Astaria, a non-fungible token (NFT) lending platform and liquidity engine, has raised $8 million in seed funding to help the company grow during the bear market.
True Ventures, Arrington Capital, Ethereal Ventures, Wintermute, Genesis Trading, LedgerPrime, Hypersphere Ventures, The LAO, and many more participated in the seed funding round.
Some of the ecosystem’s most well-known angel investors and advisors participated in the seed funding round, including Anthony Sassano, Sam Kazemian, Tim Beiko, Nick Emmons, Dean Eigenmann, Alex Svanevik, Philipp Zentner, Mariano Conti, Nathan Allman, Corbin Page, Ivangbi, Avi Meyers, Meltem Demirors, Kartik Talwar, Texture, James Prestwich, Galen Law-Kun, and Andrew Thurman, among others.
Users can generate quick liquidity by putting up their NFTs as collateral using Astaria. According to co-founder and CEO Justin Bram, the recent drop in NFT sales, followed by bear market signals, makes Astaria’s services appealing to NFT owners seeking to earn passive income on their digital assets.
“We’re very bullish on NFTs and bringing real assets in the future,” Bram told CoinDesk when asked about current trends in NFT markets. “Over the next three to five years, our hope is that we will expand well beyond art-based NFTs and profile picture NFTs.”
Users that utilize their NFTs as collateral can use Astaria to get Ether (ETH) loans. Astaria will ultimately connect other chains beyond Ethereum to offer loans in other cryptocurrencies, according to co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Joseph Delong, a crypto veteran who formerly led decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Sushi and worked at ConsenSys.
“We know Ethereum will be here in three, five years. We don’t know which other layer 1s [blockchains] will be. We don’t know which layer 2s [companion systems] will succeed,” said Bram on the topic of cross-chain expansion.
Astaria plans to use the funding round to expand its current eight-person team. According to Bram, the platform’s public launch could take place as early as September.
Astaria is unique in the highly competitive NFT lending market because it will not require two-way approvals to improve transaction efficiency.
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