By
Steve Muchoki
April 9th, 2024
The new funds raised by Aave will be used for attracting more institutions towards the decentralized finance (DeFi) market as well as further expanding its presence in the Asian market.
A well-known decentralized lending protocol Aave raised $25 million funds to bring DeFi to institutions. On Monday, October 12, Decrypto reported that the investment comes from Blockchain.com, Standard Crypto, Blockchain Capital, and others.
We are excited to announce that @blockchaincap @standardcrypto @blockchain ventures have invested into the future of the Aave Protocol and will be participating in protocol governance. https://t.co/fOGjZH73D3
— Aave (@AaveAave) October 12, 2020
The fundraising comes as the platform developers plan to bring DeFi to institutional use. Besides, Aave CEO Stani Kulechov also noted that the funds will help them expand in Asian markets. Kulechov said:
“Aave raised funds from strategic investors to bring DeFi closer to institutional use and to expand the team size to serve the growth in Asian markets”.
He further added that institutions and the new stakeholders can participate in the platform’s staking and governance. The latest funding is in addition to the $24 million raised by the protocol since its inception in 2017.
Aave is one of the most popular lending and borrowing platforms in the DeFi space. Depositors on Aave can earn interest by providing liquidity to lending pools. At the same time, other users can borrow digital currencies with little collateral. The platforms LEND is the fourth-largest DeFi token with a market cap of $636 million at press time. Also, Aave is the third-largest DeFi protocol in terms of total-value-locked (TVL) of over $1.3 billion.
Aave Protocol – Upgrading the LEND Token to AAVE Token
Earlier in October, Aave announced its plans to upgrade its native LEND token to a more powerful AAVE token. The new AAVE tokens give users a higher say in the protocol’s decision-making processes. It also gives staking rights and voting rights to users. The shift to AAVE is referred to as “Aavenomics” – a step towards higher decentralization. The Aave CEO said:
“Aave is now moving towards the AaveDAO, which means that after the migration from LEND to AAVE, anyone can build new functionality into the protocol along with the Aave team, effectively decentralizing development and governance”.
The AAVE token upgrade comes along with the upgrade to Aave V2 protocol that brings some cool new features like fixed-rate deposits, native credit delegation, debt tokenizations, and gas fee optimization. The transfer will happen at a rate of 100 LEND is equal to 1 AAVE, however, the market cap remains the same.
Crypto exchange Gemini has already announced its support to AAVE tokens as well as custody.