Key facts
- Payward said the AAVE tokens were bought on the secondary market through Digital Asset Special Investments I, LP, a Payward-affiliated fund.
- Payward said it may make additional purchases and is exploring collaboration with Aave, without disclosing plans.
- Aave holds about $17.06 billion in total value locked, per DeFiLlama, the largest share of a $52.12 billion lending market.
- Aave collected $39.63 million in fees over the past 30 days, including about $5.15 million in protocol revenue, per DeFiLlama.
- Payward agreed in April to acquire derivatives exchange Bitnomial for up to $550 million and completed its purchase of Reap in July.
- Standard Chartered's Geoff Kendrick set a $3,500 AAVE target for the end of 2030 in June 2026.
Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, said on November 5 that it had acquired an undisclosed amount of AAVE tokens alongside its asset management clients. The purchases were made on the secondary market through Digital Asset Special Investments I, LP, a Payward-affiliated investment fund, according to the Wyoming-based company. Payward said it may make additional purchases as it deepens its involvement in decentralized finance, and that it is exploring potential areas of collaboration with Aave without disclosing specific plans.
AAVE was quoted at approximately $132.29, up 1.39% over 24 hours, but down 1.89% over the past week and 27.62% over the past month. AAVE is the governance token of the Aave protocol, giving holders voting rights over decisions affecting its operations and treasury.
According to data provider DeFiLlama, Aave holds approximately $17.06 billion in total value locked, the largest position in a decentralized lending market worth about $52.12 billion across 515 platforms, or roughly 32.8% of the sector. DeFiLlama data also showed the protocol collected $39.63 million in fees over the past 30 days, including about $5.15 million in protocol revenue, with annualized fees of about $624.51 million and annualized revenue of approximately $88.7 million over the trailing year. In October, Aave launched its first externally curated Aave V4 markets on Ethereum, with institutional DeFi platform Sentora managing three isolated lending markets.
"This investment reflects our long-term conviction in on-chain credit markets and DeFi, as well as growing demand from our clients for exposure to the infrastructure shaping the future of finance," said Gurpreet Oberoi, Payward's vice president of asset management and institutional.
The purchase sits alongside a wider expansion by Payward beyond running Kraken's exchange. In April, Payward agreed to acquire US derivatives exchange Bitnomial for up to $550 million, and in July it completed its acquisition of stablecoin payments company Reap under a deal valued at up to $600 million. In September it partnered with Ledger to bring cold storage to its xStocks platform, letting eligible users hold tokenized stocks in Ledger hardware wallets. Payward is also reportedly in talks with Wells Fargo to provide crypto liquidity for the bank's planned digital asset trading services, with Payward handling trade execution and pricing through Kraken Prime.
Standard Chartered's head of digital assets research, Geoff Kendrick, set a $3,500 target for AAVE by the end of 2030 in June 2026, expecting the protocol to benefit from renewed DeFi activity and growing use of tokenized real-world assets in lending markets. Kendrick also said Aave had recovered from disruption caused by the April cyberattack involving KelpDAO's rsETH bridge, which triggered withdrawals.