Biography: Stani Kulechov is a programmer and founder of the decentralized crypto lending platform Aave and the sustainable decentralized social networking platform Lens Protocol. He is an experienced entrepreneur in the crypto, blockchain and fintech industries. Kulechov has served as a mentor to upcoming projects in the space and regularly speaks at industry events. Initially, Kulechov studied law for his master’s degree at the University of Helsinki in 2015. However, it was there that his interests in finance and technology came together when he discovered Ethereum and its potential impacts on traditional finance. In 2017, he created one of the first-ever DeFi decentralized applications, ETHLend — a pioneer of decentralized finance platforms as an Ethereum-based, peer-to-peer lending and borrowing platform. The following year, the project rebranded to Aave with the intention of expanding its focus beyond Ethereum and lending. January 2020 saw the Aave protocol officially released on the Ethereum mainnet.