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In this episode of Unlocked, we sit down with the two founders of Gondi, a platform helping collectors access liquidity against digital art — and helping more people participate in the market, beyond the very top end. We talk about the tension between art and finance, why loans aren’t new in the art world (but access has been limited), and how “on-chain” systems can make the process faster and more transparent. A practical conversation for collectors: how it works, what happens if you can’t repay, and what this shift means for the future of collecting.
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Collectors who love their NFTs face a real dilemma: access the liquidity locked in their collection without selling what they've built. Gondi's answer is elegant - use the NFT as collateral for a loan, repay it, and get the work back. Two Argentine friends who have known each other since age seventeen built the leading NFT liquidity marketplace. This is their story.
Burga and 0xEND are the Argentine co-founders of Gondi, which they describe as the leading NFT liquidity marketplace. Friends since the age of seventeen or eighteen, they built Gondi to solve a problem they understood from their own experience in the NFT ecosystem: collectors with valuable digital art holdings who need capital but don't want to sell. Their product allows NFT holders to use their digital artworks as collateral for loans denominated in USDC or ETH, with terms ranging from 30 to 365 days, in a trustless, on-chain system that processes approximately 200 whitelisted collections.
NFT liquidity is not a financial engineering problem - it's a cultural one. The reason Gondi matters to the digital art ecosystem is that it changes the relationship between collecting and capital: you don't have to choose between holding work you love and accessing liquidity when you need it. The mechanism is sophisticated (NFT as collateral, escrow, repayment or extension or lender claims), but the insight behind it is simple. Burga and 0xEND built it because they understood the collector's emotional relationship to their holdings - which is why the company's newest feature, the Purchase Bundler, allows buyers to acquire and take a loan in a single transaction with partial capital.
NFT-backed lending as collector infrastructure
The ability to borrow against a digital artwork without selling it changes the economics of collecting in a fundamental way. Gondi is building infrastructure that makes long-term holding more viable by unlocking capital that would otherwise require liquidation.
Trustless, on-chain mechanics
The on-chain, trustless nature of the Gondi system - with escrow, defined terms, and automatic execution - removes the counterparty risk that made informal NFT lending impractical. The mechanics are as important as the concept.
The emotional dimension of the first loan
The comparison between taking a first NFT loan and buying a first NFT is not marketing - it's an accurate observation about how emotional the relationship between collector and collection actually is. Gondi's design accounts for that emotion.
Purchase Bundler and fractional entry
The new feature that allows collectors to buy and borrow simultaneously - entering a position with partial capital - changes who can participate in the market. It's a product decision with real implications for how collecting communities develop.
"Taking the first loan is always scary and it feels like the first time that someone was buying something, buying an NFT for the very first time."
The financial tools available to digital art collectors are still developing - and Gondi is building some of the most important ones. If you hold significant NFT positions and have ever felt the tension between the work you want to keep and the capital you need to access, this episode is directly relevant. Understanding how NFT-backed lending works will change how you think about your collection as a whole.
Unlocked is the podcast by 100 collectors - the global network for digital art collectors. Each episode, we speak with artists, curators, collectors, and builders shaping the digital art world. No market speculation. No hype. Just honest, substantive conversations about art, practice, and what it means to collect today. New episodes release throughout the year. Find Unlocked on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 100 collectors is a membership network. [Explore membership →]
