What Is the Top NFT Lending Platform?
Blend is the top NFT lending platform, dominating the market with a 92.9% share, at a monthly lending volume of $562.33 million in March 2024. Blend launched in May 2023 as the lending protocol offered by leading NFT marketplace Blur (BLUR), and immediately captured a majority 82.7% market share in the same month. Since then, Blend’s monthly market share has remained in the lead, ranging from 88.8% to 96.5%. In Q1 2024, Blend saw its NFT lending volume jump 49.2% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) to reach a new high of $2.02 billion.
Arcade, NFTfi Lead Among Smaller NFT Lending Players
The next most popular NFT lending platforms are Arcade (ARCD) with 2.8% in market share from $16.94 million NFT lending volume, and NFTfi (NFTFI) with 2.2% from $13.32 million volume in March 2024. Arcade and NFTfi are the only other NFT lending platforms that have managed to consistently capture above 1.0% in monthly market share since last year.
Arcade also recorded a new quarterly high of $39.46 million in NFT lending volume in Q1 this year, which is a 37.1% increase QoQ. In the same period, NFTfi’s lending volume rose 48.3% QoQ to reach $35.88 million. With Arcade’s token launch in April 2024 and NFTfi’s upcoming token launch, it remains to be seen what the impact will be on each platform’s NFT lending volumes.
The remaining NFT lending platforms are X2Y2 (X2Y2) and BendDAO (BEND), which both hold 0.8% market share, and Parallel Finance (formerly ParaX) with 0.5% market share.
Total NFT Lending Volume Hits $2.1B High in Q1 2024
The total NFT lending volume reached a quarterly high of $2.13 billion last quarter, representing a growth of 43.6% QoQ as 5 of the 6 biggest NFT lending platforms experienced higher volumes. In particular, January 2024 saw a record $0.90 billion in total monthly NFT lending volume, surpassing the previous high of $0.85 billion in June 2023.
Given that NFT loan originations are still dominated by Ethereum NFT collections due to the synergy between Blend and Blur, the impact of increasingly popular Bitcoin Ordinals on the NFT lending market may be worth looking out for.
Top NFT Lending Platforms by Market Share
Market share of the top 6 biggest NFT lending platforms by lending volume, as of March 2024:
| Rank | NFT Lending Platform | Market Share |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Blend | 92.91% |
| 2 | Arcade | 2.80% |
| 3 | NFTfi | 2.20% |
| 4 | X2Y2 | 0.78% |
| 5 | BendDAO | 0.77% |
| 6 | Parallel Finance | 0.54% |
NFT Lending Volume by Month
The total NFT lending volume each month, across the top 6 NFT lending platforms:
| Month | Total NFT Lending Volume |
|---|---|
| Jan 2023 | $76.01 million |
| Feb 2023 | $70.75 million |
| Mar 2023 | $83.07 million |
| Apr 2023 | $102.18 million |
| May 2023 | $418.46 million |
| Jun 2023 | $847.54 million |
| Jul 2023 | $538.38 million |
| Aug 2023 | $380.32 million |
| Sep 2023 | $310.54 million |
| Oct 2023 | $323.12 million |
| Nov 2023 | $563.07 million |
| Dec 2023 | $598.26 million |
| Jan 2024 | $900.92 million |
| Feb 2024 | $625.20 million |
| Mar 2024 | $605.23 million |
Methodology
The study examined the top NFT lending platforms by monthly lending volume from January 2023 to March 2024, based on Dune Analytics data from @ahkek, @nftfi-team, @beetle and @arcade_xyz.
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Curious to find out more about our previous research studies & statistics? Check out this one we did on the worst NFT loan liquidations.
Yuqian is a crypto research analyst at CoinGecko, covering a range of topics from NFTs to ETFs, crypto adoption and interest, and beyond. She's especially fascinated by the philosophical and socioeconomic aspects of crypto. She holds a Bachelor of Social Sciences with Honors from the National University of Singapore. Follow the author on Twitter @solosbrqt
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