Aave Surges 19% as Kraken Rumors Meet "Aavenomics 3.0" Tease 🏦

Bitcoin stabilized around $60,000 on Friday after this week's selloff, trading at $59,985.14 as gains across decentralized finance and the Solana ecosystem stole the spotlight. Leading the advance was AAVE, the native token of the largest DeFi lending protocol Aave, which jumped 19% over the past 24 hours to $95.84. The move followed a CoinDesk report that crypto exchange Kraken is exploring a strategic investment tied to the lending protocol, involving the acquisition of a 15% stake at a $385 million valuation.

Aave founder Stani Kulechov addressed the report in an X post, pushing back against suggestions that Aave assets could be sold at a steep discount. He reiterated that all protocol revenue, currently running at an annualized $134 million, flows to the Aave DAO and ultimately benefits AAVE token holders under the protocol's recently adopted "Aave Will Win" framework. Kulechov also teased "Aavenomics 3.0," an upcoming overhaul for the token's design that will introduce an automated buyback mechanism.

Solana (SOL), the layer-1 blockchain, also outperformed, with SOL climbing nearly 10% on Friday. Trading activity around tokenized stocks on its network continued to accelerate, topping $2.5 billion in volume through the week and 10 times larger than a month ago, according to RWA.xyz. That gave the network more than 80% share in tokenized equity trading across all blockchains.

The surge lifted several Solana DeFi tokens, particularly those tied to trading infrastructure protocols. JTO, the token of Solana's largest liquid staking protocol Jito, which unveiled a new trading platform last month, soared 30% to $0.8229. Tokens of Solana-based decentralized exchanges RAY ($0.6112) and Meteora (MET) gained about 7%, while lending and liquidity protocol Kamino Finance (KMNO) also posted gains.