As the crypto bull market continues to gain traction, the price of Aave’s native token, (AAVE), is pushing toward new all-time highs.
The growth of the decentralized lending platform appears to be bolstered by improving fundamentals, steady growth in the total value locked on the platform, and the creation of a DeFi based crypto-collectibles token and community called Aavegotchi,
Unarguably, Aave was one of the DeFi success stories of 2020, as its price rose from $2 in January 2020 to today’s all-time high at $123.92.
The most recent breakout saw the price rally by 52.6% in the past 3 days and a number of analysts attribute part the upmove to the “Coinbase ffect,” after the top U.S. crypto exchange announced plans to list AAVE on Dec.15.
AAVE tracks Bitcoin’s progress
According to DeFi Pulse, Aave is now the second-ranked DeFi platform according to the total value locked metric with a total of $2.41 billion currently entrusted to the platform.
The platform also appears to show a correlation between total value locked on the platform and the price movement of BTC. As shown in the price chart below, as the BTC price appreciates, so does the amount of value locked on the Aave platform.
Choosing to expand beyond Ethereum to the wider crypto economy, and the ability to trade BTC on top of the Ethereum protocol via layer-2 solutions, looks to have been a key part in the growing success of Aave and its expanding decentralized finance offerings.
Capitalizing on DeFi, Layer 2 tech and NFTs is catalyzing growth
Crypto is an ever-evolving sector and there is a tendency for the most active, ingenuitive tokens to hold their value and growth potential when compared to meme tokens and projects without roadmaps.
As the DeFi and NFT sector grew in popularity throughout 2020, the team launched Aavegotchi (GHST), a DeFi-enabled crypto collectibles project that combines DeFi characteristics with the growing trend of NFT’s and crypto collectibles.
GHST was launched as a DAO governed token sale, a DAICO, in which all raised funds were managed by the community. The platform allows users to collect, combine, and compete with their Aavegotchi’s in an ever expanding gamified experience.
Users can also stake their GHST tokens on the Aavegotchi platform to generate Frens, which can then be used to buy raffle tickets for specialized items or to summon new Aavegotchi’s.
By keeping abreast of emergeing trends within the crypto sector, the team appears to have strengthened their ecosystem and this possibly allowed AAVE to weather the sharp DeFi sector sell-off that occurred in mid-Ocotober.
During the DeFi correction, many tokens lost up to 80% of their value and AAVE and GHST token were not spared from the carnage. This led the team to delay launching its NFT platform and the most recent 70% rally from Ether (ETH) has forced the Aavegotchi team to delay their Ethereum mainnet launch due to soaring gas fees.
This week the team announced that instaed of launching on Etheruem, Aavegotchi will shift to the Matic Network for the time being.
The team confirmed this choice with the community and stated that OpenSea, one of the largest NFT marketplaces, will also be launching soon on Matic. These revelations coincided with an increase in MATIC price and in the past 24-hours the token rallied by 28%.
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