Sharky

Sharky, also written Sharky.fi or SharkyFi, is an NFT lending protocol on Solana. You borrow SOL against an NFT, or you lend SOL to people who do. Loans are peer to peer and short, running 7 to 16 days.

What sets Sharky apart is that it holds nothing in escrow. The NFT you borrow against never leaves your wallet. It is frozen there until you repay, so you keep your access to token-gated communities and airdrops while the loan is open. Miss the deadline and the lender can take the NFT.

Sharky launched in 2022 and was still running in November 2026. Its SHARK token launched on Jupiter's LFG launchpad in April 2024.

How Sharky NFT loans and the order book work

Sharky runs an open order book of loan offers for each NFT collection it supports. Lenders post offers in SOL. Borrowers who hold an NFT from that collection pick an offer and get the SOL straight away.

No pool of shared money sits in the middle. Each loan is a contract between one lender and one borrower, created by the Sharky program on Solana (address SHARKobtfF1bHhxD2eqftjHBdVSCbKo9JtgK71FhELP).

The loan has a fixed term and a fixed amount owed. Sharky has no price-based liquidation: if the collection's floor price halves on day three, nothing happens to your loan. Only the due date matters. Repay in full by then and the NFT is released. Fail to repay and the lender can claim it.

Sharky's borrow page describes the escrow-free part in its own words: "When you accept a loan offer, a secure contract is created, freezing the NFT in-wallet." A frozen NFT cannot be sold, listed or transferred, but your wallet still shows it. That is why DAO votes, gated Discord roles and airdrop snapshots keep working during a loan.

Borrowing SOL against an NFT on Sharky.fi

To borrow on Sharky.fi you connect a wallet, choose an NFT from a supported collection, and accept the best offer on that collection's order book. The NFT is frozen and the SOL is sent to you. You owe the loan amount plus a fixed sum of interest, due on a set date. Terms run from 7 to 16 days, per Phantom's guide to Sharky.

The interest is small in SOL terms because the loans are so short, even though the yearly rates look huge. The Sharky client README gives a worked example: borrow 1 SOL for 7 days at about 145% a year and you owe roughly 1.028 SOL at the end.

The bigger cost is the one you do not see on the screen. If you cannot repay on time, you lose the NFT, even if it is worth far more than the loan. Sharky's borrow page puts it plainly: "Not repaying by the due date means the lender can repossess your NFT."

Only collections Sharky has added can be used. The list still grows: in September 2026 Sharky announced on X that you can now borrow and lend against OTC Desk NFTs.

Lending on SharkyFi: offers, APY and the fee on interest

Lenders on SharkyFi earn SOL interest by posting loan offers on a collection's order book. You decide how much SOL to offer against any NFT from that collection. When a borrower accepts, your SOL goes out. At the end of the term it comes back with interest, or you receive the NFT instead.

Phantom's guide quotes yields of 100% to 360% APY. It gives an example: a 50 SOL offer on Famous Fox Federation returning more than 1.3 SOL in two weeks. A yearly figure like that assumes your SOL is lent out again and again all year, with no idle days and no defaults.

Two details in the README matter before you lend:

• The rate stored on-chain is labelled APY but is used as APR, a simple yearly rate with no compounding.
• Sharky takes its fee out of the lender's interest. In the README's worked example the fee is set at 16% of the interest earned.

A default is not a payout. You end up holding an NFT you may not want, in a market that may have fallen since you made the offer. Lending on Sharky is really a way of saying, "I would be happy to buy this NFT at this price."

Lenders who want to automate offers can use the @sharkyfi/client npm package, which works with Sharky's order books and loans from code.

Is there Sharky staking?

Sharky has no staking product. In November 2026 the Sharky.fi site had four main pages: lend, offers, borrow and loans. It also had a page to upgrade sharx NFTs. The only way to earn on Sharky is to lend SOL.

People do search for "Sharky staking", and some pages in the results offer it. None of them is on sharky.fi. Only connect your wallet on sharky.fi.

SHARK token: Jupiter LFG launch and supply

SHARK is Sharky's own token. It went on sale on 15 April 2024 through the LFG launchpad run by Jupiter JUP$0.252+5.8%, and claims opened on 16 April. There are 100 million SHARK in total. Sharky calls it its governance token, meaning holders are meant to vote on how the protocol is run.

In February 2024 Jupiter's founder, Meow, named Sharky as one of three projects that could launch on LFG next. The other two were Sanctum and deBridge, The Block reported.

The sale offered 5 million SHARK at $1.06 each, according to CoinCarp's sale record. About 15% of all SHARK was due to be in public hands at launch, per Phantom's airdrop guide. Live price and trading figures are on this page.

At launch, Phantom's airdrop guide said Sharky "hasn't released a lot of details" on the token beyond calling it governance. We found no Sharky governance votes and no other stated use for SHARK since.

Sharky points, sharx NFTs and the airdrop

Sharky points were the scoring system behind the SHARK airdrop. Borrowers and lenders earned points by using the protocol, and the points set the size of each wallet's airdrop on 16 April 2024. A boosted period with four times the usual points ran from 12 February to 16 April 2024, per Phantom's airdrop guide. Recipients claimed through Jupiter's LFG site.

sharx is Sharky's own NFT collection, traded on Magic Eden ME$0.043-0.9%. The Sharky site still carries a page where holders can upgrade a sharx NFT and claim rewards it calls "chowder". Phantom's airdrop guide describes a separate FISHY token used for sharx upgrades.

Sharky has not announced a new points season or a second airdrop in any source we checked.

Who Sharky.fi suits

Sharky.fi suits a holder of a supported Solana NFT collection who needs SOL for one to two weeks and is confident of repaying. It also suits a lender who knows a collection well enough to be content owning one of its NFTs at the loan price.

It is a poor fit if you want a long loan, since the longest term is 16 days. It is also a poor fit if your NFT is not in a supported collection, or if you want to lend without watching NFT prices. The headline APY is not a safe yield, because a default pays you in an NFT, not in SOL.

Sharky lends in SOL against NFTs only. Sharky promoted a token lending product in a Superteam Earn bounty that closed in April 2025. In November 2026 the Sharky.fi navigation showed only the NFT lending pages.

Is Sharky safe? Audits, defaults and other risks

Sharky has run on Solana since 2022. We found no report of an exploit of its program. Beyond that, its security is hard to check from the outside. Weigh these points before you use it.

• No public audit. Sharky's site, its GitHub README and its Jupiter LFG application name no auditing firm and link no audit report for the Sharky program.
• No verified build. In November 2026 the OtterSec verification registry listed the Sharky program as not verified. So no one outside can check that the live code matches a public copy. Sharky's GitHub holds client examples and docs, not the program itself.
• Upgradeable program. The same registry lists the program as not frozen, so whoever holds the upgrade key can still change its code. We could not confirm whether that key is one wallet or a multisig.
• Sparse docs. In November 2026 the "bitepaper" link on Sharky's site redirected to a parked domain page.
• Default risk on both sides. Borrowers lose the NFT for missing a deadline by any margin. Lenders can be left with an NFT worth less than the SOL they lent.
• Token risk. SHARK has no documented use beyond governance, and its market is thin enough that the live liquidity on this page is worth checking.

In August 2026 a user on X said they thought Sharky had gone under. Sharky replied: "The rumors of our death are greatly exaggerated, sharky is still here, providing liquidity for solana's jpegs."

In late October 2026 two web software flaws were in the news. Sharky posted on X that it had checked and was not affected. It said it does not use the PHP, Railway or Node.js apps involved.

Sharky alternatives for Solana NFT loans: Citrus and Banx

The main alternatives to Sharky for NFT loans on Solana are Citrus and Banx. Rain.fi used to be on this list, but it has closed.

• Citrus is a peer-to-peer NFT lending app from the Famous Fox Federation team. It is the closest match to Sharky.
• Banx is another Solana app for borrowing against NFTs.
• Rain.fi says it shut down after Jupiter bought it in December 2025. It says any funds left on it were sent back to users.

Sharky's case is that it is simple and has a long record. In its LFG application of February 2024, Sharky said it had handled 95% of Solana NFT loans by SOL volume over two years. It put its more recent share nearer 80%. Those are the team's own figures, and they are old now. Compare live offers on your collection before you choose.

Sharky team and history

Sharky is run by its co-founder and CEO, Anton Vynogradenko. He goes by Restuta online. The LFG application also lists Biba, who runs marketing, and Jake, who runs partnerships and deals. It names three backers: Big Brain Holdings, Token Ventures and Monke Ventures.

By November 2026 the Sharky site still offered Solana NFT loans only. We found no sign that its plans to move to other chains had shipped. The same goes for its plans to lend against Ordinals or real-world assets.

• March 2022: Sharky goes live on Solana, with a public launch in April, per its website.
• August 2023: Sharky says it has bought Honey and adds "EVM, here we come".
• February 2024: Sharky reports $1.2 million of revenue for 2023 in its LFG application.
• April 2024: A press release the day before the SHARK launch says Sharky has made over 1.4 million loans. It also plans to support Ordinals and real-world assets.
• 16 April 2024: SHARK launches, and the airdrop can be claimed on LFG.