Aave is an open-source moneymarket protocol. An Ethereum native, it's deployed on Avalanche and Polygon, with more than $1 billion deposited on each. V3 is now live on seven different blockchains, including Fantom, Arbitrum, Optimism and Harmony. Aave, which has a decentralized governance system, collects about $50 million in revenue per year to its treasury through its various activities, which makes it self-sustainable.

Two years after his last visit to the show and after the recent Aave 3.0 release, we had Stani Kulechov, founder of Aave, back on to chat about governance within the DeFi space, his new project Lens Protocol, and the road ahead for not only his projects, but also the ecosystem as a whole.

Topics covered in this episode:

• In view of the situation this week with Terra and UST, we hear Stani's take on stable coins and stable coin mechanisms and how this has evolved over time
• New collateral - how a collapse of an asset can affect lending markets
• Governance within Aave and DeFi protocols in general
• How interoperability looks for a lending protocol
• Stani's new project LensProtocol - the composable and decentralized social graph
• Why have other decentralized social networks not managed to take off?
• Stani's recent ban from Twitter #freestani
• The roadmap for both Aave and Lens over the next 2 years
• What is coming next for the ecosystem?

Episode links:

• Aave
• Lens Protocol
• Aave on Twitter
• Lens on Twitter
• Stani on Twitter

Sponsors:

• Steakwallet: Steakwallet is your new favorite multi-chain, mobile wallet. Tired of having a different wallet for every chain? Get Steakwallet today and get the power of Web 3 across all chains right at your fingertips: https://steakwallet.fi/ -
• CowSwap: CowSwap is a Meta-Dex Aggregator built by Gnosis. It taps into all on-chain liquidity - including other dex aggregators such as Paraswap, 1inch and Matcha - offering the best prices on all trades. It provides some UX perks (no gas costs for failed transactions!) and protects traders against MEV. - https://epicenter.rocks/cowswap
• Tally Ho: Tally Ho is a new wallet for Web3 and DeFi that sees the wallet as a public good. Think of it like a community-owned alternative to MetaMask. - https://epicenter.rocks/tallycash

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/444