Institutional Investors Could Soon Enter DeFi through "Aave Pro"

Decentralized lending protocol Aave is planning to launch “Aave Pro,” a permissioned platform for institutional investors later this month, according to a new report from Cointelegraph. The platform, which will provide the same kinds of services as Aave’s current platform, will be launched in partnership with the digital asset custody and settlement platform Fireblocks.

The new platform was reportedly announced in a webinar entitled 'Next Steps in Institutional DeFi' that featured Stani Kulechov, Michael Shaulov and Mike Novogratz, who are respectively the CEOs of Aave, Fireblocks and Galaxy Digital.

According to a screenshot of an email that is said to recap the contents of the webinar, Aave is launching Aave Pro in response to 'extensive demand from various institutions'. The platform will only support four crypto assets in the beginning: BTC, ETH, AAVE and USDC. Additionally, Aave Pro’s pools will be kept separate from its main platform. Further, the email said that there are plans to eventually decentralized the governance of Aave Pro.

$AAVE Pro coming in July.

For those that didn't attend the "NExt Steps in Institutional Defi" Zoom with Stani, here's a recap email I received. pic.twitter.com/ClwlBkXh2r

— Noah Goldberg (@TraderNoah) July 4, 2021

In addition, Aave Pro will add a whitelisting layer onto Aave’s V2 smart contracts to ensure that only 'institutions, corporates, and fintechs' approved by Fireblocks’ Know-Your-Customer verification process can access the platform. Moreover, Fireblocks is responsible for Aave Pro’s anti-Money Laundering Money Laundering Money laundering is a blanket term to describe the process by which criminals disguise the original ownership and proceeds of criminal conduct by making such proceeds appear to be derived from a legitimate source.Money laundering is an issue that traverses countless industries and sectors, which includes the financial services space. Though criminal money may be successfully laundered without the assistance of the financial sector, billions of dollars’ worth of criminally derived money are laundered through financial institutions each year.This is not entirely surprising given the structure of the financial services industry and the nature of products and services offered by its participants.An ecosystem that involves the management, control, and processing of finances is inherently vulnerable to abuse by money launderers.Money Laundering ExplainedThe act of laundering is committed in circumstances in which an individual or entity is engaged in an arrangement that involves the proceeds of crime. These arrangements include a wide range of business relationships, i.e. banking, fiduciary and investment management.However, the degree of knowledge or suspicion will depend upon the specific offense but will usually be present where the person providing the arrangement, service or product knows, suspects or has reasonable grounds to suspect that the property involved in the arrangement represents the proceeds of crime. In some cases, the offence may also be committed where a person knows or suspects that the person with whom he or she is dealing is engaged in or has benefited from criminal conduct.One of the primary criticisms against cryptocurrencies has been their propensity for money laundering. Their anonymous nature and unregulated network structure make them ideally suited for money launders. Money laundering is a blanket term to describe the process by which criminals disguise the original ownership and proceeds of criminal conduct by making such proceeds appear to be derived from a legitimate source.Money laundering is an issue that traverses countless industries and sectors, which includes the financial services space. Though criminal money may be successfully laundered without the assistance of the financial sector, billions of dollars’ worth of criminally derived money are laundered through financial institutions each year.This is not entirely surprising given the structure of the financial services industry and the nature of products and services offered by its participants.An ecosystem that involves the management, control, and processing of finances is inherently vulnerable to abuse by money launderers.Money Laundering ExplainedThe act of laundering is committed in circumstances in which an individual or entity is engaged in an arrangement that involves the proceeds of crime. These arrangements include a wide range of business relationships, i.e. banking, fiduciary and investment management.However, the degree of knowledge or suspicion will depend upon the specific offense but will usually be present where the person providing the arrangement, service or product knows, suspects or has reasonable grounds to suspect that the property involved in the arrangement represents the proceeds of crime. In some cases, the offence may also be committed where a person knows or suspects that the person with whom he or she is dealing is engaged in or has benefited from criminal conduct.One of the primary criticisms against cryptocurrencies has been their propensity for money laundering. Their anonymous nature and unregulated network structure make them ideally suited for money launders. Read this Term and anti-fraud controls.

Aave Pro is slated to vastly expand the total value locked in the Aave ecosystem, which currently sits at around $17 billion.

DeFi “Rails” for Institutional Investors

According to CoinTelegraph, the announcement of the new platform received 'mixed reactions' on Twitter. Some enthusiastic users pointed out that the platform will act as a rail for institutions entering the DeFi world in a meaningful way for the first time.

However, others pointed to an ongoing lawsuit against Fireblocks by Staking Staking Staking is defined as the process of holding funds in a cryptocurrency wallet to support the operations of a blockchain network. In particular, staking represents a bid to secure a volume of crypto to receive rewards. In most case however, this process relies on users participating in blockchain-related activities via a personal crypto wallet.The concept of staking is also closely tied to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS). PoS is a type of consensus algorithm in which a blockchain network aims to achieve distributed consensus.This notably differs from Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchains that instead rely on mining to verify and validate new blocks.Conversely, PoS chains produce and validate new blocks through staking. This allows for blocks to be produced without relying on mining hardware. As such, instead of competing for the next block with heavy computation work, PoS validators are selected based on the number of coins they are committing to stake.Users that stake larger amounts of coins have a higher chance of being chosen as the next block validator. Staking ExplainedStaking requires a direct investment in the cryptocurrency, while each PoS blockchain has its particular staking currency.The production of blocks via staking enables a higher degree of scalability. Moreover, some chains have also moved to adopt the Delegated Proof of Staking (DPoS) model. DPoS allows users to simply signal their support through other participants of the network. In other words, a trusted participant works on behalf of users during decision-making events.The delegated validators or nodes are the ones that handle the major operations and overall governance of a blockchain network. These participate in the processes of reaching consensus and defining key governance parameters. Staking is defined as the process of holding funds in a cryptocurrency wallet to support the operations of a blockchain network. In particular, staking represents a bid to secure a volume of crypto to receive rewards. In most case however, this process relies on users participating in blockchain-related activities via a personal crypto wallet.The concept of staking is also closely tied to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS). PoS is a type of consensus algorithm in which a blockchain network aims to achieve distributed consensus.This notably differs from Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchains that instead rely on mining to verify and validate new blocks.Conversely, PoS chains produce and validate new blocks through staking. This allows for blocks to be produced without relying on mining hardware. As such, instead of competing for the next block with heavy computation work, PoS validators are selected based on the number of coins they are committing to stake.Users that stake larger amounts of coins have a higher chance of being chosen as the next block validator. Staking ExplainedStaking requires a direct investment in the cryptocurrency, while each PoS blockchain has its particular staking currency.The production of blocks via staking enables a higher degree of scalability. Moreover, some chains have also moved to adopt the Delegated Proof of Staking (DPoS) model. DPoS allows users to simply signal their support through other participants of the network. In other words, a trusted participant works on behalf of users during decision-making events.The delegated validators or nodes are the ones that handle the major operations and overall governance of a blockchain network. These participate in the processes of reaching consensus and defining key governance parameters. Read this Term provider StakeHound. The lawsuit was filed over the alleged deletion of private keys to a wallet that contained $72 million in ETH.

Aave first announced that it was entering the institutional world in May, when Kulechov said that Aave had created a “private pool” for institutions to “practice” with before jumping headfirst into DeFi. Furthermore, Aave partnered with Compound in early 2020 to launch DeFi services for institutional investors.