Unchained: Big Ideas From The Worlds Of Blockchain And Cryptocurrency

Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of Aave, comes onto the show to discuss the lending protocol and second-biggest DeFi project by total value locked. Here are some of the highlights:  How Stani’s background studying law and his passion for fintech led him to the world of smart contracts (1:53) Why he decided to transition ETHLend to Aave, and how that eliminated the “meme” narrative (5:55) How Stani would explain Aave to a five-year-old, or your normie friend (9:04) What new features were released in Aave v2 (15:54) reducing overall gas costs aTokens swapping collateral debt tokens What Aavenomics is and how the “safety module” attempts to keep the protocol secure (20:39) How AAVE works as a governance token Active versus passive risk in governance staking How Aave is transitioning from a centralized to a decentralized protocol (25:01) what he's finding difficult about this process issues with voting and an over-reliance on the Aave team delegating voting power to what he calls “prot