Rising Ether Prices Spark Liquidity Crisis at NFT Lender BendDAO
- Bored Ape NFTs worth millions of dollars faced liquidation
- Lending against pricey NFTs emerges as a fresh trend in DeFi
Bored Apes displays at the Bored & Hungry restaurant in Long Beach, California.
Photographer: Bing Guan/BloombergOne of the most popular lending platforms for holders of NFTs such as Bored Apes to borrow against their collections is revising its terms after a drop in prices threatened to trigger the liquidation of much of the collateral backing many of the loans.
A majority of the community of investors known as a decentralized autonomous organization that runs BendDAO voted to support changes in the protocol’s code to make borrowers’ NFT collateral more liquid, while also enticing lenders to stay put with higher interest rate. Users had started rushing to withdraw deposits from the platform amid concern about a potential liquidity crunch on Friday. The total value of crypto assets locked in BendDAO’s protocol dropped by about 50% to around $41 million during the weekend, according to data from DeFi Llama.