In the first quarter of the year, the NFT lending market surged to unprecedented heights, reaching a remarkable milestone of $2.13 billion, marking a substantial 43.6% increase compared to the previous quarter.
CoinGecko’s data reveals the robust growth of the top platforms in this sector, with five out of six leading platforms experiencing a surge in lending volumes.
During the month of January, the NFT lending market witnessed a historic achievement, with a total monthly volume reaching $0.90 billion, surpassing the previous peak recorded in June 2023, which stood at $0.85 billion.
Among the frontrunners, Blend has emerged dominant, commanding an impressive 92.9% market share, with a lending volume of $562.33 million in March alone.
While Ethereum NFT collections continue to dominate loan originations, the increasing popularity of Bitcoin Ordinals poses an intriguing prospect for the NFT lending market, according to CoinGecko.
In addition to Blend’s success, other players in the NFT lending landscape, including Arcade and NFTfi, have also experienced growth, albeit with smaller market shares of 2.8% ($16.94 million in volume) and 2.2% ($13.3 million in volume) respectively.
Further down the ladder, X2Y2, BendDAO, and Parallel Finance (formerly ParaX) hold smaller market shares of 0.8%, 0.8%, and 0.5% respectively.
To incentivize greater user participation, NFT lending platforms are rolling out new initiatives to stimulate trading volumes.
For example, in late February, Arcade, backed by Pantera Capital, introduced its “Clash of Clans” airdrop program, aiming to distribute ARCD tokens among 4,000 wallets, each eligible to claim 750 ARCD tokens.
Similarly, other marketplaces like X2Y2 and BendDAO have also introduced their tokens to reward their community members.
