Crypto Lending Protocol Aave Says SEC Ends 4-Year Investigation: “DeFi Will Win”

Aave announced on Tuesday that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission had concluded its investigation into the decentralized finance (or DeFi) protocol, with no intention of recommending enforcement action.

This comes four years after the investigation was opened, Aave’s CEO said on X, during which time the project invested significant time, energy and funds to protect itself from the SEC.

“This process required significant effort and resources from our team, and from me personally as founder, to protect Aave, its ecosystem, and DeFi more broadly,” Stani Kulechov, CEO and founder of Aave, said thenext to a letter received from the SEC.

“DeFi has faced unfair regulatory pressures in recent years. We are happy to put that behind us as we enter a new era where developers can truly build the future of finance,” Kulechov continued. “DeFi will win.”

Contacted for comment, an SEC representative said Decrypt that he “does not comment on the existence or non-existence of a possible investigation”.

Aave is a decentralized lending protocol that allows users to lend or borrow cryptocurrencies. It currently holds $32.79 billion in assets, according to ChallengeLlamaup significantly from $13.21 billion four years ago. Its AAVE token rose slightly by 1.4% over the past 24 hours to a recent price of $186, according to CoinGecko.

It is interesting to note that the project supported by President Donald Trump Liberty Global Financial cryptography project submitted a proposal in 2024 to rely on the Aave protocol. A few months later, World Liberty Financial purchased almost $1 million worth of AAVE tokens.

Since then, the president’s project has been reoriented towards issue your stablecoin at 1 USD as the Trump administration pushed through stable coin legislation. However, the project appears to have larger plans for the future.

Kulechov did not immediately respond to Decryptrequesting comment on whether World Liberty Financial’s adoption of Aave played a role.

Aave Becomes Latest in Long Line of Ongoing Crypto Cases and Investigations abandoned by Trump’s SECincluding those focused on Binance, Coinbase, OpenSea and many others. Perhaps most notably the SEC and Ripple Labs abandoned their disputes in August, after the SEC decision 2021 allegations on the unregistered sale of securities via XRP.

For many, this is a result of the president’s pro-crypto stance. That said, others remain wary of this administration’s crypto legacy, as several crypto privacy software developers face prison time.

Samourai Wallet developer Keonne Rodriguez is one such developer, currently serving a five-year prison sentence. On Monday, Trump said Decrypt that he would “consider” granting a pardon to Rodriguez, although the predictors on Myriad—a prediction market platform developed by DecryptThe parent company of Dastan—only give it a 20% chance of happening before February 2026.