Aave, a DeFi cornerstone, has caught the interest of institutions.
Aave Sees Institutional Adoption
Institutions are beginning to use Aave, Stani Kulechov has confirmed.
The DeFi protocol’s founder revealed the news after an Aave posted a message on Twitter expressing concern that an anti-money laundering warning had appeared on Aave’s homepage. Kulechov explained that Aave was still fully decentralized and the text had appeared in the wrong place. “The text is actually incorrect and relates to another pool we’re testing out,” he said.
Another user replied asking whether the specified pool was for testing out compliance features. Kulechov then confirmed that the message related to a private pool built for institutions to practice “before aping into DeFi.”
It’s a private pool for institutions that are still practicing before aping into DeFi
— stani.eth ? =(⬤_⬤)= ? (@StaniKulechov) May 12, 2021
Institutional adoption of crypto has become more evident in the last twelve months, with major companies and banks showing signs of interest in Bitcoin. However, until very recently, Bitcoin was the only digital asset that had caught on among institutions. That’s started to change in recent weeks; it’s become clear that Ethereum is starting to see more institutional buying, fueled by its forthcoming EIP-1559 and Proof-of-Stake updates. DeFi, though, is generally thought to be an untapped market occupied mostly by crypto natives. According to Kulechov’s messages, that could be changing, starting with one of Ethereum’s leading lending protocols.
AAVE shot up 10% on the news, trading at $571 at the time of writing. The lending protocol contains over $12 billion in total value locked today, trailing only MakerDAO.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this feature owned AAVE, ETH, FLI, DPI, and several other cryptocurrencies.
