Key Takeaways

• Some additional players in the cryptocurrency, NFTs, and DeFi space include NiftyPays, Nftfy, Unicly, Strip Finance, Liquidifty, and Metarun.
• NiftyPays is a platform that allows NFT owners to stake, swap, borrow, lend, and fractionalize their NFTs. The NiftyPays platform "revolves around $NIFTY - a utility token which introduces an incentive mechanism to allow NFT holders to transact in a peer-to-peer manner for various useful functions, such as fractionalisation of NFTs, or lending and borrowing of NFTs."
• Unicly is developed by NFT collectors, and it provides a unique and revolutionary way for users to combine their NFT collection, tokenize it and make it tradable. Unicly is "built by NFT collectors and DeFi enthusiasts, the protocol incentivizes NFT liquidity and provides a seamless trading experience for NFT assets by bringing AMMs and yield farming into the world of NFTs."
• Nftfy is a decentralized platform that fractionalizes NFTs to generate fractions that are ERC20-compliant and are fully backed by the NFTs.
• Strip Finance is a decentralized platform that aims to ease liquidity in the NFT space. 
• According to Liquidifty, its mission is to bring more cross-chain liquidity to the NFT space. 

Introduction

1. NiftyPays

• NiftyPays is a platform that allows NFT owners to stake, swap, borrow, lend, and fractionalize their NFTs.
• According to the company website, "NiftyPays will further fuel the wave of buying and holding NFTs, making them lucrative to investors looking for short-term gains apart from the increased value of NFTs over time and the pride of owning them."
• NiftyPays is a staking ecosystem that allows NFT owners to use their assets as collateral for loans or stake their NFTs for some time and earn rewards from NiftyPays' different ecosystem projects.
• The NiftyPays platform "revolves around $NIFTY - a utility token which introduces an incentive mechanism to allow NFT holders to transact in a peer-to-peer manner for various useful functions, such as fractionalisation of NFTs, or lending and borrowing of NFTs."
• The platform charges fees for unstaking, liquidation of collateral, fractionalization, and a percentage of the interest on all loans.
• Below are some of the features and benefits NiftyPays offers to NFT holders:
• The platform has a smart gamification algorithm that calculates users' rewards based on the time they spend in the ecosystem.
• NFT Staking Farm: NFT holders can stake their idle NFTs and "earn airdrops from multiple NFT partner projects listed on NiftyPays."
• Nifty AMM Pool: Users can get loans from NiftyPays' automated lending pool using their NFTs as collateral based on the history and price predictability of their NFTs.
• Fractional ownership: Users can own a fraction of NFTs they cannot buy as a whole.
• Nifty Finance: the platform allows users to access existing DEFI ecosystem tools and earn APY on their staked NFTs.

2. Nftfy

• Nftfy is a decentralized platform that fractionalizes NFTs to generate fractions that are ERC20-compliant and are fully backed by the NFTs.
• When users stake their NFT in Nftfy's Smart Contracts and Fractionalization process, they receive one million fractions in their wallets. This then allows them to make their own Initial Dex Offering "by creating a Liquidity Bootstrapping Pool using Balancer protocol to provide liquidity to your Fractions."
• This way, users can allow anyone in the open market to trade their fractions. According to Nftfy, their protocol is "a simple, instant, and trustless way of sharing ownership of NFTs." The protocol uses the $NFTFY token, which "can be farmed by providing liquidity to different pools containing Fractions and $NFTFY."
• According to Nftfy, the protocol was created to solve some of the most pressing challenges of the NFT ecosystem, such as "low liquidity, investment risk, and monetization of assets."
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• The platform's features include:
•  Fractionalizing: users can fractionalize and trade their NFTs.
•  Collective purchase: NFT holders can sell to a group of people.
• Box: NFT owners can bundle all their NFTs and sell them together.

3. Unicly

• Unicly is a protocol that allows users to combine, fractionalize, and trade NFTs while transforming their NFTs into tradable assets with guaranteed liquidity. 
• Unicly is developed by NFT collectors, and it provides a unique and revolutionary way for users to combine their NFT collection, tokenize it and make it tradable. Unicly is "built by NFT collectors and DeFi enthusiasts, the protocol incentivizes NFT liquidity and provides a seamless trading experience for NFT assets by bringing AMMs and yield farming into the world of NFTs."
• Some of the existing challenges in NFT fractionalization are "sharding single NFTs instead of collections" and un-fractionalization. Unicly strives to solve these problems as follows:
•  "Enabling sharding of collections containing multiple NFTs (ERC-721 and/or ERC-1155s)."
• "Treating every NFT within a sharded collection as a unique, irreplaceable item."
• "Allowing collectors to bid for specific NFTs rather than entire collections."
• "Rewarding contributors of the best NFT collections through whitelisting, which allows the pool to liquidity mine the UNIC governance token."

• The protocol "combines AMMs, NFT auctions, farming, and decentralized governance in order to create the best NFT gallery and trading platform ever imagined."

4. Strip Finance

• Strip Finance is a decentralized platform that aims to ease liquidity in the NFT space. According to the company, some of the problems facing the NFT space are locked liquidity, lack of an aftermarket for NFTs, and absence of price discovery.
• Strip Finance offers the following solutions to these problems:
•  Access to capital: the platform enables NFT holders to borrow using their assets as collateral at fair interest rates.
•  Bidding and pools: the platform allows liquidity providers to take part using bids or pools.
• Marketplace: borrowers and lenders can choose between a pool or P2P marketplace.

5. Liquidifty

• According to Liquidifty, its mission is to bring more cross-chain liquidity to the NFT space. 
• The platform provides a range of tools for NFT collectors to enable them to "use cross-chain NFT oracles, take loans under the NFT collateral, earn with NFT vaults and more."
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• Below are some of the platform's features:
•  Collateralized loans: NFT holders can use their NFT as collateral to borrow Ether. They can also lend money to other users.
•  Multi-ownership of NFTs: Users wanting to buy expensive NFTs can cooperate with other users and share the cost and profits.
•  Cross-chain NFT oracles: this feature helps to analyze prices for NFTs on different blockchains to give a price estimate of each NFT held by Liquidifty users.
•  Cross-chain NFT marketplace: The platform enables users to buy NFTs from any blockchain.
• Net vaults: NFT vaults automate the profitable trading of NFTs on various exchanges and markets, benefiting Liquidifty users.

6. Metarun (Formerly GoFungibles)

• Metarun is a "state-of-the-Art gamified NFT marketplace primarily built for gamers but available for all," where people can create, trade, and earn NFTs. According to its official website, "GoFungibles (Metarun) is a cross-chain state-of-the-art NFT marketplace equipped with all the existing features of conventional NFT marketplaces but augmented with DeFi and gamified components."
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• The platform claims to combine the best of three worlds Gaming, DeFi, and NFTs, unlike other platforms that offer basic features.
• Metarun's features and benefits include:
•  Fractionalized NFTs. 
•  Collateralized NFT loans. 
•  NFT leasing: players can lease out their in-game character NFTs to other players.
•  NFT staking and farming: the platform helps NFT holders create additional liquidity by staking their valuable NFT assets while farming rare NFTs and platform tokens.
•  Cross-chain NFT bridge: the platform allows NFT holders to bridge their NFTs across various blockchains to get more liquidity and wider markets while keeping bridging costs 10 times lower.
•  Artist donations. 

Other Players

7. Dibbs

• Dibbs "allows customers to buy, sell and trade fractions of collectible assets from any connected device with just a few clicks."

8. Nexo

• Nexo, "the world's largest and most trusted lending institution in the digital finance industry," offers collateralized NFT loans. 

9. PWN Finance

• PWN is a "hub for peer-to-peer loans backed by digital assets."

10. LIQNFT

• LIQNFT helps solve the liquidity problem in the NFT space by "allowing NFT owners to fractionalize or serialize their premium NFTs into more affordable Ownership Tokens (OT) or Serialized Tokens (ST)."
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Research Strategy