The price of AAVE – the token behind the popular DeFi lending protocol – has seen a major price pump in the past few days after the launch of Aave V3. Whales have contributed to these gains, accumulating over 70,000 AAVE in the last 2 months.
- The upgrade – reported by CryptoPotato on Wednesday – introduced cross-chain portals, allowing users to take their assets to versions of the protocol on alternative networks. It also reduced gas costs for all Aave functions by an average of 20-25%.
- AAVE’s price has risen sharply since. Starting at $124 at 10:00 am EST on March 16th, it has now risen to $158 at the time of writing.
- That’s a 32.9% gain in the past week, since AAVE was at just $116 last Friday.
- Similar to BNB token, AAVE offers its holders discounted trading fees when using the Aave protocol. It also operates as a governance token, giving its holders a say in Aave’s future development.
- AAVE saw its all-time high back in May of last year, reaching up to $661. It’s still down 76% from then.
- However, trading volume is currently around $475 million – highs not seen since early this year.
- Whale accumulation has been slowly on the rise since about the same time. According to on-chain metrics, users holding between $152,000 and $1.52m in AAVE have accumulated over $10.5m in the token since January.