Kulechov, founder of AaveDAO: The rise of RWA leads DeFi in 2025, with memecoins cooling down and institutions entering the market driving the return of funds

Aave DAO founder Stani Kulechov said in an interview on 3/10 that DeFi began to set off a wave of craze in 2020, but as market attention turned to memecoins, NFTs and other speculative assets, many people felt that DeFi gradually became boring, but in fact DeFi is still developing steadily.

Kulechov pointed out that Aave, as a leader in DeFi lending, has locked up $35 billion in 2024, accounting for 45% of the DeFi lending market, and has exceeded $100 million in annual revenue. It shows that DeFi, while not as hyped as meme coins, has become a truly revenue-generating financial infrastructure.

DeFi is not boring, but mature

According to Kulechov, DeFi is considered "boring" because it has become reliable, stable, and practical, unlike the risky and volatile nature of the past. "I'd rather choose a boring but stable system than an exciting but crash-prone market," he says.

Over the past few years, the crypto market has experienced major events such as FTX crashes, cross-chain bridge attacks, and smart contract vulnerabilities, while Aave and other mainstream DeFi protocols have survived unharmed, showing that mature DeFi platforms have been able to withstand market volatility and risk.

Retail investors and institutional capital have become the main targets of DeFi

According to Kulechov, DeFi currently consists of two main types of users:

General users: Use DeFi to earn income, stake assets (ETH &gt BTC) to borrow, or perform financial operations, such as mortgage down payments or car purchases.

Institutional investors: Large institutions and asset managers are also looking at DeFi, such as tokenizing assets (Tokenization) and taking advantage of the lending and yield opportunities offered by DeFi.

Kulechov pointed out that as financial institutions gradually adapt to decentralized finance, DeFi is expected to become a separate financial system that complements traditional finance, rather than completely replacing the existing financial system.

RWA will be key to DeFi in 2025

One of the main development directions of DeFi in 2025 is to move real-world assets RWA to the blockchain, think:

US Treasury Bills (Treasury Bills): Many stablecoins are already "tokenized" forms of Treasury bills, and DeFi can be further extended to a wider range of fixed income assets in the future.

Equity vs. Private Equity: Many unlisted companies struggle to access global investment, and tokenization allows more people to participate in new venture capital.

Real estate and commodities: digitize assets such as real estate and gold to improve transaction liquidity.

Kulechov revealed that Aave has already started working with institutions to provide lending services for these tokenized assets, and in the future DeFi may not just be a financial system for cryptocurrencies, but one of the infrastructures of the global financial market.

DeFi is expected to become the global financial standard in the next 10 years

Kulechov predicts that the global financial system will gradually go on-chain over the next 30 to 40 years. But this transformation is not only technological progress, but also involves the conflict of interest of traditional financial institutions, such as banks, payment systems, settlement institutions, etc., these financial giants will not easily give up market dominance.

However, financial giants such as BlackRock (BlackRock) and JPMorgan Chase (JP Morgan) have begun testing DeFi technology, showing that traditional finance no longer resists DeFi and seeks to integrate with traditional finance. Kulechov believes that the core values of DeFi are transparency, auditability, and censorship resistance, and these characteristics will become the standard in the financial system of the future.

The meme coin boom has receded and institutions have entered the market, becoming an opportunity for DeFi funds to return

The market has been dominated by a meme frenzy recently, from US President Trump (Donald Trump)'s Trump coin TRUMP, Argentine President Mirey's LIBRA to various altcoins, and a lot of money has flowed into these highly speculative assets. However, Kulechov bluntly stated that "99% of the meme market loses money, which will only make more users lose confidence in cryptocurrencies."

In contrast, DeFi provides more stable returns and more controllable risks. As the meme coin craze subsides and institutional investors start to enter the market, money may gradually flow back to DeFi.

(Aptos Founder: 326 million transactions surpassed Visa and MasterCard, RWA and stablecoins reshaped the global financial )

This article by AaveDAO founder Kulechov: The rise of RWA leads DeFi in 2025, the cooling of memecoins, and the entry of institutions to promote the return of funds first appeared in Chain News ABMedia.