SOLANA
OpenSea
Teller’s Polygon-based platform will let users make a down payment and take a loan to buy “blue chip” Ethereum NFTs.
Even at deflated prices amid the ongoing crypto market decline, a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT will run you about $104,000 worth of ETH on the low end. Decentralized lending protocol Teller wants to help make that price tag seem a little less daunting: buy a “blue chip” NFT now… and pay it off later.
Teller’s new NFT buy now, pay later (BNPL) feature is like those spearheaded by startups like Affirm and Klarna and adopted by major online retailers, albeit with some key differences. It’s available only for a select number of notable NFT projects at present, and the funds are provided by potential lenders large and small who offer liquidity through the platform.
The service, called Ape Now, Pay Later, runs on Ethereum scaling platform Polygon. Ryan Berkun, founder and CEO at Teller Finance, says the platform helps fill a need in the market to enable prospective buyers to access pricier NFT assets by paying over time.
“Buying NFTs is one of the core things Web3 consumers want to do right now,” he told Decrypt. “Buy now, pay later is a no-brainer.”
Here’s how it works. If, for example, a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT that a user wants is listed on the OpenSea marketplace, then they can use Teller’s platform to specify that they want to purchase that asset. The user is required to pay a minimum down payment of as much as 50%, depending on the project, and then the platform attempts to match the prospective borrower to a lender.
If the match is successful and a lender accepts the terms, then the down payment is pooled with the rest of the funds from the lender, the NFT is purchased from OpenSea, and it’s placed in an escrow wallet
during the repayment cycle. If all payments are made on time, then the borrower receives the purchased NFT from the escrow wallet.
An NFT is a blockchain token that’s used to prove ownership for an item, and they can be used for things like artwork, profile pictures, access passes and tickets, and digital collectibles. The NFT market surged to $25 billion worth of trading volume in 2021 alone, and has already notched about $20 billion in organic trading so far this year, per DappRadar.
Supported Ethereum NFT projects at launch include the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club, as well as Moonbirds, Doodles, Cool Cats, Azuki, Meebits, Adidas Originals: Into the Metaverse, RTFKT-MNLTH, and Murakami.Flowers Seed.
The Adidas NFTs have the lowest down payment requirement of just 25% of the cost in ETH, while RTFKT-MNLTH and Murakami are at 33% each. All of the other “blue chip” collections require a minimum 50% down payment.
Berkun said that the rates were chosen based on factors like market liquidity and volatility. The Adidas NFTs are effectively interchangeable, for example, as they all look the same and offer the same functionality for holders. On the other hand, each Bored Ape or Doodle image is made up of a unique combination of attributes, even if many are ultimately similar in design.
