Today, tBTC was listed on Aave, the leading lending platform across DeFi.
... as well as the largest single venue for lending WBTC — making Aave the largest decentralized BTC lending platform in production.
Today's listing of tBTC is a huge milestone on our 5-year journey to bring scaleable, decentralized Bitcoin access to DeFi at large.
A strong relationship between lending platforms and major asset teams is vital.
The recent changes in WBTC came as a surprise to many of us in the space, and the subsequent fallout highlights the importance of that relationship.
To deepen our relationship, I propose we bring Aave directly into governance and network validation, further decentralizing the signer set, and ensuring the largest BTC lending platform has a say in future Threshold network upgrades.
Delegating 40M T to an operator running a node on behalf of the Aave DAO will ensure the Aave community stays involved in the technical details of validating tBTC, as well as allow Aave to begin building a T treasury position from staking rewards.
The Aave Chan Initiative (ACI) has been active and successful as a tBTC minter since early 2023, and is well positioned to take on this role. If they accept, I'd propose that after operating on mainnet without issue for 90 days, they be added to the Beta Staker Program.
To date, the Threshold Council has been connective tissue between on-chain Governor Bravo votes and the Threshold Foundation. Good governance means minimizing our reliance on multi-sigs, and that's exactly what we've done, reserving the Council for situations that are difficult or expensive to achieve via on-chain voting.
The Council also quietly holds another important role: the ability to veto malicious Governor Bravo proposals, preventing a takeover of the DAO governing tBTC.
I nominate Aave to join us in ensuring tBTC's safe governance — by joining an expanded Threshold Council with a permanent seat.
We've been given an unprecedented opportunity to bring decentralized finance to Bitcoin. I believe fully embracing our partners and bringing them into our operations will further distinguish us from centralized alternatives, showing that we're safer, faster, and more transparent.
Let's grow together.