December Newsletter
Happy New Year Aave Community!
We hope you are all having a wonderful holiday season as we get ready to usher in 2021! 2020 was an incredible year for DeFi, growing from just over $600M in TVL back in January to over $14B today!
The Aave Protocol launched on January 8th, and it has been an Aavesome year of growth, with the protocol surpassing $2B market size with V1 & V2 combined. Let’s look back on the year and toast to more great things coming in 2021.
2020 Recap
We rang in 2020 with the launch of the Aave Protocol on Ethereum mainnet, bringing innovations like Flash Loans to market.
Flash Loans rocked the world, and many inspiring hacks and projects were built that utilised them in new and creative ways. The Aave Ecosystem grants program was started in April to give a boost to projects building anything that contributes to the Aave ecosystem.
In May the Uniswap Market went live as the first alternative liquidity market on the Aave Protocol! More markets may be coming… the power is in your hands now!
In July Aave announced investment from 3 Arrows Capital, Framework Ventures, and Parafi Capital.
The summer saw Aave get more decentralised with the introduction of Aavenomics and governance going live on mainnet.
Rare footage of Aavenomics coming into being
Credit Delegation also made its bold entrance into DeFi, with DeversiFi as the first ever to draw a credit line via Credit Delegation. Fast forward a few months, and Credit Delegation is now a native feature in Aave v2!
Aave Ltd. received an Electronic Money Authorization from the UK FCA, so Aave Ltd. is now able to issue electronic money accounts and facilitate currency conversions. This service will trial first in the UK, making it easier than ever for new users to onboard into the world of DeFi.
The launch of the Genesis Governance prompted the first ever vote on the token migration from LEND→ AAVE. The token migration is still going on today, but most of the tokens have been migrated to the AAVE token, the governance token of the protocol. This migration effectively jump-started the Aavenomics.
The Admin Keys for the protocol were handed over to the governance after the first governance voting. Discussion picked up in the governance forum, making it clear that the Aave community had many inspired ideas for the future of the protocol and was keen to actively participate in making decisions.
Finally, a momentous development arrived: V2 of the Aave Protocol on mainnet! V2 brought never-before-seen innovations like a Yield & Collateral Swap, Flash Liquidations, Batch Flash Loans, and more!
After a short period of getting adjusted to the new and improved V2, V2 governance was activated. V2 governance took governance innovation to the next level by implementing a segregation between proposition and voting power, upgraded voting strategies, multiple executors, and a guardian for extra security.
2020 Events Highlight Reel
Hard to believe we were ever allowed to attend events in person, but in the first few months of the year, the Aavengers were at ETHLondon, EthCC, and ETHParis.
2020 was the year of AAVESOME hackathon projects, and it was incredible to see what hackers came up with at Metacartel Dragon Quest, HackMoney, Gitcoin, and ETHOnline.
Emilio at DeFi Italy
Jordan speaking at ETHLondon
ETHLondon afterparty
Irene, Vitalik, and Alex
DeFi panel at HackMoney
Devs learning to code their first Flash Loan
Aave gang in VR
Monthly Metrics
Aave Protocol V2 launched on the 3rd of December, now surpassing $200m in just under a month. In less than a year the Aave money market has reached $2.3B of liquidity across the 2 versions of the protocol. This has been accompanied by large transaction volume on the protocol both in terms of deposits and redeems but also for borrowing with outstanding loans reaching a record level of $638M.
https://explore.duneanalytics.com/queries/15787/source#31760
This results in a record income for depositors standing at $2.7M, with a breakdown of liquidity and income across versions and assets below. The assets that have generated the most income are USDC USDT and DAI.
Join us and stay tuned
Aave and ETHGlobal are teaming up to bring you MarketMake! Kick off your year the best way possible by applying to hack here.
Get your bubbly ready, and let’s toast to a Happy New Year!
Cheers,
Aave Team