Aave V2 Operational, Will Bulls Break The 15-Month Resistance At $110?

All Aave v2 markets are now operational, the team behind the non-custodial liquidity protocol announced in a November 13 post on X. This a day after v3 markets were unfrozen following the approval from the community.

Aave is a platform where users can supply liquidity in exchange for rewards while borrowers are free to take loans while paying interest in a trustless environment.

Aave v2 Markets Unfrozen, Security Is “Non-Negotiable”

In the post, Aave said the security of the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol remains a “priority and is non-negotiable for the community.”

On November 4, Aave said they received a report “of an issue on a certain feature.” After being validated, the protocol decided to take a step and pause the operation of their v2 markets on Ethereum. At the same time, some v2 markets on Avalanche were frozen. Even so, the v2 markets on Polygon were unaffected. 

Aave also froze operations on Aave v3 on Polygon, Arbitrum, and OP Mainnet. However, v3 markets on Ethereum, Base, and Metis were unaffected. 

While Aave v2 and v3 markets were frozen, the protocol clarified that users supplying or borrowing affected assets could still withdraw and repay their positions but couldn’t supply or borrow more. With those markets unfrozen, they can now continue as it was before.

Will Bulls Ease Past $110?

The resumption of services, looking at the AAVE candlestick arrangements in the daily chart, has not impacted prices. However, the token is trading at around 2023 highs and remains within a bullish formation as optimistic traders expect the uptrend to continue.

Aave price trending upwards on the daily chart | Source: AAVEUSDT on Binance, TradingView

Despite the uptrend, bulls have failed to break above the $110 resistance level. As it is, this reaction level marks August 2022 highs and has not been breached in the past 15 months. 

The token has more than doubled at spot rates, rising from $50, a critical support level marking January and June 2023 lows. For trend continuation, there must be a solid breakout above $110 and the $60 range from where prices have been moving horizontally in a multi-month accumulation.

Still, it is unclear how the token will react in the days ahead and whether there will be more upside momentum as liquidity increases as activity resumes on Aave v2 markets. 

Aave TVL | Source: DeFiLlama

According to DeFiLlama data, Aave is one of the largest DeFi protocols, with over $6 billion in total value locked (TVL). Most of these assets are locked in Ethereum, where over $5.1 billion of tokens are under management.

$120 Million Of Aave Funds Stuck In Polygon, Good For Bears?

Following a recent update, over $120 million of Aave v2, a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol for lending and borrowing tokens, user assets are “stuck” on Polygon.

Bug On Aave v2 On Polygon

The bug affecting withdrawals from Aave v2 deployed on Polygon, an Ethereum side-chain, has been pinned to the recent implementation of “proposal 224”. 

Proposal 224 sought to make parameter changes “for the benefit of the protocol” in light of “shifts in the crypto market .” The adjustment received majority support and was implemented. 

However, after the execution, the DeFi protocol was notified of several issues affecting the interest rate strategy contracts applied to the wrapped versions of Bitcoin, Ethereum, MATIC—the native currency of Polygon, and USDT—the world’s most liquid stablecoin.

The development team has said the root cause was because the updated version, especially relating to the “LendingPool to call the rate strategy of an asset” applied on Polygon, was slightly different from that integrated with Ethereum. While users can’t withdraw assets, the DeFi protocol emphasizes that all funds are safe.

Beyond the explainer released by Aave, analysts pin the specific problem on the incompatibility issue between the ReserveInterestRateStrategy contract and the underlying Polygon network. 

Since the contract was designed to work specifically on Ethereum, as Aave mentioned, it couldn’t work on Polygon, causing it to fail. Subsequently, users couldn’t withdraw their tokens.

Compatibility Problems

The ReserveInterestRateStrategy contract is a core contract in Aave that helps calculate and apply interest rates to borrowed loans. 

To correctly function, the autonomous contract factors in several things, including prevailing market forces, the risk of user defaulting, and the collateralization ratio. 

In Aave, all loans are overcollateralized, meaning a borrower must commit more collateral than the amount they wish to borrow.

The Aave team plans to fix the bug, subject to the result of the ongoing vote. Though the community wants the problem to be fixed, affected users will only begin withdrawing assets from Aave v2 later this week.

Considering governance times, if approved, the fix will be applied in approximately seven days from now: 1 day of delay to start voting, three days of voting, one day of time lock on Ethereum, and two extra days of time lock on Polygon.

Despite the flaw, AAVE prices are stable. However, since the problem was first brought to light on May 19, the token has been lower but inside the bull bar of May 17.

Aave Price On May 22| Source: AAVEUSDT On Binance, TradingView

It is yet to be seen how prices will react in the course of the week. Presently, the token is down 25% from April 2023 and remains in a bearish formation.