Stani Kulechov: Why Aave Will Have Trillions in TVL by 2030

**Stani Kulechov** (0:00)
You have to keep innovating and creating new things that apply to these native crypto assets.

**Robbie** (0:04)
They're asking for fast finality, they're looking to scale the L1. It really feels like the rollups are coming back.

**Andy** (0:08)
Resistance is neutrality of the L1, and we're actually seeing that the institutional flows value that too.

**Robbie** (0:14)
Today's guest is Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of Aave, one of the most influential protocols in decentralized finance. Under his leadership, Aave pioneered permissionless lending and borrowing, powering billions in on-chain liquidity and helping define DeFi as we know it. Stani Kulechov, the visionary reshaping how the world borrows, lends and builds on-chain.

**Stani Kulechov** (0:33)
There's a lot to build. You have to get a whole world of credit on-chain. There's a bunch of problems to solve there.

**Andy** (0:39)
Welcome back to The Rollup.

**Robbie** (0:41)
This is your home to learn from the biggest guests, the brightest minds at the tip of innovation.

**Andy** (0:46)
Our goal is to help spread the collective knowledge of everyone in our community.

**Robbie** (0:49)
We are breaking crypto out of its echo chamber and taking it to the real world.

**Andy** (0:54)
Sit back, relax and enjoy.

**Robbie** (0:56)
We are live now, Stani is approaching in the most fashionable pants we've seen all week on Rave Day.

**Andy** (1:04)
Good to see you again.

**Robbie** (1:05)
Pleasure. Thanks for coming. Welcome to the show.

**Stani Kulechov** (1:09)
Thank you.

**Andy** (1:10)
And congrats on the big week, man.

**Stani Kulechov** (1:12)
Yeah, it's been a busy week of the year.

**Andy** (1:15)
Absolutely electric news coming from all angles. Before we get to that, how's Buenos Aires treating you? How's the food? How's the culture? How's your experience been?

**Stani Kulechov** (1:23)
Amazing. I've been coming here almost every year for the past four years. And every year, it's different, but I love it here. The best community, people are very friendly. And yeah, I mean, you've probably witnessed as well that the food is really good.

**Robbie** (1:40)
It is. Favorite type of empanada?

**Stani Kulechov** (1:42)
There's so many.

**Andy** (1:45)
Man, so let's start Aave app. Okay. We've heard distribution is king endlessly throughout crypto and other industries. We had regulatory issues with the app stores broadly. We had a lot of constraints. Those have been lifted this year in a big way. You guys have brought this Aave app now to the market. Effectively a high yield savings application kind of in that neo bank category. Talk to us about kind of the lore there. How did this come about? What inspired you guys to take this next step?

**Stani Kulechov** (2:17)
The most amazing thing that we've done in DeFi, and particularly with Aave, is that we've been able to create a very resilient landing pool. So today, there is roughly like 50 billion worth of net deposits in Aave. It's very stable coin centric. So, and it's been able to operate really well without issues over the period of five years.
People trust Aave, and as the saying goes, just use Aave. Just use Aave.

**Andy** (2:49)
DeFi will win. That's a good one.

**Stani Kulechov** (2:51)
DeFi will win as well. And the way DeFi will win is now trying to make DeFi accessible to everyone. So being able to create as simple and as easy as possible way to move funds from your bank accounts into Aave, that's the way we're going to onboard the rest of the world. And to do it really well, we essentially need to have the Aave app and also native on-drams as well. And that provides the experience where users feel like it's a more traditional, like a financial application, and all the abstraction really serves the users, abstracting away the wallet component, abstracting away chains, stable coins, and everything that is really like alien for mainstream users, while keeping true to the nature of DeFi and self-custodial access. I think that's the most important thing.

**Robbie** (3:51)
Absolutely, the mobile experience is one that's very familiar with end users. They're familiar with the online banking experience, and now Aave is firmly within the top 50 banks, probably quite higher, maybe in the top 30s at this point. Andy and I were at Chainlink SmartCon a couple weeks ago. Fidelity, BlackRock, these financial institutions that are sponsoring and coming into the space now. So we've picked up some institutional guests and connections amongst our network. And so what would your message be to the banks that could be watching this now, that Aave is one of the top banks in the US and the world?

**Stani Kulechov** (4:25)
Yeah, and the way I see it, Aave is, even though there's a comparison in terms of the amount of liquidity and whatnot, Aave is still a protocol, a lending network. And my kind of vision is to see Aave actually being more used by as an infrastructure for a lot of these institutions and banks. And then the way it happens down the line is that as more traditional institutions are connecting and also we will see also embedded DeFi. So embedded DeFi is the path I will also see how DeFi can actually scale with these integrations and down the line as there's more nodes in the network, it scales the whole liquidity protocol, meaning that there is more depth of liquidity, borrowing becomes more affordable, more business, and then attracts more supply. So it's a flywheel that really benefits everyone who connects into that lending network. And over time, it really should help also a lot of these financial institutions to lower their operational expenses. So I think the two ways that let's say banks or fintechs can reduce their cost is one, using AI, and second, going on chain. And applying these two methods obviously then allows you to operate with a lower operating expense, meaning there's cost savings for the end users. And that's the benefit of DeFi.