Stani Kulechov, founder of decentralized lending platform Aave, said DeFi could tap $50 trillion in “rich assets” like solar power through tokenization by 2050, opening up a up-to-date class of onchain security.
Data from RWA.xyz shows that almost $25 billion worth of real assets have been tokenized on the network, but they are mainly in the form of US treasury bonds, stocks, commodities, private credit and real estate.
In Sunday’s post to X Kulechov he said expects these rare assets to continue to grow, but “the greatest impact of tokenization can be achieved by tokenizing abundant assets.”
“Capital is hungry for new collateral, and the world is ready for a transformation that onchain lending can capture and accelerate,” said the Aave Labs chief, adding that solar could account for $15-30 trillion of the $50 trillion “asset stock” market by 2050.
Kulechov said solar debt financiers could tokenize a $100 million solar project by lending $70 million to roll over to up-to-date projects, while onchain depositors would have “access to an extremely scalable, low-risk and well-diversified rate of return.”
“An investor can buy tokenized solar energy, hold it for three years, sell it at a profit and immediately move to a new investment,” Kulechov added, arguing that such a model could significantly augment capital efficiency.
“Traditional infrastructure capital is locked up for decades. Tokenized assets enable continuous trading, which means the same dollar can fund multiple projects over time.”
Kulechov said the same idea applies to batteries for energy storage, robotics for work, vertical farming and lab-grown food for nutrition, semiconductors for computing and 3D printing for materials.
Rich assets can offer better returns
Kulechov said these wealthy assets can offer higher yields than rare assets, which he believes are headed “down the road towards low, thin margins and reduced profitability.”
“Abundance-backed products offer better returns, better risk characteristics and better value alignment. They win in the market because they are the highest quality products.”
Aave is the largest DeFi protocol by total value locked at $27 billion in lending and lending, DeFiLlama data can be seen.
Tether’s USDt (USDT) stablecoin, Ether (ETH), and wrapped Ether (wETH) are the most frequently borrowed and lent assets on the platform.
AAVE will decline by 15.2% in 2026
Aave’s native token Aave (AAVE) failed to contain the recent cryptocurrency crisis, falling another 1.6% in the last 24 hours, CoinGecko data can be seen.
Related: Aave silences Avara and retires family wallet in up-to-date DeFi version
In 2026, AAVE is down 15.2% to $125.98 so far and is currently 81% below its all-time high of $661.70 in May 2021.
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