For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Stani Kulechov, the founder of Avara, formerly known as Aave Companies. The company is probably best known for Aave protocol, its platform-focused stablecoin GHO and its social network protocol Lens. The web3-focused software technology company announced exclusively on our podcast their rebranding as well as a strategic acquisition of an Ethereum-based crypto wallet. The name Aave will still exist, but through Aave Protocol and Aave Labs, two organizations’ under Avara’s umbrella brand.
For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Stani Kulechov, the founder of Avara, formerly known as Aave Companies.
The company is probably best known for Aave protocol, its platform-focused stablecoin GHO and its social network protocol Lens.
The web3-focused software technology company announced exclusively on our podcast their rebranding as well as a strategic acquisition of an Ethereum-based crypto wallet. The name Aave will still exist, but through Aave Protocol and Aave Labs, two organizations’ under Avara’s umbrella brand.
We discussed the rebrand, acquisition, changes to projects under the Avara umbrella and content creator monetization on decentralized social media platforms and what it can look like.
We also talked about:
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Jacquelyn Melinek 0:01
Hey everyone, its Jacqueline melanic Welcome to chain reaction, a show that unpacks and dives deep into the latest trends, drama and news with some of the biggest names in crypto breaking things down block by block for the crypto curious. Before we dive into this week's episode, I realized that chain reaction doesn't really have a lot of reviews compared to how many listeners we have. So if I can, I wanted to take a second to ask our listeners to do us a HUGE favor and rate and review us on whatever platform you're listening on right now. It really helps us get discovered and just makes us feel good in general, and my production team and I would really, really appreciate it. Okay, back to business. Today's guest is Stani Kula chop, the founder of OB a company's obvious probably best known for OB a protocol, its platform focus stablecoin NGO, which is G H. O. And its social network protocol lens, which Sani founded and raised 15 million for back in June. lens has been in its beta phase since May 2022. And I'm excited to dig into how things have been going on there as well. Stani has been in the world of web three since 2017. And before Avi was renamed to Ave, it was known as eath blend. But with all of that said, it might be time to forget about the name of a because we learn there's another rebrand for the company being announced today, as well as an acquisition, which we're exclusively going to discuss here with Stani in a minute, but that's enough of me talking so Stani Welcome to the show.
Stani Kulechov 1:27
Thanks chuckling for having me here. Definitely a lot of things to talk about today. Ya know,
Jacquelyn Melinek 1:31
I'm super excited. Last time we spoke was in Barcelona. So it's been a number of months. And obviously, as I mentioned in the intro, there's been a ton of developments for your company. Yeah. But to start, I want to dive into this rebrand, which I know has been in the works for a little while. So Ave companies is now Avara. Can you tell us a little bit about how that came to be and what this means for the organizations that fall under that umbrella?
Stani Kulechov 1:54
Yeah, it's definitely a big change for us. Because we've been always known for building decentralized finance and using the blockchain for creating smart contract based protocols for empowering people for creating permissionless infrastructure for finance. And that's what we have done with the arbour protocol. And more recently, with with lens protocol, we've been building web three social, so decentralized social media, that basically any developer can actually build their applications on top. So what we've seen is that the whole the 3d space is thrown into a direction where many of these use cases and the technology is being more and more growing towards where consumers are. And with Inaba, we've understood that, you know, we have to do more. So we want to be able to build also non financial use cases. And we basically came up with the name of Ara, which means and finish, and I'm from Finland originally. And that basically means being able to look further ahead. And ideally, what the rebranding is all about is that we want to do more than simply the centralized finance with web three, we want to bring web three to all users globally, with different kinds of use cases. And all that will still exist as other labs as a brand that is contributing to decentralize finance, but umbrella brand is bigger,
Jacquelyn Melinek 3:12
right? And I think on that front, expanding beyond just you know, decentralized finance, we talked a bit about lens protocol, can you explain a little bit about what it means to be a decentralized social platform or social layer for web three opposed to just you know, getting on Instagram, or Twitter, or x, or whatever you want to call it, or one of these social networks that everyone has? Yeah, we
Stani Kulechov 3:34
don't really think about decentralization when it comes to social media at that much. So we start looking we as consumers, we rely on platforms or social media platforms, where we basically give all the data and also we are relying on these platforms, with everything that we have. So the audiences we build the relationships we established with our peers, and we don't really have direct ownership. So what the actual blockchain does, it brings integrity, not only in finance, but in any particular use case that that could enable ownership. So these centralized social is about establishing user ownership for the audience as you create, so the relationship you establish, and being able to monetize that as well. So as a user, you have more choice and flexibility and the freedom to move from one platform into another without losing your followers and actually keeping the relationship that you create. And if we have this decentralized social infrastructure, we actually have users that have more skin in the game, where when they're participating social networks, and also we have platforms that are actually competing of those users and providing them best products as well. And that's simply what these interests social to provide.
Jacquelyn Melinek 4:45
It is nice because I mean, I have a handful of followers on Twitter, but I can't carry those to another network, you know, and like that is where my main community is, that's where my followers are. And I does feel limiting in a sense, so being able to carry this Cross platforms or cross protocols or whatever it may be that are building on lens is definitely valuable. And you talked a bit about the monetization of content. And we've seen tick tock allow that, you know, people can upload videos. And then if they get a certain amount of views, they get paid out by tick tock. And same with Twitter, you know, they're giving people checks if you get a certain amount of impressions and views, and so on, how does that kind of compare to what lens is trying to do by getting content creators the ability to monetize their own stuff,
Stani Kulechov 5:29
also, all the monetization that is existing in the current social media landscape is really much the power of decision of the monetization itself is up to the platform. So it's up to the platforms that they can decide how much and what they want to share with their users, there's not really much of transparency on how the monetization is earned, how it's shared, and where actually that ad revenue is coming from, right? With blockchain. And basically social The idea is that when you're actually using the public blockchain network, you have visibility and transparency into how the monetization streams are working, and also providing the guarantees for those users. So for example, the same way as the blockchain can actually guarantee that you have ownership of your follower graph it, I can also guarantee you that you have a certain monetization is guaranteed to the user, and also these applications that are building these new experiences. So for example, what I'm super excited about today is that we see that all these applications that are integrating lends, they're actually building on a shared social networks. So instead of kind of like a working on silo of platforms, they're building the new social media network together and sharing this monetization. So I think it's all about that integrity that decentralization can provide, and also the transparency and the guarantees that can be brought up by using the blockchain technology.
Jacquelyn Melinek 6:49
Why do you think this idea of a shared social network isn't applicable in the maybe web two worlds of social media or social networks that we have today,
Stani Kulechov 6:58
I think it's really hard to actually give up your data, because that's the first premise to make it work. So all the bigger social media platforms, they would have to effectively give all the data and make it public. Whereas when you look at principal lens protocol, all that transaction data and what's happening in the monetization, what it's shared, it's already public by default on a public ledger. And that's the key difference. So when you start giving up the data, you will see that the platforms are actually giving what actually makes your business. So the incentives aren't really aligned with the decentralized way of building things. But that doesn't mean that for example, you can build a business around a or on top of a decentralized social network. And I actually think you can build a better business because you care more about the users and you can build better products. And when you build better products that users love, they have more skin in the game as well. And you can also share the ownership that comes from a decentralized platform across all the stakeholders, especially the users.
Jacquelyn Melinek 7:57
And for the people who aren't on chain who don't have a wallet who aren't really in the crypto space, how easy is it for them to access a platform like lens? Well,
Stani Kulechov 8:06
I would say that that's the most exciting demographic or audience that we're targeting, because we already have on lens, the vast majority of Web3 enthusiasts that are using different dietary protocols on a day to day basis, they might use multiple networks, we're more excited about onboarding the new wave of users. And I think that's where the whole idea of of aura comes into play. So we've been doing amazing job within the community, and speaking actually on a broader sense of community of web three, on building really good infrastructure, back end services to support this infrastructure that we have. But now what we are doing with Avara, we're actually expanding into a group of individuals that come together to actually build also those experiences, and the design that users are used to provide high quality products. So outside, the way to get new users is to build those exciting experiences, end to end and actually show how you can build a sustainable business inventory on a decent choice protocol, and still make really good products. So I think that's where the adoption comes when we actually start thinking about how we can bring those new users with a better product quality. And
Jacquelyn Melinek 9:17
earlier this week, at Dev connects, you guys announced that lens v two launched and you refer to it as quote, the next chapter in the evolution of lens. Maybe we already kind of discussed this, but what really is the next chapter for you there? And how does this kind of play into the visions that we've spoken about for Avara and lens.
Stani Kulechov 9:36
So the way we build the lens protocol, it's a set of social networking primitives and about primitive we mean that it's a basically a feature that enables different kinds of use cases over by that tree. So that can be powered by the blockchain or data availability, so called decentralized storage. And what's interesting here is that we want to actually in the future to break these different primitives to be offered as individual data. So for example, if you have a developer that is interested in blockchain based handles, they can actually integrate handles, if they're interested in blockchain based social graph, they can integrate that as well, if they're interested in just securing that they can store content forever on a data availability network, they can also do that. So what we're saying here is that the progression to web three happens progressively. There are startups that are working today from day one, on building these centralized offerings and these centralized products. But we think that most businesses will come into the tree, progressively one step at a time, there are social media platforms that are a good example, like Reddit, where they started to experiment with avatars, and also community tokens as well. And the way we see it is that there's many ways to actually make existing applications more battery powered, and exchange that kind of like a user ownership between the users and the application owners for basically creating better and more open applications as well on the new web trade technology. So I think that's the part we're thinking of going forward and how we can actually look maybe leap but slowly progress into more open and decentralized internet. Yeah,
Jacquelyn Melinek 11:15
and I think in a way that is kind of like a quote, unquote, next chapter for you know, these web to social media sites as well, it doesn't necessarily have to be like a full blown takeover, where they just completely leave the models that they have. But it's like integrating web three into what they have with the example of Reddit that you brought up even like fashion brands and things like that they've done an effort to get web three technology into their things to kind of reach new consumers. So I think as well, that's super valuable. Yeah,
Stani Kulechov 11:43
exactly. And we probably will see also companies coming and doing experimentations, with web three, and pushing back again, until they find something really exciting that is empowering their users.
Jacquelyn Melinek 11:53
And before we go into the break, I just want to get into one more big piece of news from your end from Avara. There is also an acquisition that you've got going on Stani, do you kind of want to tell me about that, and how this fits into everything that you've got going on in your world?
Stani Kulechov 12:09
Yeah, definitely. So with the rebranding, we also acquired a wallet called family. So family, it's a team of eight very talented individuals from engineering product design. And the founder, Benji Taylor has been with his team, putting a lot of effort of actually building a very delightful experience that you can have with a wallet, and by Wallet. So just to take couple of steps back to think about what wallet is, it's not only a place where you store assets, or your crypto, but wallet is actually a gateway and a passport into web three worlds, you can explore different kinds of bodies, interests, applications, and interact with them and settle the transactions, which are wallet, whether those are assets or nfts, or maybe even lens posts as well. So basically, what we did with the acquisition is that we really want to send a signal that we are in a time now with web three, where we are building that interface on the existing infrastructure where people can actually interact in a way where it's familiar to them. It's intuitive, and it's really well designed. And that's what the family acquisition is part of. So we're super excited of this progress. And I think this will bring a lot of users in today, we have tradespace.
Jacquelyn Melinek 13:22
There are a lot of crypto wallets out there, as you know, Estonia and a few of them, you know holds a lot of the market share, why compete in this with this acquisition? And how do you plan on kind of making family stand out compared to the other wallets out there that are dominating, we're
Stani Kulechov 13:37
actually very happy that there's a lot of competition. And there's different kinds of wallets for different purposes, hardware wallets, where you might store you know, most of your assets, you have web wallets that you use to interact on your desktop. And I think that's amazing. Because the more offerings we have and choices, the better products we can build. But also, it's more diverse setting of tools that we can offer for the users and newcomers for a bar specifically. And in terms of family, what we want to do, we just want to build the best products for our users. So while we care, mostly is that what our users enjoy what they like to do in February, and how we can translate some of the more challenging experiences that we face now in crypto with, for example, onboarding, with the security aspect of it, and also how to transact safely, but also understand what we're transacting as a consumer user. So I think family will be positioned in a way where it probably will be the most delightful experience that you can have when you are entering into the web tree. But it's also at the same time, a very good wallet for any day to day users that really just want to have a best experience on browsing or interacting with the battery technologies.
Jacquelyn Melinek 14:51
I've got to check it out. Then gotta get myself a family wallet. See what it's all about? Yeah.
Stani Kulechov 14:57
Give me all the feedback. So if there Are users that want to test and we're always open to feedback. And we just want to build the best thing out there. Is it
Jacquelyn Melinek 15:06
open to the public? Or is it going to be in a beta phase,
Stani Kulechov 15:10
it's in a beta phase, but you can download the test flight and try it out today. The next step is to have so called layer two support, which means that instead of just using Ethereum network, you can seamlessly use multiple networks. But also, that's an example where we have design choice that the user doesn't really need to browse between these different networks and the wallets, on the accounts on these different networks, but they have a consolidated balance. So our approach is fully with family that we want to abstract away all the complexity, and all things that doesn't make sense or takes too much time to understand out of the user side and just provide them everything just they need in a clean way to transact with that tree.
Jacquelyn Melinek 15:52
Right. That makes sense. All right, Sandy, we're gonna take a quick break before we get into the rapid fire round.
Okay, we are back. Now it's time for a rapid fire segment where I will ask Donnie some questions. Hopefully, we get some quick responses, and then we will go from there. So to start Stani, I've got to ask, do you think the name of vara will stay permanently? Yes. Okay. I think it will. I'll hold you to that. What community on lens excites you the most right now?
Stani Kulechov 16:27
I think in terms of lens communities, I think lens as a whole immunity is something really exciting because you can go into these smaller micro communities. There's wonderful application called orb, they have even their own communities build on lens. So I think lenses are interesting as a kind of like a bigger community,
Jacquelyn Melinek 16:46
right? What is something unexpected that people are using lens protocol for?
Stani Kulechov 16:50
I would say like, I'm surprised how little of that three brands that are known in this space are using actually lens as a way to communicating their news and keep their audiences up to date. I think that's very interesting. I'm also quite interested download of users that are actually creators that are publishing a lot of music content, and lens users are also collecting that content as LFTs. That's really cool.
Jacquelyn Melinek 17:15
Okay. And we'll lens transition out of beta testing to the public by the end of 2023.
Stani Kulechov 17:21
Hopefully, yes. And obviously, depends on the timeline, we can actually solve and go towards permissionless. But Lance already has the salt community governance, meaning that anyone could actually go and create so called lands improvement proposal, and actually request something specific like going to a permissionless mode. And if there's enough support, that's something that we can progress towards. So I do hope so. And if someone wants it faster, they can go and make a lip proposal.
Jacquelyn Melinek 17:48
Okay. By what year? Do you think decentralized social media will gain significant traction to the general public?
Stani Kulechov 17:56
I really think it depends on the experiences that were built, and finding those developers that are super excited on building something new. I think that just building Twitter clones and building existing applications that we're familiar with, will not really take us that far. But when someone comes in built something really, really exciting in a new experience, and powers that experience with web three, and the monetization, we will see a lot of excitement around that and adoption. So I would say that, it really depends. Maybe it happens next year or year after Okay,
Jacquelyn Melinek 18:28
2024 2025. We'll take it. Okay, yes or no? Last question. Do you think the decentralized social media world and the mainstream social media worlds can coexist? Yeah. And
Stani Kulechov 18:41
there's already social networks that are somehow experimenting with these contrast technologies. And that's wonderful. And I do think that there will be multiple decentralized social networks. And the more we can build user choice, and give that flexibility, I think that's the kind of important part as soon as we are decentralized enough that it provides the value and the guarantees for the users. But I can even see a lot of just traditional social media applications being built on the centralized infrastructure. So I do think that will coexist for sure.
Jacquelyn Melinek 19:12
Yeah, going into that last question and kind of stepping out of the rapid fire, what type of use cases or applications do you see them creating?
Stani Kulechov 19:20
I would say that, I would like to see applications where you can, you can use the monetization in a way where you can share that amongst other platforms, for example, right? So something that's very interesting about lenses that the applications and the integrators they can actually share the revenue with each other. So what I would like to say is that if there's an existing social media application or platform in the future, also interacting or sharing profit with a decent choice network or earning from a decent choice, therefore, I think that will be really cool.
Jacquelyn Melinek 19:55
Is moderation, something you think about at all? Like obviously free speech is an important element Have decentralized social media and even for normal social media, you know, a lot of companies struggle with whether or not they should allow everyone to say what they want. Or if they should censor people. Is that something that comes across your mind often? Or? Yes,
Stani Kulechov 20:14
yes. And I think that comes always up with decent trust social networks, because ideally, these decentralized networks, they, they want to guarantee voice for the user. And I think that kind of like, the biggest issue isn't only that voice aspect, but also the discovery aspect as well on the reach. So how you can actually reach your audience, but at the same time not being limited? And at the same time, how do we guarantee that we don't censor users, and currently with platforms in social media, you're very much locked into their algorithms. And we don't really see and understand how these algorithms work. So my vision is that by opening up these protocols, making them public building in public as well, having transparent networks, what we can do, at least is that we know, what are these algorithms and make the actual user to choose? What kind of algorithm they want to consume when they're browsing social networks. And I think that will be the most important part, because then you choose actually what you see. And also, will you give this ability and still you have your own voice? And I think that's what these employees social is all about? Yeah,
Jacquelyn Melinek 21:26
definitely. Sistani, we had a pretty busy week for you guys. You got the news of a have a now being Avara. its acquisition of family and lends me to launching. I hate to ask this. But I've got to ask this. What's next for you guys?
Stani Kulechov 21:40
I think we're still working on our vision. What happens after lunch V. Two, there's a lot of work there. There's a lot of work on the harvest side, obviously, there's a lot of innovation we have in mind. And obviously now, we're super excited about family, we want to build more and bring more users into the space and we want to make Vetri more accessible. That's going to be super cool. And obviously, we're also hiring talent at the moment. So they're sort of on the plate in the upcoming months for sure.
Jacquelyn Melinek 22:09
Yeah, there's always more work to be done even for companies that are doing a million things at once. I'm sure. Can you leave us with a piece of advice for our listeners, maybe something that helps you kind of navigate through the crypto ecosystem?
Stani Kulechov 22:21
Yeah, maybe you what I would like to advise everyone is to basically find what is what's interesting in this space, and basically researching about it quite a lot, but being curious at the same time. So we have different parts coming into Web3. And also using the technology and also participating different communities. So I highly recommend getting hands dirty and being curious and trying to participate in different decentralized organizations reading what's happening in the space. And and I think it's a lot about education. And I think it goes well within the same path as the internet as well and early days. So there's a lot of things happening at the same time, a lot of information and it doesn't need to be overwhelming. I think just taking step by step and learning and being curious. I think that's a really good advice for someone who is new to the space or still exploring. Yeah,
Jacquelyn Melinek 23:13
no, I definitely love that, Stephanie. Thank you again for coming on the show.
Stani Kulechov 23:17
Thank you so much for having here.
Jacquelyn Melinek 23:21
We'll be back next week with conversations around what's going on in the wild worlds of web three with top players in the crypto ecosystem. You could keep up with us on Spotify, Apple Music or your favorite pod platform and subscribe to our companion newsletter, also called chain reaction. Links to the newsletter and stories we talked about can be found in our show notes. And be sure to follow us at chain underscore reaction on Twitter. Chain Reaction is hosted by myself Jacqueline melanic and produced by Maggie Stamets with assistance from Nishad Kearney and editing by Kel Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator and Henry pick event managers TechCrunch audio products. Thanks for listening in. See you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai