Blur's NFT lender Blend sees volume reach $225 million in less than a month

Newly-minted non-fungible token marketplace giant Blur launched its peer-to-peer lending and borrowing platform earlier this month, and the venture, dubbed Blend, has already facilitated nearly 16,000 loans for a total of 123,500 ETH, or $225 million, according to a report from Nansen.

After Blur’s launch in October of last year, and then the rollout of an aggressive incentive program that attracted many traders to its platform, the marketplace quickly usurped OpenSea to become the top platform by trading volume. Nansen estimates that success has contributed to Blend’s popularity with NFT lenders and borrowers.

“Blend's rapid growth is no surprise since Blur is arguably the go-to NFT platform for crypto-natives and NFT degens," Nansen said in the report. "Their bidding and listing points system for blur [token] airdrops to incentivize liquidity has also contributed significantly to the marketplace's rapid success.”

Nansen said it had identified lending and borrowing on behalf of “1,200 unique borrowers and 1,600 lenders.”

Dune analytics dashboard created by The Block Research Analyst Brad Kay.

Blend offers loan options for high-end NFT collections like CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club. One feature helping Blend distinguish itself from other peer-to-peer lenders is its offer of “zero protocol fees for both borrowers and lenders,” according to Nansen.

The new NFT lender has dominated the market by capturing a whopping 85% of all loan volume across platforms this month, according to The Block Research analyst Brad Kay, who has a Dune analytics dashboard which tracks Blend lending.

This week, Binance announced plans to get into the NFT lending space when it introduced a new feature that allows customers to borrow cryptocurrency using non-fungible tokens as collateral.

Updates with commentary and chart from The Block Research in sixth paragraph.