Home The Cointelegraph Top 100 2023 Stani Kulechov

#7

Stani Kulechov

Founder and CEO of Aave

For his work on decentralized free speech

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“Web3 and crypto, in general, is very market-driven, so you have highs and downs. When we build, we always are considering the long game.”

Biography: 

Stani Kulechov is a programmer and founder of the decentralized crypto lending platform Aave and the sustainable decentralized social networking platform Lens Protocol. He is an experienced entrepreneur in the crypto, blockchain and fintech industries. Kulechov has served as a mentor to upcoming projects in the space and regularly speaks at industry events. 

Initially, Kulechov studied law for his master’s degree at the University of Helsinki in 2015. However, it was there that his interests in finance and technology came together when he discovered Ethereum and its potential impacts on traditional finance. In 2017, he created one of the first-ever DeFi decentralized applications, ETHLend — a pioneer of decentralized finance platforms as an Ethereum-based, peer-to-peer lending and borrowing platform. The following year, the project rebranded to Aave with the intention of expanding its focus beyond Ethereum and lending. January 2020 saw the Aave protocol officially released on the Ethereum mainnet.

Kulechov’s 2022:

For Aave, 2022 had a significant emphasis on the creation of decentralized social networks. In February, the company launched its Web3 social media platform, Lens Protocol. It was created to give content creators the opportunity to “own 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 “permissionless way to distribute content between a creator and the audience.” Shortly afterward, Aave deployed its protocol v3 in March to go live on the mainnet across six DeFi networks.

However, one of Kulechov’s biggest moments in 2022 came in April when he was temporarily suspended from Twitter after he tweeted jokes about becoming interim CEO just after the platform’s acquisition by Elon Musk. Ironically, Musk’s takeover of the social media giant was reportedly in an effort for more free speech, though Kulechov’s suspension didn’t speak to such a change. He used it as a moment to highlight the potential of decentralized social media networks. One month after his suspension from Twitter, Aave announced that Lens Protocol was live on the Polygon mainnet.

July saw another significant development from Aave when it announced its plans to develop its own overcollateralized stablecoin called GHO. In November, a fork of the Aave Arc Protocol, along with Verified Credentials on Polygon, allowed JPMorgan to execute its first live transaction in DeFi. Around this same time, the Lens Protocol and Laguna Games teamed up to launch a new gaming ID to connect users across multiple games in the Web3 space. Keeping up with his reputation as a mentor and thought leader in the DeFi space, Kulechov also made several media and conference appearances throughout the year, including visiting the United Kingdom’s parliament and participating in a discussion at Web Summit.

Kulechov’s 2023:

In 2022, Aave laid the groundwork for many of its 2023 plans. The development of Lens Protocol has seemingly come at a ripe time, as more issues are being raised over the current state of the internet and the centralization of media.

2023 could also be the year that Aave launches GHO. While there has thus far been no projected release date, it has already undergone an audit from OpenZeppelin. The Aave community will soon be voting to deploy its v3 on Ethereum, which will be another step toward the launch of GHO. Additionally, Aave acquired metaverse development company Sonar at the end of 2022, which could hint at future plans for expanding into the metaverse space.