Some personal news*  I've recently joined @aave 👻 as Chief Strategy and Business Officer. After ~4 months of rest and reflection regarding the state of the industry, my personal life, and my ambitions, I feel more invigorated and determined than ever to contribute to the crypto space. When I stepped away from @AvaLabs earlier this year, I said I'd take time to think carefully about where I could contribute most. I’m grateful for the awesome opportunities I've been able to consider. The answer became clear over the past months and many conversations with @StaniKulechov and the Aave Labs team. I've long known Stani and Emilio and admired their work. Like them, I believe the future of finance is onchain, and Aave is at the center of this evolution. Aave has the opportunity to provide a better way to borrow and lend, and to build credit markets at internet scale. The legacy financial system is slow, fragmented, and quietly extractive, and most of the world is underserved by it. Aave has spent years proving, in production and across cycles, that an open and programmable alternative works at scale. The next chapter is about turning that foundation into the credit and capital markets layer of the internet. In this new role, I'll lead strategy, business development, and core operational functions,  working closely with Stani and the team to strengthen what's already working while pursuing the next set of opportunities ahead of us. I'm joining at a pivotal moment. The events of the past week have made clear there's real work to be done and lessons to be drawn. I’ve been working non-stop with the team on the recovery effort this past week and I have no doubt that Aave will emerge even stronger. What I've seen up close is grit, focus, and determination under pressure. This is exactly the kind of team I want to build alongside of, and it makes me even more confident about where this is all headed. -Luigi

It’s an awesome time to build onchain. I’ve always imagined a future where all assets including stocks move onchain and become usable in DeFi. The launch of Coinbase Tokenized Stocks on Base with Aave has been particularly exciting for me. Before Coinbase Tokenized Stocks, I had never owned a single stock. Now, stocks are becoming part of the onchain economy.

i spent years in investment management watching things like this stay reserved for institutions and the wealthy now anyone in the world can own US equities and borrow against them this is what economic freedom looks like

There are a handful of tokens that are likely beneficiaries of traditional allocator flows (tech hedge funds, high net worth, single/multi family offices) based on fundamentals, asset lindyness, and addressable market. $AAVE is one of them

Borrowing against tokenized stock collaterals is live and picking up quickly at @aave V4 @base This is a dream come true, a milestone, a new beginning! Well Done Crypto Fellas 🙇‍♂️

What this means is that if you hold Base tokenized stocks, you can borrow against them, and even use the borrowed funds to buy more the same stock if you're feeling particularly bullish (as in a traditional brokerage account). With Aave v4's unique pooled model, you get margin against your entire porfolio at once. *Tokenized stocks are only available in eligible jurisdictions outside of the U.S.

This one is big. This is the first step toward @Aave V4 becoming the credit layer for assets that historically had no path into DeFi. AAPL, NVDA, TSLA, etc. can now be deposited as collateral to borrow USDC, with each asset carrying its own risk parameters while sharing the same liquidity hub. This is starting small: ~$29M in initial collateral caps and $21M in USDC borrowing capacity. But Coinbase says more stocks are coming, while Aave V4's flexible architecture makes adding new collateral without fragmenting liquidity significantly easier. The $150T+ global equities market won't move onchain today, but it'll happen slowly at first, then all of a sudden. Tokenized stocks now have somewhere productive to go. Productive is the key word here. For Aave, this means a much larger potential collateral base, more borrowing demand, and eventually another distribution channel for GHO. More assets means more collateral. More collateral means more borrowing. More borrowing means more revenue. Don't sleep on Aave.

Trading onchain stocks on aave v4 is pretty awesome lfg

The prevailing thesis is that onchain finance will transform brokerage, particularly lending and borrowing. Aave has processed around $4T in deposits and $1T in borrowing, powered simply by onchain code. Onchain rails enable faster, more accessible ways to trade, lend, and borrow by reducing reliance on intermediaries. Now its time to expand these benefits to stocks. Over time, this has the potential to fundamentally reshape the cost structure of securities finance, creating more open, efficient, and deeper capital markets. Excited to bring capital markets onchain, one asset class at a time.

great overview of why onchain borrow rocks

NEW: @Coinbase tokenized stocks are now live as collateral on @Aave V4 on @Base, letting eligible non-U.S. users borrow $USDC against real equity holdings, with @Chainlink providing price feeds.

borrow against any tokenized stocks on @aave

Borrowing against Coinbase Tokenized Stocks is now available on @Aave V4 Access USDC liquidity against eligible tokenized stocks on Base

Excited to announce Coinbase Tokenized Stocks are now live on Aave V4 on @base. Users can borrow USDC against tokenized stocks. Aave is on a mission to bring the $200T global equities market onchain.

I'm participating in @RockawayX's Catapult as a mentor. RWA teams get venture funding, liquidity from a $150m facility, market making, and help scaling the asset across onchain markets. A new support stack for new founders.

Tomorrow. 👀

Had the pleasure to sit down with @alextapscott to discuss all things onchain finance and Aave.

New @defidecodedpod is out! I sit down with past guest and industry leader @luigidemeo who is now heading up BD at @aave His ambition is to build the infrastructure for global credit markets. Can Aave eat Wall Street, and remake finance for the better? Find out! 👇

This categorisation doesn’t make sense and is pretty much self-serving. First of all, arguing that a vault where a curator has discretion over how capital is allocated across markets, and can even expand into new markets beyond the user’s initial mandate, which, btw, is a known Morpho drawback (very non-LP friendly), should be considered non-custodial simply because it has a timelock is about as strong an argument as a wet European paper straw. Especially the part of implicit approvals that simply changes the whole allocation mandate and users don’t even have the proper tools to monitor these changes. Also the part on relying roles, doesn't really solve much, simply creates a blame game and relocates potentially liability but doesn't solve the actual problem. Vaults that could reasonably be considered non-custodial are those without a manager. For example, vaults that simply wrap deposits into a lending protocol, or the original Yearn vaults. These are make sense to be categorized as non-custodial vaults. There’s nothing inherently wrong with discretionary vaults, as long as the regulatory path is figured out. I’m all for developing industry standards, but let’s at least do it in a way that serves the broader industry rather than your own interests. 😂