One of the first institutions to be whitelisted is Fireblocks, an institutional custodian of digital assets, which will also act as a whitelisting agent. Fireblocks will use its security expertise to “verify the identity and beneficial ownership of customers with legal personality and to continuously monitor the Aave Arc Pool and its participants”.
As a whitelisting agent, you have already approved “30 licensed financial institutions to participate in Aave Arc as lenders, borrowers and liquidators”. Some of the 30 institutions that are on the whitelist are Anubi Capital, Bluefire Capital (which was bought by Galaxy Digital), Canvas Digital, Celsius, CoinShares, GSR, Hidden Road, Ribbit Capital and Wintermute.
At the time of writing this article, about $217.46 billion is tied up in DeFi, according to Stelareum. With the clarification of these issues, further institutional funds are likely to flow into DeFi, and according to Blockdata, institutional access to DeFi “could open up a trillion-dollar opportunity in the next half decade”.
