With decentralized finance (or DeFi) having been the big success story in crypto this summer, investors look to be flocking to grab themselves a stake.

• Aave, one of the largest DeFi projects and provider of decentralized lending and borrowing, announced Monday that it has raised $25 million from investors Blockchain Capital, Standard Crypto and Blockchain.com Ventures.
• The project's CEO, Stani Kulechov, said that the investment would go toward growing Aave's team to better serve growing Asian markets and bringing DeFi "closer" to institutional investors.
• The investors in the strategic raise will take part in the protocol's staking and governance, per a press release.
• According to data provider DeFi Pulse, Aave is currently the third largest DeFi protocol, with $1.15 billion in cryptocurrency locked in.
• Having seen explosive growth over the summer, the total value locked in all DeFi projects has plateaued somewhat in recent weeks and now stands at $10.79 billion.
• Per price data site CoinMarketCap, Aave's LEND token is up 2.38% in 24 hours at time of writing.
• However, the protocol is in the process of migrating these over to a new AAVE token, as reported previously.
• The process will ultimately see ownership of the protocol shift over to a “genesis governance” built and approved by token holders.

Also read: Investors Flock to India’s DeFi Scene Months After Central Bank Ban Overturned