Funds locked in Aave soar past $20 billion amid layer-two embrace

Aave has surged to the top of the DeFi ranking by total value locked (TVL) amid its recent embrace of layer-two for scaling.

According to Aave’s website, the v2 and Polygon deployments of the popular crypto-powered money market protocol currently represent more than $20 billion in locked capital, holding more than $12.6 billion and $7.8 billion in the respective versions.

According to DeFi Llama, Aave v2 is currently the largest decentralized protocol by assets locked, while Aave’s Polygon deployment would rank fourth despite launching just six weeks ago.

Aave’e embrace of layer-two solution, Polygon, appears to have bolstered its adoption compared to other leading DeFi protocols

Using data provided by Dune Analytics, Twitter user “DeFi Dividends” found that the share of Aave’s monthly userbase represented by new users is roughly 50% greater than either MakerDAO and Compound, with 44% of Aave’s users comprising newcomers in May compared to 29.8% for MakerDAO and 26.3% for Compound.

Excluding its Polygon deployment, Aave outpaces Compound’s total value borrowed by one-third and MakerDAO by roughly double.

Total Amount Borrowed market share:$AAVE: 47%$MKR: 17.9%$Comp: 35.1%Once again Aave's growth is impressive! This is the first month where it has passed comp for the most amount of money borrowed. And this doesn't even account for the extra $7b+ on Polygon that Aave has pic.twitter.com/Tl3SX9dc0m

— Defi Dividends (@DefiDividends) May 30, 2021

At the start of April — three weeks before its launch on Polygon, Aave’s Marc Zeller predicted DeFi will transition towards a multi-chain ecosystem that uses Ethereum’s layer-one mainnet for settlement.

Zeller’s vision appears to be catching on across the crypto sector, with prominent influencer, ChainLinkGod, asserting that “most chains will be L2 rollups that store data on L1 shards anchored to Ethereum” in the near future.

Anthony Sassano, founder of The Daily Gwei, has also echoed this sentiment, stating: “I think that the [Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)] has already won, I think the EVM is going to be the winner for the long term, and there is going to be a point where it's basically a handful [...] of different chains and L2s.”

The comments come just days after the mainnet beta launch of the highly anticipated layer-two rollups sidechain, Arbitrum. Many top DeFi protocols are already eager to deploy on Arbitrum, with Uniswap, Curve Finance, and Mcdex among those eying the protocol.