DeFi Project Aave Raises $25M From Blockchain.com and Other Investors

Oct 12, 2020 at 14:47 UTCUpdated Oct 12, 2020 at 14:49 UTC.With decentralized finance having been the big success story in crypto this summer, investors look to be flocking to grab themselves a stake.

Aave, one of the largest DeFi projects and provider of decentralized lending and borrowing, announced Monday that it has raised $25 million from investors Blockchain Capital, Standard Crypto and Blockchain.com Ventures.

The project's CEO, Stani Kulechov, said that the investment would go toward growing Aave's team to better serve growing Asian markets and bringing DeFi "Closer" to institutional investors.

The investors in the strategic raise will take part in the protocol's staking and governance, per a press release.

According to data provider DeFi Pulse, Aave is currently the third largest DeFi protocol, with $1.15 billion in cryptocurrency locked in.

Having seen explosive growth over the summer, the total value locked in all DeFi projects has plateaued somewhat in recent weeks and now stands at $10.79 billion.

Per price data site CoinMarketCap, Aave's LEND token is up 2.38% in 24 hours at time of writing.

The protocol is in the process of migrating these over to a new AAVE token, as reported previously.

The process will ultimately see ownership of the protocol shift over to a "Genesis governance" built and approved by token holders.