Taker Protocol Raises $3M to Transform NFT Liquidity and Utilization

Taker Protocol, a crypto liquidity protocol for NFTs, has raised $3 million from a number of reputable investors to build new financial primitives into the burgeoning NFT market.

The round was led by Electric Capital, with DCG, Ascentive Assets, Dragonfly Capital, Spartan Group, The LAO, Sfermion and Morningstar Ventures participating as well.

Taker Protocol focuses on improving the liquidity available in the NFT market. Due to the unique non-fungible structure of NFTs, existing DeFi primitives are difficult to integrate into the market, resulting in significant issues in terms of overall liquidity. The value of an NFT is extremely volatile and often effectively becomes zero as no buyers can be found at any reasonable price. Furthermore, NFTs are difficult to use productively after purchase and often end up forgotten in the user’s wallet.

Taker Protocol aims to solve the worst of the liquidity issues. Allowing lenders and borrowers to liquidate and rent assets that aren’t cryptocurrencies creates new liquidity streams and opportunities. For Taker, these assets will include NFTs, financial papers, synthetic assets, and much more.

The TKR token defines membership in the Taker DAO, which has several key functions in the system. In addition to setting loan-to-value rates and other parameters in the protocol, the DAO will also contribute in fairly appraising a particular NFT or NFT collection. This means that each asset supported by Taker will have a guaranteed fair floor price. In return, TKR holders will be able to obtain rewards and receive a portion of platform income.

The funds received will help Taker launch the full version of the protocol across multiple chains, including Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, BSC and Near. The support of major stakeholders and participants in the NFT ecosystem will also help further development of the project.

Taker DAO contains many different Curator DAOs (Sub-DAOs), each sub-DAO will manage their own whitelist and a floor price for any NFT on their whitelist if the borrower defaults on the loan. We believe that it is best to mitigate the risks for our lenders by carefully selecting the NFT assets that our community desires and trusts the most. Aligning the interest of the DAOs with that of the lenders, we will mitigate the risk exposure for the lenders and optimize the profits for the DAOs. Moreover, each sub-DAO will have its own funds and can choose to focus exclusively on a specific type of NFT assets. For example, it could be artworks-only or Metaverse-only.

Taker Co-Founder Angel Xu comments:

"We are absolutely thrilled to welcome so many well-established investment funds to the team. Their participation heralds an exciting new phase for the protocol as we seek to address persistent problems in the NFT lending market for the benefit of end-users. This investment will enable us to further optimize liquidation of NFT assets across multiple blockchains, removing the barriers to entry that prevent new players from entering the market.”

“Taker Protocol is using an innovative approach to solve the biggest problem in the NFT space -- lack of liquidity. With Taker, we are one step closer to the world where anyone anywhere can use their NFT assets to take out a loan.”

(Maria Shen, Partner at Electric Capital)