Aave

Aave is a decentralized finance protocol (DeFi) that enables the lending and borrowing of cryptocurrencies without the involvement of intermediary financial institutions. Aave was founded in 2017 under the name ETHLend by Stani Kulechov, a Finnish lawyer, born in Estonia in 13.01.1991. Originally, the project was based on a peer-to-peer lending model. In January 2020, the protocol was relaunched under the new name Aave (Finnish for 'ghost') with a liquidity pool model. The associated governance token carries the same name (AAVE) and allows holders to vote on protocol changes. In 2025, Kulechov visited Dublin to headline two separate conferences as part of Dublin Tech Week, ETH Dublin and Blockchain Ireland. At the time, the Aave lending protocol recorded €40.3 billion in net deposits. In February 2025, Bloomberg reported that Aave remained the largest decentralized finance lending platform by deposits. At the Reform UK conference in September 2025, Kulechov spoke alongside Zia Yusuf, the party's efficiency chief, as part of its push to embrace the cryptocurrency industry, which includes accepting donations in bitcoin. Aave allows crypto lending and borrowing without the use of a central authority.