Aave is an open-source, decentralized lending protocol based on the Ethereum blockchain. The protocol enables a market where users can earn interest on their deposits and borrow a wide variety of cryptocurrencies. Currently, there are 22 different ERC-20 tokens available for lending and borrowing on Aave. In addition to lending, the protocol also enables some more exotic use-cases like flash loans and liquidity pool token trading. It was originally launched in 2017 under the name ETHlend with an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) and their own LEND token. However, their platform initially failed to gain much traction and rebranded themselves as Aave in 2018. In October 2020, Aave started migrating LEND tokens into AAVE tokens. Aave had a wildly successful 2020 and became one of the biggest DeFi protocols.