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Aave Achieves Record $35 Billion In Net Deposits – Is 2025 The Year Of DeFi?

Leading decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Aave has reached a significant milestone, hitting $35 billion in total net deposits. This marks Aave’s new all-time high (ATH) in net deposits since 2021. Aave Hits $35 Billion In Net Deposits – What’s Ahead? In an announcement made yesterday, the leading DeFi lending protocol Aave revealed that it had reached a new ATH in net deposits since 2021. With $35 billion in net deposits, Aave has solidified its position as the largest DeFi protocol at the time of writing. Related Reading: AAVE Price Soars 26% In A Single Week — Will Rising FOMO Lead To A Bust? To put this into perspective, Aave’s net deposits were $5.5 billion at the end of 2022, increasing to $10 billion by the close of 2023. The current figure of $35 billion at the end of 2024 reflects an astounding surge of over 535% in just two years. The year 2024 proved to be transformative for Aave, with the protocol experiencing heightened user adoption across multiple blockchains. Throughout the year, Aave added support for five new markets, including BNB Chain, Scroll, ZKsync Era, and Ether.fi. According to the announcement, Aave is poised to expand further by potentially adding support for six additional blockchains. These include Mantle, Sonic, Linea, BOB, Spider Chain, and Aptos, pending approval by the Aave decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). For the uninitiated, a DAO is a blockchain-based entity governed by smart contracts and decentralized voting, where decisions are made collectively by token holders without any central authority. DAOs enable transparent, democratic management of protocols in a trustless environment. In addition to expanding to new blockchain markets, Aave launched its latest protocol upgrade, Aave V4. This upgrade introduces significant improvements, such as enhanced modularity, reduced governance overhead, optimized capital efficiency, and innovative features like the Hub and Spoke liquidity architecture. Moreover, Aave’s decentralized, overcollateralized stablecoin GHO is set to witness increased adoption. Plans are in motion to expand its cross-chain support across various smart contract platforms, including Coinbase’s Base and Avalanche (AVAX), by early 2025. DeFi To Make A Comeback In 2025? Following Donald Trump’s victory in the November 2024 U.S. presidential election, DeFi tokens have experienced a significant surge, driven by optimism surrounding favorable cryptocurrency regulations under the new administration. Related Reading: Chainlink And AAVE Surge After Trump’s Crypto Project Invests In Both Additionally, DeFi protocols have become increasingly secure, fostering greater user trust and leading to higher deposit volumes and a larger total value locked (TVL). A recent report highlighted that DeFi exploits decreased by 40% in 2024 compared to 2023, signaling improved security across the ecosystem. In addition, Q1 2025 is expected to be bullish for Ethereum (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, and home to the largest DeFi ecosystem. A positive price action for ETH is expected to benefit major DeFi tokens such as AAVE, Curve (CRV), Compound (COMP), and others. That said, the Solana (SOL) DeFi ecosystem is rapidly gaining traction and catching up with Ethereum in terms of adoption. This development could propel Solana-based DeFi tokens, such as Orca (ORCA) and Raydium (RAY), to reach new highs. At press time, ETH is trading at $3,461, up 4% in the past 24 hours. Featured image from Unsplash, chart from Tradingview.com CryptoIntelligence

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2024 Crypto Narratives: DeSci And AI Surge As Legacy Trends Fade

Kaito data reveals a dramatic reshaping of crypto narrative mindshare in 2024, with decentralized science (DeSci) and artificial intelligence (AI) leading the charge. While some trends like DeFi and memecoins showed resilience, others, including layer routing technologies (LRTs) and DePIN, experienced a steep decline. Breakthrough Narratives DeSci saw an astounding 2,640% increase in mindshare, marking a breakthrough year for blockchain’s application in scientific research. While DeSci is still far from dominating Web3 discussions, its growth signifies a pivotal moment for the space. AI narratives also continued their impressive trajectory, growing by 116%, even with an already high baseline of interest. Similarly, trusted execution environments (TEE) and chain abstraction gained traction, with respective increases of 192% and 160%. Established Leaders Stay Strong Despite the rise of new narratives, DeFi and memecoins remained strong, demonstrating their enduring relevance in the crypto ecosystem. These sectors sustained their high levels of awareness from the start of the year and continued to attract attention. We can finally unveil the biggest mindshare growers of 2024 It’s still far for DeSci to dominate the Web3 mindshare, but the increase in interest over the last year can definitely be seen as a breakthrough moment It’s also worth noting how strong DeFi and memecoins… pic.twitter.com/E4XqsX5PaC — Michał Moneta (@michmoneta) January 2, 2025 Trailing and Disappointing Trends On the flip side, older trends saw a significant decline. LRTs, a major focus in 2023 and early Q1 2024, dropped by 82%, while account abstraction and BRC-20 tokens decreased by 71% and 77%, respectively. Surprisingly, decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) underperformed, failing to meet expectations. Meanwhile, GameFi, ETFs, and Layer 2 solutions also saw reduced interest, with declines of 41%, 63%, and 58%. According to Kaito data, compared with the beginning of 2024, the narrative mindshare of AI concepts increased by 116%, DeSci increased by 2640%, TEE increased by 192%, and chain abstraction increased by 160% at the end of 2024; LRT decreased by 82%, account abstraction decreased… pic.twitter.com/aY2rGA5JTa — Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) January 1, 2025 As 2024 comes to a close, it’s evident that the crypto industry is undergoing a shift. Emerging narratives like DeSci and AI are defining the future, while older trends continue to fade into the background. Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services. Follow us on Twitter @nulltxnews to stay updated with the latest Crypto, NFT, AI, Cybersecurity, Distributed Computing, and Metaverse news ! Image Source: burdyak/ 123RF // Image Effects by Colorcinch CryptoIntelligence