Aave, Ethena and Hyperliquid founders name their biggest rivals at TOKEN2049

Ask three of DeFi’s most prominent builders who keeps them up at night, and you get three very different answers. At TOKEN2049 Singapore, Aave’s Stani Kulechov said banks. Ethena’s Guy Young said Circle. Hyperliquid’s Jeff Yan said nobody. Three founders, three targets The exchange took place at TOKEN2049 Singapore, held October 7-8, 2026. The panel was moderated by Robbie Petersen of a16z crypto and also featured Kain Warwick from Synthetix alongside the three founders. Kulechov’s answer was the broadest. By naming banks as Aave’s main competition, he framed the lending protocol as a challenger to traditional finance rather than to other DeFi platforms. The protocol aims to expand its lending business using real world assets (RWAs) and tokenized assets. Aave is targeting a future in which crypto-native lending surpasses traditional borrowing by 2027. The protocol previously saw liquidity peaks of approximately $76B. Young went narrower and more pointed. Ethena’s rival, he said, is Circle, putting the protocol squarely in competition with stablecoin issuers for market share. Ethena’s flagship product is USDe, a stablecoin that reached about $15B in recent growth analysis. Hyperliqu...