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Aave-Chan Initiative Founder Marc Zeller unpacks Aave’s efforts at decentralization, buyback initiatives and the GHO stablecoin.

Episode 22 of The Crypto Beat was recorded with The Block Editor-In-Chief Tim Copeland and Aave
AAVE +3.07%
-Chan Initiative Founder Marc Zeller.

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The Block's Editor-in-Chief, Tim Copeland, was joined by Aave-Chan Initiative Founder Marc Zeller.

In this episode, Copeland and Zeller discussed Aave's decentralization, the GHO stablecoin and the ACI's "most important proposal" of a six-month, $1 million dollar per week buyback program.

Zeller said that the GHO stablecoin — part of the Aave ecosystem — did a 10X in supply in 2024. He said the goal is to see it grow 5X in 2025, aiming for a 1 billion supply. He noted that the stablecoin is a much more profitable part of the whole ecosystem where 1 GHO minted brings in as much revenue as $10 borrowed on Aave. If the 5X target is hit, that’ll bring in half of the Aave DAO revenue.

“So it's extremely interesting because we have billions and billions and billions of borrowing volumes and active loans in Aave, but we only have 200 plus million GHO borrowed in Aave and GHO is already 10% of the revenue of the protocol,” he said.

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Plus, for every dollar the protocol makes on supporting lending and borrowing of other stablecoins, they can invest that in GHO — essentially using their competitors’ strengths against them. “How do we 10X the Aave revenue?” he asked. “The answer is growing GHO.”

OUTLINE
00:00 - Introduction
05:15 - The most Important Proposal
07:32 - DeFi Isn't Dead — It's Maturing
10:43 - Buybacks
17:16 - Liquidity Incentives and Yield Optimization
25:23 - The Horizon Plan
32:49 - GHO and Stablecoin adoption
38:42 - Embracing Competition to Grow GHO
40:14 - Bitcoin-Backed Loans
43:09 - Bullish Outlook on Ethereum
48:12 - Building on Mainnet vs. L2
51:31 - Fixing Ethereum
54:10 - Outro and Final Thoughts

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Guest links:
Marc Zeller - https://x.com/lemiscate
Aave-Chan Initiative - https://x.com/Aavechan

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