Stani Kulechov

Stani Kulechov studied law at the University of Helsinki. While a student, he began to explore EthereumEthereumEthereum is an open, general-purpose smart contract blockchain that launched in 2015, and its native asset is ether (ETH). The project was proposed by Vitalik Buterin and advanced jointly by eight co-founders; the network now uses proof of stake and centers on the EVM, the account model, a rollup scaling roadmap, and the open EIP process.Open the full entry and studied how smart contracts could be used in traditional financial services.⁠[1]

In early ETHLend interviews, he linked his motivation for starting the company to his concerns about transparency in banking and cross-border lending. He said he hoped to use smart contracts to let borrowers and lenders agree on collateral and repayment terms directly.⁠[2]

In 2017, he launched ETHLend, focused mainly on peer-to-peer lending on Ethereum. The early product explored using digital assets and ENS domain names as collateral, with lending agreements executed through smart contracts.⁠[1][2]

In 2020, the team that developed ETHLend launched the Aave protocol. Aave Labs describes itself as the protocol’s original developer and contributor, and Stani Kulechov serves as the company’s CEO.⁠[3][4]

On May 18, 2022, at the Permissionless conference, Kulechov announced that Lens Protocol was opening on the Polygon mainnet. The protocol, developed by Aave Companies, provides developers with infrastructure for building decentralized social applications.⁠[5]

In interviews and at the launch, he emphasized users’ control over their profiles and content. Lens at the time used profile NFTs to link follow relationships and communities, allowing users to carry these relationships across different applications built on the same protocol.⁠[5]

In November 2023, Aave Companies was renamed Avara. In an interview with CointelegraphCointelegraphCointelegraph is a digital news outlet covering blockchain, digital assets, artificial intelligence, and fintech, known for its cartoon-style news illustrations. It also runs businesses including Cointelegraph Magazine, research, an accelerator, and events.Open the full entry, Kulechov said the business already covered lending, stablecoins, and social protocols and needed a brand encompassing more products; the Aave protocol and Aave Labs continued to use the Aave name.⁠[6]

The reorganization also included the acquisition of Los Feliz Engineering, along with its Family self-custody wallet and ConnectKit developer tools. Family founder Benji TaylorBenji TaylorBenji Taylor is a design lead and software entrepreneur who currently leads design for X and SpaceXAI at SpaceX. He founded Los Feliz Engineering, the maker of Honk and Family, joined Avara when the company was acquired, and later served as chief product officer and as head of design at Base; he has also helped build open-source interface tools such as Agentation and Liveline.Open the full entry and his team joined Avara, with Taylor becoming senior vice president of product and design.⁠[6]

In August 2025, Aave Horizon launched as one of the team’s institution-facing products. In October of the same year, Aave Labs acquired Stable Finance, bringing its team and stablecoin savings technology into consumer product development. In the announcement, Kulechov explained the acquisition as a step toward bringing on-chain finance into everyday saving and borrowing experiences.⁠[4]

From late 2025 to early 2026, the Aave community debated who should receive front-end swap fees and who should control the brand and intellectual property. On January 2, 2026, Kulechov responded on the governance forum, saying that Aave Labs would propose a plan to share revenue generated outside the protocol with token holders and would design protective mechanisms for brand governance.⁠[7][8]

In February, the team announced that it would retire the Avara umbrella brand and gradually wind down the standalone Family wallet business, concentrating product work in Aave Labs. Lens had already been handed over to Mask; these changes reflected the team’s renewed focus on decentralized finance.⁠[7]

The Aave Will Win framework, published on March 27, proposed that the DAO fund Aave Labs’ development work, that revenue from Aave-branded products flow to the DAO treasury as defined in the framework, and that brand protection arrangements be handled separately. Participants in the discussion also raised requirements concerning service provider concentration, performance metrics, and conditions for disbursing funds.⁠[9]

On March 30, Aave V4 went live on the Ethereum mainnet, and Kulechov announced the milestone on his own account. The new architecture uses liquidity hubs to connect different lending markets, allowing each market to set its own collateral and risk parameters while drawing on shared liquidity.⁠[10][11]

After the rsETH incident on April 18, Aave service providers and other participants launched DeFi United, aiming to replenish the asset backing of rsETH and help the market recover. The initiative’s website lists Kulechov as one of the major contributors of 5,000 ETH; the effort relies on technical and governance arrangements among multiple participants.⁠[12]

On July 15, Aave Labs announced that Aave V4 had gone live on Avalanche, V4’s first multichain deployment, configured with a shared liquidity hub and different markets. On September 23, Kulechov continued to discuss on X the direction of using V4 to support financing against securities such as debt and tokenized stocks.⁠[13][14]

Aave Labs is the development company he founded and leads as CEO; the Aave protocol, the governance community, and the development company have distinct roles. Aave official website: https://aave.com/ (opens in a new window); governance forum: https://governance.aave.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[3][9]

His personal X account is https://x.com/StaniKulechov (opens in a new window). The aave.com site linked from his profile is the project website.⁠[15]