DAOlama: 5 leverage strategies on TON NFTs with worked numbers

The base article on DAOlama: NFT-collateralized lending on TON covered how the protocol works. This one covers what to do with it: five concrete strategies with real numbers and the points where each one breaks. Not financial advice — pattern review. The decision to apply any of this is yours, and so is the risk of an NFT liquidation on a misjudged trade.

Strategy 1. Hold + Borrow — the safest entry

Logic: you don’t want to sell a rare NFT, but you temporarily need TON (travel, hardware, an investment into another project). Pledge the NFT for 14–30 days, receive TON, spend it, repay with interest a month later.

Numbers:

NFT: a Telegram Username with a 500 TON floor.
Loan: 200 TON (40% LTV) for 30 days at 22% APR.
Interest due: 200 × 0.22 × 30/365 ≈ 3.6 TON (~$15 at $4/TON).

When it works:

The alternative is selling and rebuying. On sale you lose 5–10% to the marketplace spread. A 30-day loan = 1.8% of the principal — cheaper if the floor doesn’t dump.
No capital-gains event on the NFT (jurisdiction-dependent — see Strategy 5).

When it breaks:

Floor drops 30%+, LTV creeps into the danger zone. Inattention = liquidation.
Life happens, you miss the deadline — you lose a 500 TON NFT to clear a 200 TON loan.

Mitigation: set a deadline-minus-24h alarm. Pledge at LTV ≤ 40% — that gives you room for a floor drawdown.

Strategy 2. Leveraged NFT flip — high risk

Logic: you spot an undervalued collection and want to buy N units, no cash on hand. Pledge NFT-1, buy NFT-2 from the new collection with the borrowed TON, resell after 2–4 weeks at a margin, repay the loan, pocket the difference.

Numbers (optimistic case):

Collateral: Anonymous Number with 800 TON floor → loan 400 TON (50% LTV) for 14 days at 30% APR.
Interest: 400 × 0.30 × 14/365 ≈ 4.6 TON.
Buy NFT-2 for 400 TON, sell 14 days later for 500 TON (floor +25%). Marketplace 5% fee = 25 TON.
Net profit: 500 − 25 (fee) − 400 (principal) − 4.6 (interest) ≈ 70 TON on zero of your own TON deployed.

Pessimistic case (same setup):

NFT-2’s floor dropped 20%. Sale after 14 days for 320 TON.
Net loss: 320 − 16 (fee) − 400 − 4.6 ≈ −100 TON. Your collateral NFT-1 survives only if you cover the gap out of pocket.

This is 2× leverage on the NFT portfolio. Profit and loss both double. Suitable for experienced NFT traders, not a first DeFi experiment.

Strategy 3. Cross-staking — rate arbitrage

Logic: borrow TON on DAOlama, immediately stake it via Tonstakers, capture the spread.

When it works (rarely):

DAOlama borrow rate: 18–25% APR on longer terms.
TON staking: 3–5% APR.
Spread: minus 15–22% — loss-making on default parameters.

When it actually works:

You find a DeFi pool with APR above the borrow rate. Example: a new DEX provider’s farming pool at 40–60% APY (smart-contract risk plus native-token risk).
$LLAMA-airdrop farming: DAOlama distributes $LLAMA for activity, and a well-timed exit through the token can unlock extra APY. That’s no longer “arbitrage”, that’s “playing incentives”.

When it breaks:

Farming-pool exploit = you lose the TON and still owe the loan.
$LLAMA dumps after the airdrop and the effective APR sits below expectations.

Realistic take: cross-staking via DAOlama only makes sense with a specific high-yield pool whose risk profile you understand. On vanilla TON staking it’s a money-loser.

Strategy 4. Bear-market rollover — psychology over math

Logic: the collection’s floor sank, you don’t want to crystallise the loss with a sale. Pledge on DAOlama → get working TON → don’t sit in drawdown, keep going. When the floor recovers, repay the loan and keep the NFT.

Numbers:

NFT: a NOT-gift with a 50 TON floor (down from 80 TON over a month).
Loan: 20 TON for 14 days at 35% APR. Interest ≈ 0.27 TON.
After 14 days: either the floor recovered (good) or you roll over for the next cycle (+0.27 TON of interest).

When it works:

Conviction in the collection’s fundamentals — this is temporary drawdown, not structural decline.
Willingness to pay 1–2% per month for the option on a 30–50% recovery.

When it breaks:

The collection keeps falling. Three rollovers in, you’ve paid 1 TON of interest and the floor sank to 20 TON — LTV above threshold, liquidation.
The psychological trap: instead of accepting the loss, you accumulate it through interest payments hoping for a dead-cat bounce.

Mitigation: set a hard exit: “if floor hasn’t recovered after two rollovers, I close via sale-repay and take the loss.” Without an exit plan, rollover becomes a long agony.

Strategy 5. Tax optimisation (only with jurisdiction-specific advice)

Logic: in most jurisdictions, selling an NFT at a profit is a taxable event (capital gains). A loan against an NFT is not taxable (it’s debt, not realisation). If you need liquidity now and selling at a profit is tax-inefficient, borrowing can defer the taxable event until a better moment.

Scenarios:

A jurisdiction with a long hold period (say 1 year for long-term gains) — borrow TON, wait for the period to roll over, then sell at the preferential rate.
A jurisdiction with a tax on unrealised gains (rare) — borrowing becomes less effective.

Important caveat:

In several jurisdictions NFT operations are still in a grey zone — there’s no clear guidance on how authorities classify NFT collateral.
In the EU / US the precedent is more developed; consult a tax professional.
This strategy is only meaningful at large position sizes (NFT portfolios of $50k+). On small balances the tax savings are smaller than the fees.

!
Not legal advice

The tax section above is a pattern review, not advice. Application depends on the specific jurisdiction and personal circumstances. Before using DAOlama for tax purposes — discuss with a local tax professional.

Safety checklist

Before borrowing on DAOlama, walk through this:

You know the exact repayment deadline and set a reminder at -24h.
LTV ≤ 40% — buffer for a 30% floor drawdown without liquidation.
A “what if floor crashes” plan is written down before the trade.
You actually need the loan right now — not “because I can”.
Collateral is an NFT from the top 3 Getgems collections by volume (not a fresh hype drop).
You’ve checked the pool parameters: p2p vs pool, liquidation threshold, grace period.
Your TON wallet is protected by 2FA / hardware (Tonkeeper + Ledger).

Wrapping up

DAOlama gives NFT holders an instrument that used to live only in OTC channels with counterparty risk. Strategies 1 (hold+borrow) and 4 (rollover with an exit plan) are relatively safe. Strategies 2 (leveraged flip) and 3 (cross-staking) require experience and an understanding of failure modes. Strategy 5 (tax) only works on serious positions and with a professional.

The most common mistake is overestimating floor stability and pledging a hype-driven NFT at high LTV. The safest scheme is a premium username at 30% LTV for 7–14 days against a clear use of the borrowed TON.