#204 - Blur wants unlock NFT liquidity with "Blend" 🔓

GM and welcome to Decentra Daily.

Hello to all of last week’s new subscribers. Thanks for joining!

Today,

1. Is Blur’s new lending platform good for the NFT market?

2. Sotheby’s rolls out its secondary digital art marketplace

3. Lifelike Meta avatars & Venmo crypto features

Plus, all the web3 headlines, memes, and Tweets of the day.

D-Daily takeaway 🥡
Huge rally today thanks to strong Cryptopunk activity.

What's this? 🤔
Our floor price index tracks the biggest, most influential pfp projects, art collections, and gaming assets.

Blend - Blur’s NFT lending tool

Blur + Lending = Blend. Clever, huh?

The most controversial marketplace in NFTs has just launched a new feature.

It’s called Blend, and it lets you buy blue-chip NFTs with small up-front deposits – sort of like making a down payment on a house.

If you spent all your ETH on sweet, sweet JPEGs, this peer-to-peer lending protocol also gives you a convenient way to release liquidity from your bag.

Simply borrow against your NFTs from whichever lender is offering the best deal.

How it works:

• Holders can borrow ETH against (certain) NFTs without needing to sell.

• Buyers can borrow ETH to purchase (certain) NFTs with a small deposit.

• Blend loans have fixed rates and never expire. Borrowers can repay at any time.

• But, lenders can also exit their positions by triggering a 30-hour Dutch auction.

Blur hopes these flexible terms will make Blend the defi protocol of choice for hungry buyers and big-bag lenders.

Lenders don’t have to set fees, can offer extremely low rates, and allow loans to continue indefinitely until paid.

Why make this feature?

Blend is another attempt by Blur to attract users by offering ways for traders and holders to make extra money (or $BLUR) from their assets.

Blend supporters will also say that loans and other financial services are necessary to unlock the NFT market and produce real growth.

— Just like how most people don’t bring a suitcase of cash into a car dealership or real estate office. They interact with these markets through mortgages and loans.

Laura Chin from Unchained Crypto spoke to Blur co-founder Pacman about this angle:

So what’s the catch? (and what about $BLUR)

It looks like lenders will receive $BLUR rewards points for loaning assets – creating an incentive to offer generous terms to borrowers.

Which is great!

Thanks to Blend, you can now take home a top-tier NFT like an Azuki for just a couple of ETH (or less).

But, a second look at those loan terms shows lots of incentives and protections for the lender …and not so many for the buyer. 👀 🤔

Especially that part where it seems lenders have the power to trigger liquidation auctions at any time. 

Is Blend going to create an army of over-leveraged degens, with a flood of liquidated NFTs any time there’s a shift in floor prices?

Really though: how can borrowers make informed decisions when NFT floors are so volatile and the lender can trigger an auction at any time?

• Here is the Blend whitepaper.

• Blend is now live for CryptoPunk, Azuki, and Milday NFTs – with more collections coming soon.

Notable Tweets ✅

On the web3 wire

Yuga’s new CEO sits down for a Coindesk interview 🎮
Daniel says that the idea of games with real player economies was a big factor in his decision to join Yuga Labs.

Meta’s new avatars show it’s still on a quest for the metaverse 👤 
These real-time, photorealistic avatars are sensitive to light and tiny facial movements. They can also be trained to speak in your voice using LLMs.

+60 million Venmo customers can now transfer crypto 💸
After PayPal unlocked crypto features for users last year, Venmo customers will be able to transfer their crypto to PayPal accounts, external wallets, and exchanges.

Sotheby’s steps up: an elite secondary marketplace for the best digital art NFTs

Calling all distinguished degens – Sotheby’s Metaverse marketplace now supports onchain secondary sales.

The auction house’s marketplace is highly-curated, offering a small selection of elite works…

The launch curation, live now, includes art from 13 of the biggest names in the space – e.g. Claire Silver, XCopy, Refik Anadol, etc.

Transactions between collectors will be fully onchain, with artist royalties enforced at the marketplace’s smart contract level.

Selling on the marketplace brings a 2.5% fee, while purchases can be made with ETH or MATIC.

Expect a new roster of leading artworks every few months.

Check out the marketplace here. 👍

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Meme of the day

Every goddam time.

C U Tmrw! 👋

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