Zharta Raises $4.3M to Accelerate Growth in Instant NFT Lending
DeFi company Zharta, has secured seed funding from leading Web3 VCs and strategic investors to accelerate growth to meet customer demand and go-to-market.
Zharta, the creator of a lending protocol for instant NFT collateral loans, has closed a seed round of $4 million in new capital to power the company’s next phase of growth.
The company had initially raised an acceleration round of $300,000 from angel investors.
Prominent investors include Lead Investor Greenfield One, followed by institutional VCs Shilling Capital and Possible Ventures, core Web3 industry players SpaceShipDao and UniwhalesDao, as well as Clever, Olisipo Way and other strategic Business Angels.
This seed funding round was assisted by Cuatrecasas Law Firm.
Zharta will allocate the new funds primarily to customers’ requirements, followed by R&D, sales and marketing. The goal is to accelerate market penetration and expand rollouts to improve the instant lending platform. To implement these goals, they will add up to 20 new employees to their current team of 12 people.
“Zharta is an important building block in NFT funding. We are very pleased to support Zharta as a lead investor in bringing this great NFT use case to market quickly.
David An, partner in Greenfield One
Zharta has created a real-time lending model leveraged on Lending Pools and NFT assessments with Machine Learning and targets the native DeFi and NFT holders to quickly prove the platform’s potential, which the company attributes to its 3 keystones: Simplicity, UX-oriented, and Trusted
. Nuno Cortesão, Zharta’s co-founder and CEO, hopes that a strong customer-centric foundation will enable them to expand: “We aim to deliver the best user-centric experience so we can address a wider audience in the future,” said Nuno, “moving from early adopters to the mass market.”
Currently, the collections that can be secured are Doodles, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Bored Ape Kennel Club, World of Women, VeeFriends, Cool Cats, Hashmasks and Pudgy Penguins, with “more collections to be added in the near future”, the MANAGING DIRECTOR guarantees.
“We are positive about the future of NFTs and their role in changing the landscape of climate technology, scientific innovation and data platforms more generally. As NFTs become ubiquitous, we see Zharta’s work in unlocking liquidity as an important part of the NFT ecosystem and believe that Nuno and the Zharta team will be important contributors to the NFT community.”
Possible Ventures partner, Simon Leicht.
“We believe the right conditions exist to accelerate protocols at the intersection of DeFi and NFT, so we couldn’t be more excited to support the Zharta team in this round of investment. A core component of the infrastructure that has yet to be unlocked is collateral – that is where Zharta comes in, with a solution that provides liquidity to collectors and the general NFT market while encouraging new parties to participate in the ecosystem,” said Pedro Rosa, of Shilling.VC.
Zharta has already gone through a testing phase, gathering feedback from users to launch a platform that meets consumers’ wants, needs and concerns, and improves the user experience. This phase also allowed them to address security issues by revising Smart Contracts.
Zharta aims to leverage AI valuations and DeFi pools to fund NFTs. This includes existing assets such as collectibles, but will also cover the emerging play2earn game, metaverse and art markets.
Zharta exhibits a grounded and pragmatic mentality, and is not reckless. It focuses on solid growth and providing the market with a robust value proposition that is financially sustainable.
It wants to establish good partnerships in Web3 and build on the value others have created, become an important part of the whole, build complex primitives and integrate with institutional actors.
Zharta envisions a future where TradFi and DeFi work together reliably and where digital assets are treated with full respect in the financial system. Zharta’s platform’s official launch is expected to take place in late summer.
About Zharta
Zharta is a unique blockchain protocol that offers a solution to the illiquidity problem faced by NFT holders. Thanks to its NFT-backed loans, Zharta enables the democratization of the market by allowing every collector and investor to stake their NFT assets in exchange for crypto-tokens.
Built with a strong focus on security, the protocol leverages AI price discovery mechanisms and on-chain index funds to further optimize liquidity, offering a more efficient way to trade NFTs.
The project is led by a trio of founders (Diogo Pires, Nuno Cortesão and Pedro Granate) with vast expertise in computer science, business development, blockchain programming and gamification theory.
About Greenfield One
Greenfield One is an Early-Stage Crypto Fund based in Berlin and was founded in 2018 by former VC Sebastian Blum and entrepreneur Jascha Samadi. The fund invests early in crypto networks and development teams across Web 3.0 infrastructure, decentralized finance and NFT technology.
Greenfield One pursues a highly research-driven investment approach and also actively participates in the portfolio’s crypto network through its own technical infrastructure and liquidity. Greenfield One is currently investing from its third fund, which is Europe’s largest crypto fund, with 135 million euros in volume.
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