The host of popular crypto channel Coin Bureau is looking at what’s in store for decentralized lending and borrowing protocol Aave (AAVE).
In a new video, the pseudonymous analyst Guy tells his 1.87 million YouTube subscribers that the overall decentralized finance (DeFi) sector is coming off a slump compared to the rest of the crypto markets.
“The AAVE token has performed poorly and is barely up 2x since the start of 2021. Just about every DeFi token has been struggling to keep up with the rest of the crypto market since it crashed in May last year.
This seems to be because the hype has moved into NFTs [non-fungible tokens]. This is something that [AAVE founder and CEO] Stani Kulechov acknowledged in an October panel discussion.
He basically said that while DeFi is very exciting and often offers lots of gains, it’s just too complex for the average person to wrap their head around.
Meanwhile, NFTs provide comparable levels of excitement and gains, and they’re a concept that almost anyone can understand.”
Last year Aave climbed from under $100 to an all-time high above $660 on May 18th before crashing by over 70% to $184 by late June. After clawing its way back to over $400 by mid-September, the altcoin ended the year on a downward trend until a rally in late December which took AAVE from $180 to $255.
The Coin Bureau host notes that Aave’s upcoming V3 upgrade ought to increase interest in the project.
“The most important upcoming milestone is the launch Aave V3, which will introduce multiple new features to the Aave protocol.
The first is a feature called Portal and it will make it possible for lenders and borrowers to transfer any tokens they have deposited into Aave V3 on one blockchain to Aave V3 on other blockchains.
The second feature is called high-efficiency mode, or e-mode, and it will make it possible to significantly increase the loan-to-value ratio for certain assets…
The third feature on Aave V3 is Isolation Mode and it will make it possible to introduce new tokens to the Aave protocol while minimizing the risks to the rest of the protocol.“
Guy also mentions Aave’s plans to impact the future of social media by releasing a decentralized social media platform where users cannot be censored or deleted.
“Aave’s social media platform will be built in such a way that your social media profile, as well as any other content you create on Aave’s platform, will be portable to any other decentralized social media platforms that emerge on Ethereum, effectively making censorship impossible.
In terms of a specific release date, Aave said its social media platform is ‘coming soon’ and it’s been slow to roll out because the team has been mostly focused on Aave v3 for the last few months…
Stani believes decentralized social media will be the next hot niche after NFTs.”
The analyst concludes by giving his price predictions for AAVE.
“With a market cap of just $3 billion, this means that AAVE could be undervalued by a factor of five, and its fair valuation could be well over $1,000.”
At time of writing, AAVE is up 2.93% on the day and trading for $217.36.
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