Web3-focused software technology company Aave Companies is rebranding to Avara, its founder Stani Kulechov told TechCrunch exclusively.
The crypto parent entity is best known for supporting Aave Labs, Aave Protocol, its native stablecoin GHO and decentralized social network protocol Lens, among others. About $8.66 billion of liquidity is locked in Aave across eight networks and over 15 markets like Ethereum, Avalanche, Optimism, Polygon and Base, according to its website.
Before being called Aave and now Avara, the company was known as ETHLend. But this is the company’s final name change, Kulechov shared on TechCrunch’s Chain Reaction podcast. Aave will still exist but through Aave Protocol and Aave Labs, under Avara’s umbrella brand.
Avara also shared its strategic acquisition of Los Feliz Engineering, the team behind Ethereum-based crypto wallet Family. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Avara plans to use the Family crypto wallet acquisition as a means to help users enter the web3 ecosystem. “We really want to send a signal that we are in a time now with web3 where we’re building that interface on the existing infrastructure where people can actually interact in a way where it’s familiar to them,” Kulechov said.
The crypto wallet is currently in a beta phase, but users can download it to try it out. This is the company’s second acquisition after obtaining Sonar, a metaverse mobile application, in December 2022.
But the rebrand and acquisition signifies the company’s want to “do more” and focus beyond DeFi by bringing web3 to “all users globally with different kinds of use cases,” Kulechov said. This new mission nods at the rebrand, Avara, which symbolizes a Finnish colloquial meaning for “seeing more than you see,” Kulechov said.
“We’ve always been known for building decentralized finance [tools] and using the blockchain for creating smart contract-based protocols,” Kulechov said. “More recently, with Lens Protocol, we’ve been building virtually social, so decentralized social media, that basically any developer can actually build their applications on top.”
When looking at Avara’s entities, Kulechov said he’s most excited about Lens because there are “micro communities” within the protocol like web3 social apps Orb and Phaver. Lens has been in beta since May 2022, but Kulechov is hopeful that it will transition out of it by the end of 2023.
This story was inspired by an episode of TechCrunch’s podcast Chain Reaction. Subscribe to Chain Reaction on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to hear more stories and tips from the entrepreneurs building today’s most innovative companies.
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