Source: Aave Companies
Muyao Shen
Some of the largest projects left standing in decentralized finance, created as a parallel universe to traditional lending but minus intermediaries such as brokerages and banks, appear to be still feeling the pinch of the springtime collapse of the sector.
Aave Companies, the main developer behind the biggest DeFi lending project, is seeking $16.28 million from the so-called decentralized autonomous organization that governs the protocol. It is the first time the development team ever asked for money from the Aave DAO, according to a proposal. on the plan, which will close on Sept. 8, has already received the quorum needed for approval.
“As the Aave protocol has grown into what it is today, costs associated with development have risen substantially,” the proposal said. “Building an innovative, secure and battle-tested version of a protocol such as Aave V3 requires experienced builders across a variety of skill sets that are fairly compensated for their work.”
Aave’s developers aren’t alone in seeking to weather DeFi’s ongoing liquidity crunch. Lido DAO, which manages Lido Finance, one of the biggest projects as measured by the total value of crypto locked on the platform, recently a proposal to sell 10 million of Lido’s native token to the venture capital firm Dragonfly Capital. The sale followed the rejection of several proposals put before its community on how to manage its assets in order to cover two years worth of expenses.
“Candidly, we moved too slowly,” said Jacob Blish, head of business development at Lido Finance, acknowledging the project’s failure to anticipate the consequences of the crisis earlier. He added that Lido had focused on everything else but managing its money in the middle of the bull market.
At its height earlier this year, money woes seemed like the last problem DeFi would have. The sector attracted billions of dollars in investment and saw activity surge, generating million of dollars in revenue. The value of the treasuries of top DeFi projects have come down significantly in tandem with token prices during the current bear market, according to blockchain data provider Nansen.
Aave DAO’s liquid assets stand at $378 million, compared with over $800 million in April. Lido DAO saw its liquid assets’ value drop to around $344 million from about $800 million. Uniswap, one of the most popular decentralized exchanges, also saw the value of its DAO treasury drop to about $1.7 billion, from $2.5 billion five months ago. The three are among the wealthiest DeFi projects based on the value of their treasuries.
“We really started understanding how serious this was going to get once we entered into mid, late May, as Terra and the CeFi protocols started getting worse with inflation running away, the war overseas, whatever else is going on,” Lido’s Blish said.
Unlike the typical tech startup, the treasuries of DeFi projects are usually comprised of their native tokens as well as other cryptocurrencies. Aave’s proposal is mostly for stablecoins.
“We’ve seen protocols being just too bullish on crypto and having all their treasury in Ethereum” or Bitcoin, said Diogo Monica, co-founder and president of crypto platform Anchorage Digital “Whenever crypto goes down, their treasuries also go down, which materially changes their ability to run their protocols, businesses, treasuries and foundations.”
In hindsight, some industry observers said it isn’t surprising that some of the biggest DeFi projects are struggling with money. Then there is the examples of the likes of Kyber Network, a decentralized trading platform, which disclosed previously that it had “a small portion” of Treasury exposed to the failed hedge fund Three Arrows Capital.
“A lot of them are more technical founders who are extremely book smart,” said Jake Dwyer, managing director at crypto financial services firm GSR. “When it comes to finance, they are not experienced asset managers.”
