Stableminded · · 43 min
He Built a DeFi Savings App, Grew It to 10,000 Users, and Aave Acquired His Company
With 
Mario Cabrera
Key takeaways
Aave Labs acquired Stable last year, and Stable is now reinventing itself as Aave App.
Mario Cabrera says DeFi has about 40 million users compared with 4 billion fintech users, which he calls a 100x opportunity.
Aave App will offer a stable rate set for each user and balance protection of up to $1 million per customer.
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0:00Cabrera moved from Director to VP of Product at Aave1 of 11
Summary
Mario Cabrera, Stable's founder and now VP of Product at Aave, wants DeFi savings to feel so much like ordinary fintech that users can't tell a blockchain is involved.
Aave Labs acquired Stable, a consumer savings app built on DeFi, last year. Mario Cabrera, Stable's founder, says the app is now reinventing itself as Aave App. Before the deal, he says, Stable grew to almost 10,000 users.
From Stable to Aave
Stable built only on top of Aave. Mario Cabrera says it was the first way to earn with USDC on Aave across multiple chains. The two companies first worked together on a co-marketing campaign, which he says brought Stable a lot of users and traction. He joined Aave about seven to eight months ago as Director of Product for Aave App. He was recently promoted to VP of Product and now oversees Aave App, Aave Pro and Push, the regulated side of the business.
“You place a user in front of a fintech application and you ask that user, is this application powered by blockchains or is it not? And if the user isn't able to tell you with any degree of certainty, then it passes the fintech test.”
Mario CabreraThe fintech test
Mario Cabrera says DeFi's total market is not much larger than it was at the peak of the last bull cycle, because very few net new users have arrived. In his view the experience has stayed the same and still serves a narrow group of highly technical early adopters. He proposes a test: put a user in front of a fintech app, and if the user cannot say with any certainty whether it runs on blockchains, the app passes.
What Aave App changes
Mario Cabrera says Stable users found variable rates "extremely confusing", since savings apps they know pay a round number such as 3% or 3.5%. Aave App vaults will let Aave program a rate for each user and add APY as a reward for actions like referring friends. Deposits arrive on gas-efficient chains and can be routed to wherever Aave is deployed. The app also adds biometric recovery built with CoinCover, and an Aave card is planned that earns until the point of spend.
Cabrera argues that giving users more detail about where yield comes from is the wrong fix. If users feel they need to learn more, he says, "there's something missing at the product level."
Institutions and V4
On the institutional side, Aave launched Aave Horizon, a real-world asset market built on v3. Cabrera says the V4 hub-and-spoke model allows both pooled liquidity and isolated collateral markets.
Mario Cabrera is setting goals for the next 12 months. He expects Aave App to onboard hundreds of thousands of net new consumers. He also expects institutional work on V4 to bring billions of dollars in net new capital to Aave.
Aave, Stable, Altitude, and Aave Labs come up most.
- People
- Mario Cabrera
- Drew Rogers
- Companies
- Aave
- Stable
- Altitude
- Aave Labs
- CoinCover
- Alliance DAO
- Meta
