I recently wrote about the IQ Protocol, an innovative borrowing and lending platform that deals with utility tokens. Unlike other borrowing and lending platforms loans taken from the platform are more like a subscription i.e. you pay an up-front fee to borrow tokens for a certain amount of time instead of providing collateral. For a more in-depth understand I'd recommend going to the IQ Protocol blog.

While as of right now the usability of the IQ Protocol is limited to Parsiq they've spoken about possible use cases at great length, today I'll explore one of those use cases: NFT renting. Blockchain Gaming can cost a lot, there's no doubt about that. So what if, instead of having to buy NFTs to play these games you could just rent them. That's the basic idea of the IQ Protocol seeks to bring to the world of blockchain gaming, among other things.

One of the benefits of the protocol that I explained in my last post about it is that there is no risk involved, neither the lender nor the borrower are at risk of losing their assets. The way this works is that the underlying asset never actually leaves the renting pool, instead the IQ Protocol creates a sort of wrapped token/NFT which represents the underlying asset and works the same way. The only difference being that the wrapped token comes with an expiration date, so if for example I choose to rent a legendary sword for 30 days, once that time is over the asset goes back to the original owner. I can't just run away with the NFT and sell it to somebody else. 

This could substantially lower the entry requirement to get into blockchain gaming while also generating value for those who are already invested. A win-win-win situation since devs may also benefit by attracting more players. It's definitely something to check up on in the future.