Bessie Liu

The blockchain infrastructure company behind open-sourced liquidity protocol Aave has rebranded from Aave Companies to Avara.&nbsp;



Inspired by a Finnish word that translates to ‘spacious,’ Avara will oversee existing portfolio brands, including liquidity protocol Aave, decentralized social media protocol Lens, and stablecoin <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/gho">GHO</a>, among others.&nbsp;



The Aave brand will continue under the umbrella of Aave Labs, and no changes will be made to the Aave protocol’s native token (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/aave">AAVE</a>).



Aave on Ethereum has an estimated total value locked (TVL) of $9.2 billion, split between Aave V2 with over $4 billion and Aave V3, which <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/aave-ethereum-pool-v3-vote">launched on Ethereum mainnet last January</a>, has a TVL of over $5 billion, DeFiLlama <a href="https://defillama.com/protocol/aave">shows</a>. This makes the Aave protocol one of the largest DeFi protocols to date.&nbsp;



As part of the announcement, Avara reveals that it has also acquired Los Feliz Engineering (LFE) — the team behind the self-custody Ethereum wallet Family — in conjunction with its latest rebrand. 



This acquisition will see the entire LFE team become part of Avara, with Benji Taylor, the founder of the company, stepping into the position of senior vice president of product and design.&nbsp;



“Our wallet will continue to grow and improve under Avara, while maintaining its unique brand and features,” Taylor wrote in a blog post announcing the acquisition.



ConnectKit, Family’s popular developer library that enables wallet-to-dapp connectivity, will also be part of the acquisition. Developers who use the tooling can continue using its services without interruption, as part of the acquisition.



Specific terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.&nbsp;



Avara confirms that there will be no strategic changes for the company other than the latest rebrand and acquisition, and that it remains committed to the decentralized finance and Web3 space.



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Aave Companies is rebranding to Avara

Sebastian Sinclair

<div id="highlights-block_62e73989bfce5" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>A proposal to implement Aave&#8217;s crypto-collateralized stablecoin has passed by a majority DAO vote</li>
 <li>Users will soon be allowed to mint the stablecoin against their supplied collaterals while still earning interest</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol Aave will soon inject a new crypto-collateralized stablecoin into its ecosystem following the conclusion of a unanimous vote via its DAO on Sunday.



A proposal put forth by Aave Companies, a group of development teams working in support of the protocol, on Thursday asked users to weigh in on whether its US dollar-pegged GHO stablecoin should be launched.



The decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) voted with roughly 501,000 AAVE, or 99.9%, in the affirmative, compared with 17 abstentions and 12 against the idea, according to results from a <a href="https://snapshot.org/#/aave.eth/proposal/0xb17b3294dcb08316cb623c717add7f82df54948d558992f886be59d0958e9b24" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">voter snapshot</a>.



The move means Aave users and borrowers will be allowed to mint GHO against their supplied collaterals while earning interest on the underlying, similar to how other borrowed transactions function.



Unlike algorithmic stablecoins, whose designs have been called into question following the collapse of Terra, crypto-backed stablecoins are assets collateralized by a basket of other digital assets. 



Yet like its algorithmic cousin, GHO will be created by users when they supply the required collateral. When a user repays a borrow position, the GHO protocol governing the stablecoin burns that user’s GHO, according to an <a href="https://governance.aave.com/t/introducing-gho/8730/49" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">initial proposal</a> on July 8.



&#8220;Borrow interest rates for GHO will be determined by the AaveDAO, with a stable rate that may be adapted depending on market conditions,&#8221; Aave Companies said. &#8220;This design retains the Aave protocol’s borrow interest rate model flexibility, and it will be possible in the future to implement any interest rate strategy the Aave community sees fit.&#8221;



Founded in 2017 following a $16 million ICO raise, Aave is the DeFi sector&#8217;s third-largest protocol by total value with around $6.58 billion locked up in smart contracts, per <a href="https://defillama.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DeFi Llama</a>, behind Lido and MakerDAO.



Aave&#8217;s native token (AAVE) has risen 70% over the past month and is changing hands for around $99.40, up 4% on the day.



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Aave DAO Approves Crypto-Backed Stablecoin GHO

Jacquelyn Melinek

<div id="highlights-block_6227ad008c97c" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Avalanche Multiverse’s program and investments will be divided into at least six phases to support new cohorts and projects</li>
 <li>Up to four million AVAX tokens will fund the program</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



A non-profit fund for the Avalanche blockchain has rolled out an incentive program with millions of dollars earmarked for the proof-of-stake ecosystem.



Up to four million AVAX tokens, or about $290 million at the time of publication, will fund the program, also known as Avalanche Multiverse. 



The initiative will aim to grow its “subnet” functionality, which helps develop application-specific blockchains on Avalanche. Subnets are natively integrated with Avalanche’s broader ecosystem, available in an unlimited supply and allow for custom implementations — or the ability to tack on features from other chains.



Avalanche Multiverse’s program and investments will be divided into at least six phases to support new cohorts and projects but will not be constrained to a specific time period.&nbsp;It&#8217;s a non-profit organization that is run separately from Ava Labs. 



The first subnet to receive an investment from the program is DeFi Kingdoms, an NFT gaming project. It will get up to $15 million in incentives through AVAX tokens, as well as the game’s new Avalanche-native token CRYSTAL and existing token JEWEL.



Ava Labs, a core developer of Avalanche, will also partner with the Aave Companies, GoldenTree Asset Management, Wintermute, Jump Crypto, Valkyrie, Securitize and other organizations to build the subnet. This will allow regulated institutions that participate to leverage its subnets and access institutional DeFi (decentralized finance) after completing know-your-customer (KYC) checks.



“Avalanche Subnets enable us to create an ideal environment for institutions to migrate on-chain and experience the power of DeFi protocols first-hand as users rather than just as investors,” Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of Aave, said in a statement. “This is a significant leap toward a future where the barriers between traditional and decentralized finance cease to exist.”



In November, Avalanche launched a <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/avalanche-launches-200m-fund-to-support-ecosystem-growth/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$200 million fund</a> to support ecosystem growth on its blockchain. It also closed a <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/?s=avalanche#:~:text=Avalanche%20Closes%20%24230M%20Token%20Sale%20Backed%20by%20Three%20Arrows%20Capital%2C%20Polychain" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$230 million token sale</a>, backed by Three Arrows Capital and Polychain, a few months prior.&nbsp;



Avalanche’s native token, AVAX, had a price of $75.39 as of 1:30 pm ET on Tuesday, according to CoinMarketCap <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/avalanche/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">data</a>. The coin’s market capitalization is near $19.9 billion, which ranks the token as the 10th largest cryptocurrency, behind Solana (SOL) and ahead of Binance USD (BUSD), the data show.



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