The rental was decentralized and non-custodial, which means that no escrow intermediary was required to take custody of the NFT at any time, nor were legal contracts required to be signed. Such financial transactions are made possible through Vera’s smart contracts, which are programs stored on a blockchain that run when predetermined conditions are met, and are used to automate the execution of an agreement so that all participants can be immediately certain of the outcome, without an intermediary’s involvement or time loss.
Vera, a non-fungible token (NFT) decentralized finance (DeFi) platform, made history today by becoming the first open-source protocol to successfully rent a $1.5 million dollar Bored Apes Yacht Club NFT, “#65,” between two strangers immediately after launching its highly anticipated Ethereum mainnet network in front of a crowd of over 3,000 attendees at the Sagamore South Beach Hotel during Art Basel Miami.
Denis Lam, the CEO and Founder of Vera Labs, the firm developing Vera said, “The tremendous interest in NFTs this year has demonstrated the desire for communities to have true ownership of the assets they create, purchase, or own. But true ownership means that these assets should have the ability to generate recurring income and have utility beyond speculative buying and selling. Vera is excited to tackle these challenges and be the leading pioneer for the financialization of the next trillion-dollar asset class after the advent of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.”
Michael Arbach, the CTO and Co-Founder of Vera Labs added, “Showcasing this NFT lending and rental demo on our Ethereum mainnet presents a monumental milestone in the fintech industry. The overhead costs required for a centralized escrow service provider is significantly higher and usually increase along with the value of transacted assets. Using Vera’s decentralized technology, we are allowing such service to be performed with a flat fee regardless of the value of the assets lent and borrowed. And when we deploy our technology on other blockchain networks in the near future such as Polygon, BSC, or Solana, we will further bring that service cost down to a negligible amount. Moreover, not only is our solution significantly more cost-effective, it also has superior security over traditional centralized approaches. Our launch is a small step in our technology roadmap but a giant leap forward to grant our technology more applications/use cases to enter other industries beyond digital and cryptonative arts such as event passes, ticketing, music, entertainment, gaming, metaverses, and much more!”
Bob Murray, a member of the Bored Ape Yacht Club and owner of the rental B.A.Y.C. NFT comments, “I’m honored to contribute to the huge historic milestone achieved by Vera for the crypto and NFT space. What made it special for me was this historic moment was realized at one of the most epic parties during Art Basel Miami in the presence of legendary artists like Busta Rhymes, Murdabeatz, and N.O.R.E. in front of thousands of attendees that love crypto, NFTs, and hip hop culture.”
Vera’s mainnet is a public permissionless network built on Ethereum, and launching soon on other major blockchains such as Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, and Solana, so anyone can start utilizing the network to build decentralized financial applications for NFTs that require rental, lending, and mortgage transactions.
Founded in early 2021 and backed by notable investors in the decentralized fintech space such as Animoca Brands, Sky Vision Capital, Infinity Venture Crypto, and the Web3 Foundation (grant), Vera’s mission is simple: To build open, secure, and powerful NFT financial products that are equally available to everyone everywhere and governed by its native token $VERA.
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