Aave, Ethena, and Hyperliquid founders discuss their biggest competitors and key DeFi mistakes at TOKEN2049 Singapore.
News ·
At TOKEN2049 Singapore on October 14, 2025, three prominent founders addressed their competitive landscape in a roundtable discussion. Aave founder Stani Kulechov identified banks as his biggest competitor, while Ethena founder Guy Young named Circle, and Hyperliquid co-founder Jeff Yan said nobody. The exchange highlighted divergent views of the market across three major protocols.
When pressed on common mistakes in DeFi, the trio converged on several pitfalls: founders often prioritize infrastructure before establishing product-market fit, adopt an overly narrow focus on DeFi's current user base rather than expanding addressable markets, and underweight composability in protocol design. These critiques suggest a pattern of misaligned priorities in how projects approach growth and technical architecture.
The founders also diverged notably on emerging trends, displaying different positions on tokenized stocks, liquidity mining mechanics, and intent-based systems. The specific nature of these disagreements—whether they reflect strategic differences, market positioning, or architectural philosophy—was not detailed.