Aave

Aave (AAVE) is a decentralized money market protocol for lending and borrowing crypto assets. The protocol accepts 20 different assets as collateral. Lenders supply liquidity to pools and receive interest, while borrowers lock up their own assets as collateral to take out loans from those pools.

AAVE is the protocol's native token and also works as a governance token. It lets the community take part in collective decisions about the direction of the protocol.

The protocol offers several markets with different configurations, from stablecoin-focused setups to higher-yield arrangements. One example is a market for borrowing USDe against Ethena-related assets. Aave also provides an integration stack that lets developers add lending and other onchain finance features to their own products. The project states that it has operated without interruption for six years and has been independently audited.