According to the online news sources, Arcade has reportedly raised over $15 million in a Series A round of investment. Arcade is a lending application, a non-fungible token (NFT) financialization platform, and a decentralized finance (DeFi) marketplace. As per the details provided in the announcement by Arcade, the investment round was led by Castle Island Ventures, Pantera Capital, and Franklin Templeton Blockchain Fund. Besides these companies, other participants of the funding consisted of Eniac Ventures, Lemniscap, Probably Nothing Capital, Golden Tree Asset Management, and Protofund.
Recently, the company had also facilitated an $800,000-worth loan against a lender’s NFT portfolio. This on-chain loan was a part of $3.3 million that was secured when Arcade was released privately. Arcade recently said in a statement that the total amount of digital assets that have been loaned on the platform come up to around $10 million. The DeFi marketplace is compatible with many ERC20 tokens. It has been found that the project comes with something called a Wrapped NFT technology, that allows multiple non-fungible tokens to be packaged together. They can then be utilized for acquiring a loan, which allows one to acquire more liquidity and larger loans.
The Principal at Pantera Capital, Lauren Stephanian, said during the announcement of the Series A funding that her company was looking forward to the future of Arcade. She said that the collateralization of a new asset class provided by Arcade will give new entities an incentive to participate. These new entities could be from both finance and traditional/digital art worlds, including the DAO and institutional investors.
