Stani Kulechov is the Founder and CEO of Aave, an open source and non-custodial liquidity market protocol for earning interest on deposits and borrowing assets.
Who is Stani Kulichov, Founder of Aave?
Stani Kulechov is the programmer and founder of decentralized crypto lending platform Aave and sustainable decentralized social networking platform Lens Protocol. He is an experienced entrepreneur in the crypto, blockchain and fintech industries. Kulichov has mentored upcoming projects in space and regularly speaks at industry events.
Originally, Stani Kulechov studied law at the University of Helsinki in 2015 for a master’s degree. However, his interest in finance and technology met there when he discovered Ethereum and its potential implications for traditional finance. In 2017, he created ETHLend, one of the first decentralized DeFi applications, pioneering decentralized finance platforms as an Ethereum-based, peer-to-peer lending and borrowing platform. The following year, the project was renamed Aave in an effort to expand its focus beyond Ethereum and lending. January 2020 saw the Aave protocol officially released on the Ethereum mainnet.
Stani Kulechov for Aave 2022 put a significant emphasis on the creation of decentralized social networks. In February, the company launched Lens Protocol, the Web3 social media platform. It was created to give creators the opportunity to “claim their digital roots” and create a more sustainable digital social experience based on smart contracts. According to Kulechov, creating a Web3 social network also made possible “a way of distributing content between a creator and an audience without permission.” Shortly thereafter, Aave deployed protocol v3 in March to go live on the mainnet across six DeFi networks.
But one of Kulechov’s biggest moments in 2022 came in April, when he was temporarily suspended from Twitter after tweeting about becoming interim CEO right after the platform was acquired by Elon Musk. Ironically, Musk’s takeover of the social media giant was reportedly in an effort for greater freedom of speech, but the suspension of Stani Kulechov made no mention of such a change. He used it as a moment to highlight the potential of decentralized social media networks. Aave announced that Lens Protocol is live on the Polygon mainnet a month after its removal from Twitter.
In July, Aave saw another major breakthrough when it announced plans to develop its own over-collateralized stablecoin, called GHO. In November, a fork of Aave Arc Protocol, along with Verified Credentials on Polygon, allowed JPMorgan to run its first live transaction on DeFi. Around the same time, Lens Protocol and Laguna Games teamed up to launch a new gaming ID to connect users across multiple games in the Web3 space. Establishing a reputation as a mentor and thought leader in the DeFi space, Stani Kulechov has appeared in a variety of media and conferences throughout the year, including visiting the UK parliament and participating in a discussion at the Web Summit.
In 2022, Aave laid the groundwork for many of its 2023 plans. The development of the Lens Protocol apparently came at a ripe time, as more issues emerged about the current state of the internet and the centralization of media.
2023 could also be the year Aave launches the GHO. While there is no predicted release date so far, it has already been audited by OpenZeppelin. The Aave community will soon vote to deploy its v3 on Ethereum and this will be another step towards the launch of the GHO. Additionally, Aave acquired metaverse development company Sonar at the end of 2022, which could point to future plans to expand into the metaverse space.
