Stani Kulechov
Founder & CEO, Aave
London-based fintech company, Aave, is building a decentralised financial ecosystem on the ethereum blockchain that is transparent, open, and trustless.
Decentralised finance (DeFi for short) uses open-source networks to create financial products and services without involving centralised institutions. Like traditional finance, DeFi allows people to earn interest on deposits and borrow assets, but DeFi doesn’t require any middlemen.
DeFi provides an opportunity to enable services that have a near zero cost of entry. Decentralisation means that the records are kept via a network of smart contracts on the blockchain across a vast number of computers, making the ecosystem extremely resistant to failure at a single point.
The Aave Protocol for DeFi
Headquartered in Shoreditch, London – a global hotspot for fintech – Aave Protocol is a completely decentralised, open-source, and non-custodial money market protocol. Users can purchase and deposit cryptocurrency assets into the protocol and earn interest on their deposits as the underlying assets are lent to borrowers.
DeFi is permission-less, so the protocol is accessible to everyone and does not discriminate based on financial background. The whole system is trustless, and lenders and borrowers can be complete strangers. Historically, rates in DeFi have been higher than in a traditional bank account where interest rates are low in the current economy.