In a fireside chat (titled “DeFi: Resilience in the Face of Global Uncertainty”) with Alex Cohen at the two-day event StarkWare Sessions held during ETHTLV 2023 week in Tel Aviv, Israel, Aave Founder and CEO Stani Kulechov shared his thoughts on the DeFi space and its potential for wider adoption.

As Cointelegraph reported earlier today (6 February 2023), during this interview with Cointelegraph’s managing editor Alex Cohen, Kulechov stated that the ability to precisely quantify risks in DeFi makes it better than traditional finance (TradFi) products and could result in cheaper operating costs as risks are more easily identified.

Regarding onboarding regular people into DeFi, Kulechov emphasized the important role that stablecoins and payments can play. He believes that by building a payment layer, DeFi can hook regular people into the space, eventually introducing them to other DeFi offerings.

However, the Aave executive also acknowledged some challenges in the stablecoins space, including the amount of value within the ecosystem and the collateralization of decentralized stablecoins. He noted that there is currently not enough value in the ecosystem, leading to less backing in decentralized stablecoins compared to centralized stablecoins.

When asked about the future of DeFi, Kulechov expressed confidence in the space, stating that it will be around for a long time as it solves one of the first problems that blockchain set out to address and will serve as infrastructure for many applications. The founder also noted that there are many new innovations in DeFi, even finding their way into non-financial applications.