Today, Aave, a leading DeFi protocol governed by the Aave DAO, announced the launch of Aave V3 on ZKsync Era, a hyperfast layer-two network developed by engineering and cryptography research company Matter Labs. Aave users can now access low-cost transactions powered by advanced zero-knowledge (ZK) technology leveraging Ethereum’s security with highly reliable price data provided by industry-standard decentralized computing platform, Chainlink.
In an official announcement, Aave Labs Founder and CEO Stani Kulechov distilled the significance of connecting Aave’s non-custodial, open-source, decentralized liquidity protocol with ZK-proofs and ZKsync’s Elastic Chain – an infinitely extensible network of ZK chains designed to interoperate as a single ecosystem.
“This integration marks a pivotal moment for both the Aave and ZKsync communities, providing opportunities for increased access, collaboration, and innovation,” he said. “By combining ZK-proofs and the unified Elastic Chain ecosystem, Aave can unlock unprecedented scalability, privacy, and security, expanding the DeFi user base and new institutional use cases.”
ZKsync’s co-inventor, Alex Gluchowski, described Aave V3’s launch on Era as an opportunity to bring new liquidity and yield generation capabilities to the Elastic Chain ecosystem.
“Aave has established itself as one of the leading DeFi protocols and has played a core role in the growth and adoption of crypto since its launch,” he said. “As ZKsync’s Elastic Chain keeps building momentum, it is important that it become a place where both retail and institutional users can leverage a secure access point for the digital asset ecosystem across all ZK Chains. ZKsync is the most advanced and future-proof scaling solution powered by ZK-proof technology, and with the deployment of Aave on Era, a greater audience will be able to leverage ZKsync to its fullest potential.”
Last year, ZKsync integrated Chainlink Price Feeds and joined the Chainlink Scale program to expand its ecosystem by promoting the creation of secure, scalable, feature-rich dApps through Chainlink’s industry-leading oracle infrastructure, which has securely and reliably enabled over $14 trillion in transaction value, even during volatile market conditions and adverse events such as flash loan attacks.
Reflecting on years of collaboration with Aave and ZKsync, Chainlink Labs’ Chief Business Officer, Johann Eid, called Aave V3’s launch on Era an important milestone in advancing DeFi’s scalability and institutional usage.
“In a short amount of time, both projects have had a profound impact on DeFi and the blockchain industry as a whole, helping to drive interest, secure transactions, and bring a large amount of value and innovation into this space,” he said. “Aave V3’s deployment on Era Mainnet brings together a foundational DeFi protocol and a pioneer that is pushing the zero knowledge space forward, which is a major step forward for our industry, and Chainlink Price Feeds are playing a key role in ensuring that the market data powering the protocol is ultra-reliable and accessible.”
For more information, governance proposals for Aave’s deployment on Era can be found here and here.