Aave, Ethena leaders outline push to build onchain fixed income markets in DeFi

Crypto finance is only now beginning to provide an environment that matches traditional finance: ways to earn steadier, more predictable returns — similar to bonds or savings products, according to Aave Labs founder Stani Kulechov and Ethena CEO Guy Young.

“Most fixed income is like the distribution of risk in different formats … basically just slicing and dicing and distributing risk,” Young said during a panel at Digital Asset Summit (DAS) in New York. “This piece of DeFi was probably the least featured two years ago.”

Until recently, crypto users mostly traded tokens or borrowed against them, often chasing high, unpredictable yields. New tools make it possible to lock in returns, even in a market known for big swings.

“What you’re doing with Pendle is providing a fixed-to-floating rate swap,” Young said, referring to a system that lets users choose between more stable or more variable returns — similar to choosing between fixed or adjustable interest rates.

That’s not easy in crypto. “It’s very difficult to know three months out what the market is actually going to look like,” he said.

Kulechov said Aave has helped support this shift by providing deep pools of capital that other projects can tap into. “Aave is sort of acting as a liquidity sink,” he said, helping “bootstrap a lot of the new coming products in DeFi.”

For now, much of the money being made still depends on trading rather than traditional lending. “A lot of DeFi yield … is largely still based on … leverage,” Kulechov said.

Over time, that could change as more real-world assets move onchain, a process known as tokenization.

“A lot of the yields and a lot of the economics will come from the traditional finance,” he said.

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