Aave: The Road to a Crypto-Powered Neobank

Chain Reaction Host Jose Maria Macedo sits down with Stani Kulechov – Founder & CEO of Aave. Aave is one of the leading DeFi protocols with nearly $3B in TVL and $4B in loans originated. Originally known as ETHLend, Aave launched its ICO in 2017 and unlike most, built through a brutal multi-year bear market that saw its price drop >90%. The team’s persistence was rewarded with a truly epic 2020 as TVL grew 1000x (from $300K to $3B) and market cap grow ~150x (from $10M to $1.5B). Most importantly, the team has continued to innovate at breakneck space, pioneering features such as flash loans, delegated credit lines, collateral swaps and entirely new governance structures.

In this conversation, we skip over much of the now well-covered Aave back story and focus on covering new ground. We discuss things like:

• What makes a good protocol founder & CEO,  
• What Stani looks for as an angel investor, 
• How Stani sees the competitive landscape,
• Aave’s e-money license and plans to become a neobank,
• Aave’s biggest mistakes in 2020 and focuses for 2021,

…and much more

Resources:

• Stani’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/StaniKulechov
• Aave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/AaveAave
• Aave website: https://aave.com/
• Jose’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/zemariamacedo
• Delphi Podcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/PodcastDelphi

More

• Our Video interviews Can Be Viewed Here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Yy99ZlQIX9-PdG_xHj43Q
• Access Delphi’s Research Here: https://members.delphidigital.io