Aave raises $25 million to bring DeFi closer to institutional use

October 12, 2020 Editor Ethereum 0

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  • Blockchain Capital, Standard Crypto, Blockchain.com Ventures have invested $25 million in the Ethereum based protocol Aave.
  • Aave aims to expand into the Asian market and drive the project towards greater institutional adoption.

A report from Decrypt reveals that the Ethereum-based loan protocol, Aave, has raised $25 million in a funding round. Led by Blockchain Capital, Standard Crypto, Blockchain.com Ventures, among others, the investment will be used to support Aave’s expansion into the Asian market and drive the project towards greater institutional adoption. The investors will participate in the decentralized governance model that was recently approved by the Aave community, as Aave CEO Stani Kulechov also 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.

The new governance model and Aavenomics

Data from DeFi Pulse show that the Aave has managed to maintain its position in the top 3 Ethereum DeFi, despite the drop in prices of the main tokens in this sector. At the time of publication, Aave records a Total Value Locked (TVL) of $1.12 billion. In addition, the protocol holds 3.1 million ETH and 99,800 Bitcoin (BTC), in the last 24 hours these values have increased by 1.7% and 1.2% respectively.

Recently, Aave announced the launch of its governance model to give more participation to the community. In that sense, it made a vote that determined the activation of the “Aavenomics” proposal. As reported by CNF, the old Aave token called LEND can now be swapped for the new AAVE token by investors at a ratio of 100 LEND to 1 AAVE.

The migration of the token will take place progressively, unless the community decides otherwise. To migrate their tokens, users only need to connect to the Aave’s platform and go to the migration portal. There they can indicate how much of their LEND they want to swap to AAVE. The application will also allow users to directly stake their funds. According to Aave’s CEO, the protocol has started a new stage in its development:

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.

In conjunction with the above, AAVE has shown a slight price increase of 0.18% in the last 24 hours. Currently, AAVE is traded at $50.60 and has a market capitalization of $271,049,712. Remarkably, two days ago, crypto exchange Gemini, founded by the Winklevoss twins, announced that it added the token for trading on its web and mobile platform.