Hello, Solana!

Meet Howl Finance. The collateralized NFT-loan protocol, building on Solana.

Have you ever wanted to buy a really special NFT that you just knew was going to go up in value, but you couldn’t afford it? Maybe it was just beyond what was in your wallet, or maybe it was 2–3 times what you could afford to spend? Unfortunately, you’re out of luck.

Enter Howl.

Howl Finance is a protocol leveraging collateralized loans to allow for users to provide liquidity to consumers looking to purchase NFTs on margin. While leverage and margin trading is a tricky game to play, there is no denial that loan protocols are in constant demand. Liquidity providers would earn interest on HOWL tokens that are deposited with USDC into a pool.
If someone is interested in a loan, they can deposit USDC and acquire a collateralized loan. The loan process would require input on the NFT being purchased, so the best method for doing so would be to create a marketplace that allows users to place bids on any NFT on any blockchain, even if the NFT is itself not for sale. This allows anyone to appraise NFTs in an open format, creating a general baseline for the value of any given digital collectible. If an NFT-holder decided to list a certain NFT, they could have the option of selling the NFT for any open bids. Open bids would require deposited tokens in escrow. HOWL/USDC locked up in a liquidity pool would be counted toward this available escrow balance. This method allows the protocol to track the value of a certain NFT that a consumer might purchase with the loan. Once the value of an NFT drops below the allowed margin, the ownership of the NFT would revert to the protocol and would be sold automatically in order to reimburse HOWL/USDC liquidity providers for the loan.

Although we missed the hackathon, we will be developing our lite paper and aim to build this protocol in Q3 2021! Follow us on Twitter and let us know what you think!