Decentralized finance (DeFi) has its justifiable share of ‘forks,’ however not often do they high the full worth locked (TVL) charts. Linea, the zero-knowledge rollup ‘bootstrapped’ by Consensys, claims to be ‘dwelling to essentially the most modern web3 tasks.’ However its largest mission, ZeroLend, is a seemingly low-effort fork of Aave, the widely-established lending protocol.
As famous by X (previously Twitter) person @majinsayan, ZeroLend’s cellular website till very not too long ago even redirected to Aave’s personal FAQ part.
At $235 million TVL, ZeroLend accounts for over a 3rd of the blockchain’s whole $667 million TVL, in keeping with knowledge from DeFiLlama.
‘Forking,’ widespread in DeFi, is the observe of copying an current mission’s code for reuse and, ideally, additional growth.
Oft-forked Aave is the most important protocol in DeFi — ignoring Lido and Eigenlayer which provide ETH staking and re-staking, respectively — with $11.6 billion of TVL throughout 12 chains.
Many forks of Aave, and related lending protocol Compound, have been deployed through the years, and have usually fallen sufferer to hackers. Latest examples embody Radiant Capital, which misplaced $4.5 million in January, and Michael Patryn’s UwU Lend, which was hacked for $20 million one month in the past.
Learn extra: Sifu’s UwU Lend reportedly hacked for $20M, Curve’s Egorov amongst affected
Regardless of this, the unique codebases are extensively thought of amongst essentially the most safe within the sector, with any modifications solely doable by way of decentralized governance and on-chain voting.
Whereas this can be comforting for even essentially the most risk-averse crypto customers, equivalent to addresses labeled because the US authorities, it’s not with out its personal issues, on condition that any bug fixes take time to implement.
Learn extra: Compound Finance improve bug freezes $830M in crypto
Associates don’t fork associates
Again in March, Aave governance delegate Marc Zeller described ZeroLend as “the Aave codebase with a excessive inflation shitcoin slapped on high.”
The remark got here in response to ZeroLend’s governance discussion board submit suggesting that Aave acknowledge them as a ‘pleasant fork,’ providing to share income and a portion of their ZERO token airdrop in return.
Zeller didn’t appear eager on the popularity danger in associating Aave with one of many many unsanctioned spin-offs, nevertheless, hazarding that ZeroLend “solely has one seemingly consequence, onboarding the unsuitable collateral or Oracle, or pushing a unsuitable config and getting featured in Rekt Information.”
ZeroLend had been looking for the same setup to MakerDAO’s SparkLend, which has been endorsed by Aave underneath the same income sharing proposal because it handed in March 2023.
Regardless of this, Spark additionally discovered itself on Zeller’s radar final week. He accused MakerDAO of ‘artistic accounting,’ resulting in a income share calculation at ‘a lot nearer to 1%,’ fairly than the agreed upon 10%.
Zeller is not any stranger to inter-DAO controversy, hitting out at Gauntlet and Morpho earlier this yr, and criticizing the identical pair’s danger administration technique within the wake of Renzo’s ezETH depeg. He then branded as “reckless” MakerDAO’s resolution to onboard Ethena’s ‘artificial greenback’ as collateral.
