Decentralized finance protocol Aave has surpassed $1 trillion in cumulative credit volume, marking a historic first in the DeFi industry.
“Ten years ago, DeFi and Aave didn’t exist. They were just ideas. Today, Aave is the backbone of onchain lending and the engine of a new financial system that is open, global and unstoppable,” Stani Kulechov, CEO of Aave Labs, said in an X-post on Wednesday.
This achievement marked another step toward Aave’s goal of becoming the “largest, most efficient liquidity network in the world,” Kulechov added. “One that builders, banks and fintechs connect to as standard, fundamentally improving liquidity and cost structures in the global financial sector.”
Source: Aaf
In August, Aave Labs launched Aave Horizon, a new lending market on Ethereum specifically for traditional financial firms and other institutional investors to borrow stablecoins against real assets.
VanEck, WisdomTree and Securitize were among the first participants to take advantage of Aave’s institutional offering.
On February 15, Kulechov said DeFi lending could benefit from tokenizing “abundant assets” such as solar energy, energy storage batteries, and robotics for labor. He expects these assets to be worth a combined $50 trillion by 2050.
Kulechov originally launched Aave in November 2017 under the name ETHLend before rebranding as Aave in September 2018. It now secures a total value of over $27.2 billion, allowing users to earn interest on deposits and borrow instantly using crypto as collateral.
Aave leads several prominent DeFi lending platforms in TVL, such as Morpho, JustLend, SparkLend, Maple, Kamin Lend, and Compound Finance, each holding over $1 billion in total value.
Aave has generated more than $83.3 million in fees over the past 30 days, nearly four times as much as its closest competitor, Morpho.
The DAO proposal has caused division within the Aave community
Aave’s milestone comes amid a protocol-wide feud over how much funding and revenue control Aave Labs should receive versus Aave’s decentralized autonomous organization.
Aave ($AAVE) token holders have been asked to approve a package worth up to $42.5 million of stablecoins and 75,000 $AAVE for Aave Labs.
In return, Aave Labs would send all revenue from Aave-branded products to Aave DAO’s coffers under a DAO-funded business model.