Uniswap eyes NFT financialization, in talks with lending protocols
Crypto exchange Uniswap engaged in talks with several non-fungible token (NFT) lending protocols, according to a social media post from Uniswap’s head of NFT product Scott Lewis.
In the tweet, Lewis highlights the company’s interest in tackling both liquidity issues and “information asymmetry” around NFTs.
uniswap is the interface for all nft liquidity.
we are now in talks with 7 nft lending protocols. we will work with each to address liquidity fragmentation and information asymmetry. this is the first step to build nft financing.
— Scott (@Scott_eth) 23 August 2022
While Uniswap’s goal with these talks and potential collaboration with lending protocols is NFT funding, the crowd on Twitter came back with a two-sided response. Some users saw the decision as a step towards strengthening the future of decentralized finance, simply known as DeFi:
@uniswap continues to prove it #challenge is here to stay.
— struktur_fi (@struktur_fi) 23 August 2022
Other users questioned the motives behind Uniswap’s interest in NFT funding and pointed to exploiting liquidation gains.
any motive for offering this feature other than profit on liquidations? or be kind enough to buy lenders worthless assets at liq price and hold it while you try to dump yourself?
— PilotGFX (@PilotGFX) 23 August 2022
Over the past few months, Uniswap has taken big steps towards including NFT activity in its service offerings. Uniswap is one of the world’s largest decentralized exchanges (DEX), responsible for nearly $6 billion in assets in its liquidity pools.
In June, the company introduced the acquisition of Genie, an NFT marketplace aggregation platform, which allows users to find and trade digital assets across most platforms.
Shortly after, Lewis tweeted that Uniswap plans to introduce NFTs with full Sudoswap support. Sudosawp enables anonymous interactions around NFT sales and creation of NFT liquidity pools.
We launch NFTs on Uniswap with full @sudoswap User support. Pool data is flowing in pic.twitter.com/nsRt9Cp1Ss
— Scott (@Scott_eth) 22 July 2022
This is not the company’s first foray into the NFT space, as in 2019 they launched Unisocks, which was the first rendition of NFT liquidity pools. However, this latest push for NFT activity comes as these digital assets gain more traction and utility in and outside of the DeFi space.
Industries use these tokenized digital assets for everything from real estate contracts and digital fashion to collectibles and music rights monetization.
Similar platforms like OpenSea, MagicEden and even eBay are moving full speed into the wild west of NFTs. DappRadar’s Q2 industry report even hinted that an NFT platform battle could be in the future.
