freebies are already exhausted, Doodles holder could mint derivative NFTs.

The key people are Pharrell Williams (Chief Brand Officer), artist Scott Martin and the co-founders Evan Keast, Jordan Castro (both part of Cryptokitties). The community doesn’t fall short either, with high profile celebrities like Pranksy, Steve Aoki publicly endorcing the collection.

Doodles DUNE dashboard by courtesy of catherine:

https://dune.com/cat/doodles-holders

For those readers who dislike any of the presented blue-chip NFTs: while researching for this article I stumbled upon a very ambitious project, which I would like to recommend to anyone interested to learn more about all the quality NFT collections: presenting “the 1st Twitter NFT Library” created by Da Vinci - the library is continually expanding, you can even make suggestions!

While the aforementioned blue-chip NFTs are exciting already, a buy and hold strategy would be very capital intensive and therefore it makes sense to pursue a different strategy which allows a more capital efficient use of funds.

The optimal strategy for regular non high net worth folks (aka plebs), would mean to get some exposure to blue-chip NFTs, but without having to allocate a major part of their personal crypto wealth. Thanks to the ever innovating web3 builders, investors can choose from a different array of dApps, which allow them to get exposure to blue-chip NFTs with just a small amount of funds.

On top of the mere (expected) price increase of the NFT assets, I personally prefer additional upside in the form of potential airdrops, also to justify or mitigate the risk taken by investing in these relatively new and unproven assets as well as the various risks deriving from the dApps interacted with. Therefore the presented dApps in this article will preferably without a governance token (yet) and be backed by known investors as well as possibly a doxxed team with proven track record.

While PartyBid is already well known in the NFT space, the features of their NEW version are some of the best alpha in the space currently. Read on to discover why! Starting off with a general introduction to the PartyBid dApp:

How does it work? TL;DR: The dApp allows a group of people to crowdfund buy NFTs in a completely trustless way, as the smart contracts ensure that every Party either buys its target NFT or refunds contributors. Also in its latest version, PartyBid supports only purchases on OpenSea, Zora, and Foundation on Ethereum Mainnet. (At least for now)

Previously the individual investors would get automatically fractional shares as ERC-20 tokens according to the individual participated amount. Note that Party Bid v2 has developed into a standalone dApp and the use of Fractional.art has become optional. With the new version investors get additional options thanks to the introduction of "Party Cards". Finally it's possible to use community owned NFTs almost like individually owned NFTs, which means basically:

• DAO voting (new feature)

• Mint derivative project (new feature)

• Claim airdrops (new feature)

• Lending/borrowing/NFTfi (new feature)

• Sell on Opensea or Zora (new feature)

• Fractionalize into ERC-20 tokens (via Fractional.art)

Party Cards are NFTs, so they can be transferred or sold on secondary Marketplaces like Opensea, although keep in mind that the NFTs represent ownership according to the individual participating (ETH) amount.

While the innovations brought with the latest version are definitely noteworthy, there are already further improvements on the horizon: additional integrations with marketplaces and NFTfi dApps, as well as alternative crowdfund methods.

Last but not least: PartyDAO - previously funded entirely by team members and on-chain revenue - has raised $16M in investment led by a16z crypto in June 2022.

https://party.mirror.xyz/MFSokSaKwBD7KBCxHFRuHADZ2y8xSdSu-cNJykXJIVo

Tessera is the new product and rebranding from the team of Fractional.art, a well known dApp in the NFT space and one of the first products making group ownership of blue-chip NFT possible, therefore lowering the barrier to access this NFT assets. The team is spearheaded by the Ethereum OGs Andy Chorlian and DeeZe.

Fractional.art is a permissionless dApp, which allows anyone with an Ethereum wallet to divide any NFT through a smart contract into multiple fractions, which are represented as fungible ERC-20 tokens. The dApp has mostly been used on top of Party Bid dApp, where a group of people would collectively bid on a higher priced NFT and if successful, the acquired NFT would have been automatically fractionalized by the smart contracts of Fractional.art.

Eventually the frontend of Fractional.art will be discontinued and hence (the much loved) feature of permissionless fractionalizing NFTs will be accessible only by interacting directly with the smart contract or via Party Bid dApp. Access and managing of existing fractional vaults however will be integrated into the frontend of Tessera.

The new product Tessera has developed into a standalone dApp, the vaults are curated and only “the rarest, and most iconic collectibles” will be featured on the dApp after being approved by the Tessera team. Interesting sub-products of Tessera are “Nounlets” (100 fractions of a Noun NFT) and “**Parallel Paraset Binders” **(Parallel Cards NFTs collectively pooled to claim $PRIME).

Back to the core product Tessera. How does it work? TL;DR: Fractions are now called “Rae”, as short version of plural Tessera(e). Curated NFTs are sold as multiple Rae in a last price Dutch action, whereby bidders deposit at the highest price they’re committed to pay. If the auction ends successful, the difference to the lowest price (the last Rae sold) is refunded. If the action is not successful (any Rae remains unsold), all bidders get their deposited ETH refunded.

Simultaneously to the rebranding a new Series A round of funding has been announced, now totalling at $28M of venture capital investment. The latest round was lead by Paradigm and investors include Focus Labs, Uniswap Labs Ventures, E Girl Capital, Yunt Capital. The project is still without a governance token and it can be expected that Tessera will at some point decentralize the protocol, potentially users of the new products will get distributed parts of the ownership.

Entering the New Phase of Collective Ownership as Tessera

Entering the New Phase of Collective Ownership as Tessera As we enter a revolutionary new phase for NFTs, we're excited to announce: A new name A new round of funding An ambitious, focused ...

https://medium.com

Insrt Finance is building products that enable users access to blue-chip NFTs and to the opportunities of financialization of those NFTs. The team is compromised mostly of anon shadowy coders, although hentai avenger is a well known (anon) figure on CT. Venture investments closed already, an according announcement should come soon, so far confirmed seems a Seed round with participation of Sky9 Capital, Park Capital, Three Sigma Capital, Caballeros Capital.

The protocols first product is ShardVault, specifically the fractionalized Crypto Punk #9620, divided into 100 Shards. The Punk Shard Vault is particularly interesting, as there are currently very few viable options to get exposure to both the asset (Crypto Punks are pre ERC-721 standard) and it’s financialization at a small budget.

Shards are NFTs that represent a user’s proportional ownership of a ShardVault and come with a unique ID, metadata and artwork inspired by the underlying NFT. Currently ShardVaults are deployed with predetermined properties, the chosen blue-chip NFT to fractionalize, the number of fractions and the yield strategy.

Features are very similar to the new Tessera dApp: while Shard NFTs can only be traded on secondary marketplaces, Tessera Rae NFTs can be traded directly within the integrated marketplace. Tessera allows a buyout of the underlying NFT, a feature which is on the roadmap for Insrt Finance. The major distinction of Insrt Finance Shard Vault is the financialization of the vaults underlying NFT.

ShardVault uses NFT lending protocols to borrow against the NFT and deposit into yield strategies that will generate a positive net flow. Strategies are managed and won’t need any interaction from the investor, which impairs its own benefits and risks and should therefore be considered before investing.

The vaults do however represent an efficient opportunity to get exposure to potential airdrops both from underlying NFTs and lending dApps, as all the captured yield (subtracted by protocol fees) is transferred to Shard holders. Additionally Insrt Finance has a confirmed airdrop of their own governance token to holders of ShardVault #1 - Crypto Punk #9620 and Genesis NFT Dawn of Insrt.

Investors considering to deposit on Insrt Finance ShardVault should generally have a long term focus, as both yield and desired price appreciation of the underlying blue-chip NFT will most likely require a longer time horizon of a few years. That being said, Shard NFTs can be traded on secondary NFT marketplaces and hence allow to exit the investment. Apart from that, Shard holders can also wind down the vault by consensus via a governance proposal, e.g. after realising a desired appreciation of the investment.

Nftperp is a decentralised (and just as the name suggests) perpetual exchange for NFTs, specifically the “true” floor price of listed blue-chip NFTs. Hereby democratizing the opportunity for regular folks to gain exposure to blue-chip NFT assets and also providing a useful tool for (OG) holders of the actual blue-chips to hedge their positions. Nftperp runs on Arbitrum, hence low transaction costs ensure that even traders with small portfolios aren’t priced out from participation.

Nftperp uses the proven virtual AMM developed by Perpetual Protocol, which means there are no liquidity providers needed. Price feeds utilise the protocols own “True Floor Price” - based on average bottom 50% sales of an **acceptable price range (**determined by the truncated mean and the standard deviation and a sensitivity multiplier).

Current stats from DUNE dashboard by courtesy of aster:

https://dune.com/aster2709/nftperp-beta

Nftperp is audited and is currently in private beta - while the price feed used seems really nuanced, it has to still be proven in practice for the long term. Definitely an interesting tool to play with, but it’s advised to be aware of risks and therefore traders should only use amounts that they can afford to loose.

Degens wanting to trade blue-chip NFTs (currently Punks, BAYC, MAYC, Azuki, Milady) with up to 10x leverage need to first WL their address on Discord.

Last but not least: a governance token is confirmed, yet the team hasn’t announced all the details how to qualify for distribution, could potentially be rewarding to use the perp DEX! They also could raise venture capital investment with participation of Dialectic, Maven 11, Flow Ventures, DCV Capital, Gagra Ventures, AscendEX Ventures, Perridon Ventures, Caballeros Capital, Cogitent Ventures.

nftperp raised $1.7m for its Seed Round

nftperp raised $1.7m for its Seed Round Ahead of our Private Beta launch, we'd like to announce the closure of our seed investment round. nftperp raised a total of $1.7m at the valuation of ...

https://medium.com

MetaStreet aims to solve scaling issues with NFT money markets (lending/borrowing), i.e. liquidity is very fragmented and without arbitrage opportunities, lending/borrowing conditions tend to vary to gross degrees among various money market. While the P2P nature of most NFT lending activity makes it difficult to aggregate loans, MetaStreet acts to facilitate arbitrage by introducing the concept of NFT backed notes.

MetaStreet TVL (total value locked) by courtesy of DefiLlama:

https://defillama.com/protocol/metastreet

Metastreet enables a secondary market for NFT liquidity, whereby the protocol design splits market participants into 4 distinct actors:

• Note Originators enable liquidity by depositing capital on supported third-party NFT lending markets and repackage the loans into “promissory notes” which are sold (for a profit, hence arbitrage) to a MetaStreet vault.

• Capital Borrowers (as indirect participants) borrow funds against their collateral on third-party NFT lending markets.

• Capital Depositors provide liquidity for MetaStreet vaults for an expected yield.

• Vault Governors are the administrators of the platform, currently the founding team, in future by DAO governance.

The most straightforward way to interact with the protocol is to deposit into a MetaStreet Vault. Take note that deposits can’t be withdrawn anytime, consider 30-90 days to redeem your capital depending on when promissory notes are originated and the overall vault utilization. Return APR can be adjusted before deposit, by simply dynamically allocating between the two risk profiles: Senior tranche (low risk) and Junior tranche (high risk).

A more degen opportunity for active NFT traders to interact with the MetaStreet protocol could be through their PowerSweep dApp, where blue-chip NFTs can be acquired with up to 3x leverage, loans have a duration of up to 30 days (perpetually extendable) and NFTs can as well be sold during the loan period.

The further roadmap is quote: “focused on usability, scale, decentralization” - probably related hereby is the “Community-as-a-Product” onboarding program, called “Tradeweaver” - which is currently paused. Join Discord to stay up to date, when or if the campaign will be resumed. Community members who completed the quests had been able to claim a distinct soulbound token, which potentially could be useful when the protocol decentralises ownership in future.

Speaking of which, the protocol has attracted lots of interest from venture capital, the cumulative investment from Seed round and Series A amounts to a total of $24M, investors include Dragonfly Capital, Nascent,  Ethereal Ventures, Fintech Collective, DCG, TheLAO, Focus Labs, Mirana Ventures, Metaversal, Opensea Ventures, Ledgerprime, Meta4, Flying Falcon.

https://mirror.xyz/0x66ceac5EE8F093059C4BC9628C06e63076505B15/7drHFmKo8022iV1zIkOVMKXu6WtiAcFqcQY5qCD8qac

Arcade.xyz is an NFT money market, which allows NFT owners to stay liquid while borrowing against a wide range of NFT collections as collateral (Ethereum Mainnet) and lenders to earn yield on the capital provided (ETH, USDC, DAI).

Current Stats for Arcade and for comparison an overview of major NFT money markets, DUNE Dashboards provided by courtesy of Arcade Intern and ah kek - ImpossibleFi:

https://dune.com/sdlep/arcade-nft-lending

https://dune.com/impossiblefinance/nft-lending-aggregated-dash

Like most of the NFT money markets Arcade is based on P2P (peer to peer) loans, where both borrowers and lenders can set desired loan terms. In practice this often means long and complex negotiations, widely different terms for very similar assets and loans simply not coming into existence as no agreeing counterparty is found.

The novelty introduced by v2 of the protocol are collection loan offers, which means borrowers can access instant liquidity if they provide the right collateral. While a floor price based collection offer is certainly not favourable for rare NFTs, for a vast majority of collection items instant access to liquidity is a huge improvement over previous single item offer matching.

For NFT connoisseurs with large collections Arcade Vaults are probably the better suited solution, multiple NFTs can be deposited into a vault to request one single loan and hereby safe on gas fees and multiple negotiations. Although bear in mind that putting literally all eggs into one basket bears a lot of risk.

There are no liquidations with Arcade unless the borrower is not repaying the loan on the agreed upon terms, then the collateral will be forfeited and sent to the lender. After interest has been paid off, loans are extendable, although bear in mind that extension requires to be matched with a counterparty and terms could be less favourable then previously.

With Arcade v2 another important improvement has been introduced both for single items lent out as well as vaults: potential airdrops will be claimable while eligible NFTs can remain deposited as collateral asset.

Arcade v2 has undergone two audits from Roku and Quantstamp and the protocol is well funded, they completed a Series A financing of $15M led by Pantera Capital and with participation of Castle Island Ventures, Golden Tree Asset Management, Quiet Capital, Franklin Templeton, Lemniscap.

Arcade.xyz

The leading DeFi protocol for NFT lending.

https://medium.com

Probably interesting upcoming NFT-fi projects in 2023 which I am personally eyeing:

Astaria.xyz is not just another NFT money market, they are building a hybrid P2Pool model marketplace. But how does it work? TL;DR: NFT assets are pooled in a “BrokerVault” which will be valued by an appraiser who/which sets also the loan terms. Lenders simply deposit ETH and borrowers get access to liquidity by providing a merle proof. The marketplace is not yet live and has to attract enough lenders and borrowers for the concept to work out in practice.

Led by a prominent team including former Ethereum core developer and former Sushi.com CTO Joseph Delong and well funded by reputable firms, the project seems to have a bright future. Investors of $8M Seed round include True Ventures, Arrington Capital, Ethereal Ventures, Wintermute, Genesis Trading, LedgerPrime, Hypersphere Ventures, The LAO.

Ex-Sushi CTO Raises $8M for NFT Lending Platform Astaria

The platform, led by CEO Justin Bram and DeFi vet Joseph Delong, aims to provide instant liquidity for your JPEGs and should be available to the public by September.

https://www.coindesk.com

Gnosis Safe is the industry standard for web3 native investment collectives and DAOs, but for this particular use-case the standard Safe is not enough. What’s needed is a tool which both manages raising funds (with defined parameters), distributing a DAO tokens for decision making with all stake holders, a dedicated UI specifically for NFTs - you want to see them and track all the actions taken by the DAO on a seamless UI, don’t you anon? And last but not least there needs to be a solution for an exit.

The most established solutions for NFT currently available are Castle and Juicebox, both of which are directly integrated into the new Safe Global user interface.

Fragments is a newer alternative, they just released their first product version for private beta access - below the features available at the moment:

• Governance: Fragments provides 4 governance options: in Monarchy the creator of the vault is given a free hand by the community to execute investment decisions. In Committee the investors delegate their decision to a few members of the community. Lastly and not yet live: Weighted Voting in proportion to the capital or Democratic voting equivalent to each member having one vote right.

• Asset Manager’s skin in the game: The vault creators have to deposit a minimum of 10% of the total capital they aim to raise through the vault.

• Integrations: Fragments is built on top of Gnosis Safe and has integrated with Gem.xyz and Opensea to let the community easily buy or sell the NFTs.

• Deposit from any chain: Investors can swap tokens while depositing to a vault and from any chain thanks to the integration of Li.Fi SDK.

• Zero gas fees: ERC-20 tokens to represent ownership will be deployed on Polygon to have gasless transactions for voting, data storage and token distribution.

Fragments is yet to release a governance token, most of which will be distributed to the community, partially to “FRAGmates Early Believers” NFT holders.

Disclaimer: WagameDAO has attained beta access to Fragments vaults, therefore this article is featuring Fragments instead of more well known solutions. WagameDAO Discord members will soon be able to test the product.

The year 2022 has come to an end and we are still in deep bear market - but that’s exactly where the opportunities can be found! One particular opportunity that I’m personally eyeing:

True blue-chip NFTs will eventually recover, but not just that, these NFTs will thrive and outperform ETH in the next bull run. Some consider blue-chip NFTs as ETH on leverage without liquidation risk.

Now you might say: But blue-chip NFTs are still out of reach for most individual investors - unless for the OG’s, but those might have minted blue-chip NFTs for almost free or bought in when NFTs have still been affordable…

Well, true. But same can be said about Bitcoin, no? Frankly speaking, today most individual investors can’t afford to buy (many) Bitcoins, but they can instead buy just fractions of a $BTC.

When looking to Ethereum, today most investors might not be able to afford 32 ETH required to stake for a node and hence miss out on the native (relative low risk) yield the Ethereum Blockchain offers. But luckily innovative web3 builders have created solutions (and continue to do so) - to lower the barrier to entry for wannabe stakers.

And the same innovation process is recently happening with regard to blue-chip NFTs: lots of creative new projects are trying to lower the barrier for regular retail investors to access the opportunities these NFTs can offer.

One idea could be collectively investing as a group. Either by directly acquiring NFTs via multi-signer Safe or with the help of dApps that manage collective investing via trustless smart contracts - today both solutions make it possible to get access to even high priced ticket items like Crypto Punks.

Another opportunity is to trade derivatives of blue-chip NFTs without owning the underlying. This is particularly interesting as the NFTs themselves are mostly illiquid, while derivatives allow instant trading just like with regular fungible tokens (ERC-20).

But more on the the dApps which enable collective ownership, derivative trading and more later in this article. Let’s now identify the best opportunities within the blue-chip NFT space in detail…

I selected interesting NFTs for this article according to the following criteria:

• Blue-chip NFT based on the time of first mint: I skipped newer mints, as those would still have be proven over time, therefore considering only mints pre market crash in May 2022.

• Blue-chip NFT based on consistent high trading volume over time: I considered only NFT collections scoring decently on 7 day, 30 day and 1 year timeframe.

• Below value buy: newer mints are still jumping multiples in price even at current market sentiment, while the blue-chip collections are down 50% or more from ATH

• Roadmap: preferably NFT collections with an ambitious roadmap, where the team hasn’t left the project right after the mint

• Last but not least, the collection in question would not (yet) have released a token (ERC_20), in combination with VC investment, which could probably end up in an airdrop to NFT holders - on top of aimed gains from price increases.

• As the reader might notice: some of the highest ranking and most successful NFT collections in terms of trading volume are missing in this article. The reason being that particular collections have jumped in price considerably at the time of writing the article or are missing reputable investors backing the long term development.

• Disclaimer: I own none of the NFTs mentioned in this article (apart from fractions of no more then 1% and an inexpensive Art Blocks NFT). I tried to assess this research in completely unbiased manner, as someone who is looking to acquire (parts of) a blue-chip NFT which has the best chances of making it long term.

To select the best suited NFTs based on the above criteria I used the DUNE dashboard “Top NFT Collections” from CryptusChrist:

https://dune.com/cryptuschrist/Top-100-NFT-Projects?undefined=&Time_e2eee8=1+Year

Crypto Punks is the most exclusive OG community in the NFT space, the NFTs are probably a safe bet for a long term hold. While BAYC (Bored Ape Yacht Club) NFTs were able to flip Punks in terms of the most expensive floor price, Punk holders are arguably more respected. Crypto Punks community consists mostly of web3 natives vs BAYC community members mostly being from the likes of social media influencers and celebrities.

Noteworthy also for BAYC NFTs are the literally hundreds of incidents of stolen Apes, resulted mostly from the NFT owners poor knowledge of managing self custodial web3 wallets - and while that’s already casting a bad light onto BAYC as a desirable asset (at least from the perspective of web3 natives), even worse is the fact, that BAYC PFPs have been commonly used by scammers.

From an investment perspective it’s also well worth considering potential airdrops to NFT holders, as well as WL or discounted mints of derivative NFT collections. Crypto Punks holders definitely could receive such in future, while BAYC exhausted all additional value-add to their NFT holders already: they released multiple derivative collections, airdropped $APE ERC-20 token and created merchandise products.

Crypto Punks have just recently been acquired by YUGA Labs, the parent company owning the BAYC brand, probably another indication that Crypto Punks might follow the path of BAYC to potentially airdrop an ERC-20 token to holders.

https://mirror.xyz/0xEc9f53fA69682833FBd760C104B5D61aE29221E0/Km81y6Mc3O5LzS0wnrghVIV0HnZgLOd4wsnfcGw3_2I

But there is an actual downside for Crypto Punks NFTs as well: since those have been created ahead of the ERC-721 standard, the interoperability with dApps is very limited, e.g. at the moment it’s almost impossible to buy Crypto Punks as a collective, other than acquiring already existing fractionalized token shares.

Crypto Punks DUNE dashboard by courtesy of catherine:

https://dune.com/cat/cryptopunks

As stated on their website: “Art Blocks is dedicated to bringing compelling works of contemporary generative art to life. Art Blocks connects artists, blockchain technology, and creative coding into one extraordinary experience.”

Art Blocks are generated by an algorithm provided by the artist and while all the NFTs will be completely unique, they still have enough similarities to be positioned in the same project. The artwork will be generated only after the user initiated the mint process and therefore they won't know exactly what the NFT looks like until after the mint is completed.

Art Blocks was founded by Erick Calderon, an artist and NFT OG since Crypto Punks back in 2017. Calderon, better known as “Snowfro” was in fact the first artist on Art Blocks with his project Chromie Squiggle, which has since been the logo of the Art Blocks brand.

New projects on Art Blocks launch weekly and follow a Dutch action with the starting price and resting price set by the artist. This method guarantees a completely different experience than the usual NFT mints following a FCFS or WL model. Art connoisseurs will decide to pay top Dollars (ETH) if the mint experiences lot of buys and they value a project or artist accordingly, or in other cases there might not be minted all editions available and the remaining will be burned after the action ends.

Art Blocks recently introduced some changes to their product collections, grouping the projects into two distinct categories:

• Art Block's Present's - which includes all projects from artists with succesful applications and merged from the previous categories “Playground” and “Factory”

• Art Block's Curated - only the most innovative projects that gain approval from a board of judges.

The curated collections are highly sought after and there seems to not exist a bear market for these remarkable art pieces, among the most well known are Chromie Squiggle by Snowfro, Fidenza by Tyler Hobbs, Ringers by Dmitri Cherniak, Gazers by Matt Kane , Archetype by Kjetil Golid.

Overview of Art Blocks projects by courtesy of catherine:

https://dune.com/cat/art-blocks

While the most expensive Art Blocks sold at 2.100 ETH, there are also available lots of very affordable pieces on secondary markets for below 0.1 ETH currently. Owning any Art Blocks NFT would have made you eligible to mint 2 free Friendship Bracelets by Alexis André and it’s probably not the last time that Art Blocks holders will get similar opportunities, even the release of a governance token for the collection is rumoured.

Last but not least and interesting with regard to a possible governance token, Art Blocks has raised (more likely a symbolic) amount of $6M from investors, including True Ventures, Galaxy Interactive, Collab Currency, Libertus, Flamingo DAO, The LAO.

Art Blocks Raises $6M From True Ventures, Galaxy on Strength of Generative NFTs

In an interview on CoinDesk's "Opinionated" podcast, founder Erick Calderon explained how a crypto side hustle grew into a leading digital art project.

https://www.coindesk.com

Created by parent PROOF Collective,** Moonbirds **is a 10k PFP NFT collection and spearheaded by CEO and co-founder Kevin Rose, a highly respected personality in the startup scene, serial entrepreneur, investor and partner at VC firm True Ventures.

CPO and and co-founder Justin Mazzell is nothing short of references as well: renowned as illustrator and designer for Disney, Google and Meta. Both co-founders are actively involved in the community and host weekly calls.

Moonbirds don’t fall short in technical specifications, contracts are open source and under CC0 licence, which means the Moonbirds artworks are public domain and can be freely used even for commercial purposes.

The NFT attributes are stored in-chain and re-created by their innovative rendering smart-contract and therefore not dependent on external storage for the imaged. Another advantage of the “in-chain” method is that the NFT attributes can improve in rarity, e.g. if the Moonbird is nested over a long period of time. TL;DR, explained best by PROOF collective’s own smart contract engineers here:

The parent PROOF Collective has raised $10 Million Seed funding and another $50 Million in Series A funding from renowned VC firms a16z, True Ventures, 776, Flamingo DAO, Collab + Currency, SV Angel among others.

The roadmap for Q1 2023 includes the derivative NFT Moonbirds Mythics, with a total supply of 20k, which will be released slowly at a rate of 25 mints per day, both nested (staked) Moonbirds or burning Oddities NFT (the first Moonbirds derivative NFT) give a chance to mint the new derivative. The Roadmap also includes a confirmed $PROOF token, details are expected to be released in Q1 2023.

Moonbirds DUNE dashboard by courtesy of CryptusChrist:

https://dune.com/cryptuschrist/Moonbirds-NFT

Doodles NFTs are definitely advancing as a blue-chip collection: a 10k PFP collection with strategic VC investment lead by 776 - the venture-capital firm from by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Doodles has raised $54 million at a $704 million valuation, at a time when both the crypto market in general and NFTs specifically have been in a downwards spiral.

Reddit's Ohanian Leads $54 Million Doodles Capital Raise

Creator of colorful NFT profile pictures, blossoming despite crypto winter, seeks to branch out.

https://www.forbes.com

Doodles probably have convinced the investors with their extensive roadmap, focused on strong community and a widely recognisable brand. Doodles long term vision is to become one of the world’s leading producers of media and entertainment. There have been talks of licensing Doodles from holders for IRL products and events like comic books, TV shows, and music videos etc.

The probability that Doodle holders might get airdropped an official ERC-20 token are in our opinion quite likely. Additional value-add freebies are already exhausted, Doodles holder could mint derivative NFTs.

The key people are Pharrell Williams (Chief Brand Officer), artist Scott Martin and the co-founders Evan Keast, Jordan Castro (both part of Cryptokitties). The community doesn’t fall short either, with high profile celebrities like Pranksy, Steve Aoki publicly endorcing the collection.

Doodles DUNE dashboard by courtesy of catherine:

https://dune.com/cat/doodles-holders

For those readers who dislike any of the presented blue-chip NFTs: while researching for this article I stumbled upon a very ambitious project, which I would like to recommend to anyone interested to learn more about all the quality NFT collections: presenting “the 1st Twitter NFT Library” created by Da Vinci - the library is continually expanding, you can even make suggestions!

While the aforementioned blue-chip NFTs are exciting already, a buy and hold strategy would be very capital intensive and therefore it makes sense to pursue a different strategy which allows a more capital efficient use of funds.

The optimal strategy for regular non high net worth folks (aka plebs), would mean to get some exposure to blue-chip NFTs, but without having to allocate a major part of their personal crypto wealth. Thanks to the ever innovating web3 builders, investors can choose from a different array of dApps, which allow them to get exposure to blue-chip NFTs with just a small amount of funds.

On top of the mere (expected) price increase of the NFT assets, I personally prefer additional upside in the form of potential airdrops, also to justify or mitigate the risk taken by investing in these relatively new and unproven assets as well as the various risks deriving from the dApps interacted with. Therefore the presented dApps in this article will preferably without a governance token (yet) and be backed by known investors as well as possibly a doxxed team with proven track record.

While PartyBid is already well known in the NFT space, the features of their NEW version are some of the best alpha in the space currently. Read on to discover why! Starting off with a general introduction to the PartyBid dApp:

How does it work? TL;DR: The dApp allows a group of people to crowdfund buy NFTs in a completely trustless way, as the smart contracts ensure that every Party either buys its target NFT or refunds contributors. Also in its latest version, PartyBid supports only purchases on OpenSea, Zora, and Foundation on Ethereum Mainnet. (At least for now)

Previously the individual investors would get automatically fractional shares as ERC-20 tokens according to the individual participated amount. Note that Party Bid v2 has developed into a standalone dApp and the use of Fractional.art has become optional. With the new version investors get additional options thanks to the introduction of "Party Cards". Finally it's possible to use community owned NFTs almost like individually owned NFTs, which means basically:

• DAO voting (new feature)

• Mint derivative project (new feature)

• Claim airdrops (new feature)

• Lending/borrowing/NFTfi (new feature)

• Sell on Opensea or Zora (new feature)

• Fractionalize into ERC-20 tokens (via Fractional.art)

Party Cards are NFTs, so they can be transferred or sold on secondary Marketplaces like Opensea, although keep in mind that the NFTs represent ownership according to the individual participating (ETH) amount.

While the innovations brought with the latest version are definitely noteworthy, there are already further improvements on the horizon: additional integrations with marketplaces and NFTfi dApps, as well as alternative crowdfund methods.

Last but not least: PartyDAO - previously funded entirely by team members and on-chain revenue - has raised $16M in investment led by a16z crypto in June 2022.

https://party.mirror.xyz/MFSokSaKwBD7KBCxHFRuHADZ2y8xSdSu-cNJykXJIVo

Tessera is the new product and rebranding from the team of Fractional.art, a well known dApp in the NFT space and one of the first products making group ownership of blue-chip NFT possible, therefore lowering the barrier to access this NFT assets. The team is spearheaded by the Ethereum OGs Andy Chorlian and DeeZe.

Fractional.art is a permissionless dApp, which allows anyone with an Ethereum wallet to divide any NFT through a smart contract into multiple fractions, which are represented as fungible ERC-20 tokens. The dApp has mostly been used on top of Party Bid dApp, where a group of people would collectively bid on a higher priced NFT and if successful, the acquired NFT would have been automatically fractionalized by the smart contracts of Fractional.art.

Eventually the frontend of Fractional.art will be discontinued and hence (the much loved) feature of permissionless fractionalizing NFTs will be accessible only by interacting directly with the smart contract or via Party Bid dApp. Access and managing of existing fractional vaults however will be integrated into the frontend of Tessera.

The new product Tessera has developed into a standalone dApp, the vaults are curated and only “the rarest, and most iconic collectibles” will be featured on the dApp after being approved by the Tessera team. Interesting sub-products of Tessera are “Nounlets” (100 fractions of a Noun NFT) and “**Parallel Paraset Binders” **(Parallel Cards NFTs collectively pooled to claim $PRIME).

Back to the core product Tessera. How does it work? TL;DR: Fractions are now called “Rae”, as short version of plural Tessera(e). Curated NFTs are sold as multiple Rae in a last price Dutch action, whereby bidders deposit at the highest price they’re committed to pay. If the auction ends successful, the difference to the lowest price (the last Rae sold) is refunded. If the action is not successful (any Rae remains unsold), all bidders get their deposited ETH refunded.

Simultaneously to the rebranding a new Series A round of funding has been announced, now totalling at $28M of venture capital investment. The latest round was lead by Paradigm and investors include Focus Labs, Uniswap Labs Ventures, E Girl Capital, Yunt Capital. The project is still without a governance token and it can be expected that Tessera will at some point decentralize the protocol, potentially users of the new products will get distributed parts of the ownership.

Entering the New Phase of Collective Ownership as Tessera

Entering the New Phase of Collective Ownership as Tessera As we enter a revolutionary new phase for NFTs, we're excited to announce: A new name A new round of funding An ambitious, focused ...

https://medium.com

Insrt Finance is building products that enable users access to blue-chip NFTs and to the opportunities of financialization of those NFTs. The team is compromised mostly of anon shadowy coders, although hentai avenger is a well known (anon) figure on CT. Venture investments closed already, an according announcement should come soon, so far confirmed seems a Seed round with participation of Sky9 Capital, Park Capital, Three Sigma Capital, Caballeros Capital.

The protocols first product is ShardVault, specifically the fractionalized Crypto Punk #9620, divided into 100 Shards. The Punk Shard Vault is particularly interesting, as there are currently very few viable options to get exposure to both the asset (Crypto Punks are pre ERC-721 standard) and it’s financialization at a small budget.

Shards are NFTs that represent a user’s proportional ownership of a ShardVault and come with a unique ID, metadata and artwork inspired by the underlying NFT. Currently ShardVaults are deployed with predetermined properties, the chosen blue-chip NFT to fractionalize, the number of fractions and the yield strategy.

Features are very similar to the new Tessera dApp: while Shard NFTs can only be traded on secondary marketplaces, Tessera Rae NFTs can be traded directly within the integrated marketplace. Tessera allows a buyout of the underlying NFT, a feature which is on the roadmap for Insrt Finance. The major distinction of Insrt Finance Shard Vault is the financialization of the vaults underlying NFT.

ShardVault uses NFT lending protocols to borrow against the NFT and deposit into yield strategies that will generate a positive net flow. Strategies are managed and won’t need any interaction from the investor, which impairs its own benefits and risks and should therefore be considered before investing.

The vaults do however represent an efficient opportunity to get exposure to potential airdrops both from underlying NFTs and lending dApps, as all the captured yield (subtracted by protocol fees) is transferred to Shard holders. Additionally Insrt Finance has a confirmed airdrop of their own governance token to holders of ShardVault #1 - Crypto Punk #9620 and Genesis NFT Dawn of Insrt.

Investors considering to deposit on Insrt Finance ShardVault should generally have a long term focus, as both yield and desired price appreciation of the underlying blue-chip NFT will most likely require a longer time horizon of a few years. That being said, Shard NFTs can be traded on secondary NFT marketplaces and hence allow to exit the investment. Apart from that, Shard holders can also wind down the vault by consensus via a governance proposal, e.g. after realising a desired appreciation of the investment.

Nftperp is a decentralised (and just as the name suggests) perpetual exchange for NFTs, specifically the “true” floor price of listed blue-chip NFTs. Hereby democratizing the opportunity for regular folks to gain exposure to blue-chip NFT assets and also providing a useful tool for (OG) holders of the actual blue-chips to hedge their positions. Nftperp runs on Arbitrum, hence low transaction costs ensure that even traders with small portfolios aren’t priced out from participation.

Nftperp uses the proven virtual AMM developed by Perpetual Protocol, which means there are no liquidity providers needed. Price feeds utilise the protocols own “True Floor Price” - based on average bottom 50% sales of an **acceptable price range (**determined by the truncated mean and the standard deviation and a sensitivity multiplier).

Current stats from DUNE dashboard by courtesy of aster:

https://dune.com/aster2709/nftperp-beta

Nftperp is audited and is currently in private beta - while the price feed used seems really nuanced, it has to still be proven in practice for the long term. Definitely an interesting tool to play with, but it’s advised to be aware of risks and therefore traders should only use amounts that they can afford to loose.

Degens wanting to trade blue-chip NFTs (currently Punks, BAYC, MAYC, Azuki, Milady) with up to 10x leverage need to first WL their address on Discord.

Last but not least: a governance token is confirmed, yet the team hasn’t announced all the details how to qualify for distribution, could potentially be rewarding to use the perp DEX! They also could raise venture capital investment with participation of Dialectic, Maven 11, Flow Ventures, DCV Capital, Gagra Ventures, AscendEX Ventures, Perridon Ventures, Caballeros Capital, Cogitent Ventures.

nftperp raised $1.7m for its Seed Round

nftperp raised $1.7m for its Seed Round Ahead of our Private Beta launch, we'd like to announce the closure of our seed investment round. nftperp raised a total of $1.7m at the valuation of ...

https://medium.com

MetaStreet aims to solve scaling issues with NFT money markets (lending/borrowing), i.e. liquidity is very fragmented and without arbitrage opportunities, lending/borrowing conditions tend to vary to gross degrees among various money market. While the P2P nature of most NFT lending activity makes it difficult to aggregate loans, MetaStreet acts to facilitate arbitrage by introducing the concept of NFT backed notes.

MetaStreet TVL (total value locked) by courtesy of DefiLlama:

https://defillama.com/protocol/metastreet

Metastreet enables a secondary market for NFT liquidity, whereby the protocol design splits market participants into 4 distinct actors:

• Note Originators enable liquidity by depositing capital on supported third-party NFT lending markets and repackage the loans into “promissory notes” which are sold (for a profit, hence arbitrage) to a MetaStreet vault.

• Capital Borrowers (as indirect participants) borrow funds against their collateral on third-party NFT lending markets.

• Capital Depositors provide liquidity for MetaStreet vaults for an expected yield.

• Vault Governors are the administrators of the platform, currently the founding team, in future by DAO governance.

The most straightforward way to interact with the protocol is to deposit into a MetaStreet Vault. Take note that deposits can’t be withdrawn anytime, consider 30-90 days to redeem your capital depending on when promissory notes are originated and the overall vault utilization. Return APR can be adjusted before deposit, by simply dynamically allocating between the two risk profiles: Senior tranche (low risk) and Junior tranche (high risk).

A more degen opportunity for active NFT traders to interact with the MetaStreet protocol could be through their PowerSweep dApp, where blue-chip NFTs can be acquired with up to 3x leverage, loans have a duration of up to 30 days (perpetually extendable) and NFTs can as well be sold during the loan period.

The further roadmap is quote: “focused on usability, scale, decentralization” - probably related hereby is the “Community-as-a-Product” onboarding program, called “Tradeweaver” - which is currently paused. Join Discord to stay up to date, when or if the campaign will be resumed. Community members who completed the quests had been able to claim a distinct soulbound token, which potentially could be useful when the protocol decentralises ownership in future.

Speaking of which, the protocol has attracted lots of interest from venture capital, the cumulative investment from Seed round and Series A amounts to a total of $24M, investors include Dragonfly Capital, Nascent,  Ethereal Ventures, Fintech Collective, DCG, TheLAO, Focus Labs, Mirana Ventures, Metaversal, Opensea Ventures, Ledgerprime, Meta4, Flying Falcon.

https://mirror.xyz/0x66ceac5EE8F093059C4BC9628C06e63076505B15/7drHFmKo8022iV1zIkOVMKXu6WtiAcFqcQY5qCD8qac

Arcade.xyz is an NFT money market, which allows NFT owners to stay liquid while borrowing against a wide range of NFT collections as collateral (Ethereum Mainnet) and lenders to earn yield on the capital provided (ETH, USDC, DAI).

Current Stats for Arcade and for comparison an overview of major NFT money markets, DUNE Dashboards provided by courtesy of Arcade Intern and ah kek - ImpossibleFi:

https://dune.com/sdlep/arcade-nft-lending

https://dune.com/impossiblefinance/nft-lending-aggregated-dash

Like most of the NFT money markets Arcade is based on P2P (peer to peer) loans, where both borrowers and lenders can set desired loan terms. In practice this often means long and complex negotiations, widely different terms for very similar assets and loans simply not coming into existence as no agreeing counterparty is found.

The novelty introduced by v2 of the protocol are collection loan offers, which means borrowers can access instant liquidity if they provide the right collateral. While a floor price based collection offer is certainly not favourable for rare NFTs, for a vast majority of collection items instant access to liquidity is a huge improvement over previous single item offer matching.

For NFT connoisseurs with large collections Arcade Vaults are probably the better suited solution, multiple NFTs can be deposited into a vault to request one single loan and hereby safe on gas fees and multiple negotiations. Although bear in mind that putting literally all eggs into one basket bears a lot of risk.

There are no liquidations with Arcade unless the borrower is not repaying the loan on the agreed upon terms, then the collateral will be forfeited and sent to the lender. After interest has been paid off, loans are extendable, although bear in mind that extension requires to be matched with a counterparty and terms could be less favourable then previously.

With Arcade v2 another important improvement has been introduced both for single items lent out as well as vaults: potential airdrops will be claimable while eligible NFTs can remain deposited as collateral asset.

Arcade v2 has undergone two audits from Roku and Quantstamp and the protocol is well funded, they completed a Series A financing of $15M led by Pantera Capital and with participation of Castle Island Ventures, Golden Tree Asset Management, Quiet Capital, Franklin Templeton, Lemniscap.

Arcade.xyz

The leading DeFi protocol for NFT lending.

https://medium.com

Probably interesting upcoming NFT-fi projects in 2023 which I am personally eyeing:

Astaria.xyz is not just another NFT money market, they are building a hybrid P2Pool model marketplace. But how does it work? TL;DR: NFT assets are pooled in a “BrokerVault” which will be valued by an appraiser who/which sets also the loan terms. Lenders simply deposit ETH and borrowers get access to liquidity by providing a merle proof. The marketplace is not yet live and has to attract enough lenders and borrowers for the concept to work out in practice.

Led by a prominent team including former Ethereum core developer and former Sushi.com CTO Joseph Delong and well funded by reputable firms, the project seems to have a bright future. Investors of $8M Seed round include True Ventures, Arrington Capital, Ethereal Ventures, Wintermute, Genesis Trading, LedgerPrime, Hypersphere Ventures, The LAO.

Ex-Sushi CTO Raises $8M for NFT Lending Platform Astaria

The platform, led by CEO Justin Bram and DeFi vet Joseph Delong, aims to provide instant liquidity for your JPEGs and should be available to the public by September.

https://www.coindesk.com

Gnosis Safe is the industry standard for web3 native investment collectives and DAOs, but for this particular use-case the standard Safe is not enough. What’s needed is a tool which both manages raising funds (with defined parameters), distributing a DAO tokens for decision making with all stake holders, a dedicated UI specifically for NFTs - you want to see them and track all the actions taken by the DAO on a seamless UI, don’t you anon? And last but not least there needs to be a solution for an exit.

The most established solutions for NFT currently available are Castle and Juicebox, both of which are directly integrated into the new Safe Global user interface.

Fragments is a newer alternative, they just released their first product version for private beta access - below the features available at the moment:

• Governance: Fragments provides 4 governance options: in Monarchy the creator of the vault is given a free hand by the community to execute investment decisions. In Committee the investors delegate their decision to a few members of the community. Lastly and not yet live: Weighted Voting in proportion to the capital or Democratic voting equivalent to each member having one vote right.

• Asset Manager’s skin in the game: The vault creators have to deposit a minimum of 10% of the total capital they aim to raise through the vault.

• Integrations: Fragments is built on top of Gnosis Safe and has integrated with Gem.xyz and Opensea to let the community easily buy or sell the NFTs.

• Deposit from any chain: Investors can swap tokens while depositing to a vault and from any chain thanks to the integration of Li.Fi SDK.

• Zero gas fees: ERC-20 tokens to represent ownership will be deployed on Polygon to have gasless transactions for voting, data storage and token distribution.

Fragments is yet to release a governance token, most of which will be distributed to the community, partially to “FRAGmates Early Believers” NFT holders.

Disclaimer: WagameDAO has attained beta access to Fragments vaults, therefore this article is featuring Fragments instead of more well known solutions. WagameDAO Discord members will soon be able to test the product.