DeFi Lending Giant Aave Sets Vote to Offload Wrapped Bitcoin as Justin Sun Concerns Linger

The action could impact $200 million of DeFi loans in the Aave ecosystem should the proposal pass.

Sky, the decentralized finance (DeFi) lender formerly known as MakerDAO, will vote on fully removing wrapped bitcoin (wBTC) from its ecosystem, according to a Thursday governance post, in a potentially major development in DeFi given that the platform has $200 million of loans that are largely collateralized by the token.

WBTC is a token that allows investors to use bitcoin (BTC) on other blockchains, and it plays a key role in lending DeFi as a form of quick and liquid collateral, with a $9 billion market capitalization in the space.

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DeFi risk management firm BA Labs, an influential voice in the Sky protocol's governance, had previously proposed reducing exposure to wBTC due to perceived risks from Tron founder Justin Sun's involvement with the custodian for the underlying assets. Sky is one of the biggest DeFi projects and the issuer of the $5 billion decentralized stablecoin DAI, so the development has been closely followed by crypto analysts and blockchain industry watchers.

On Thursday, BA Labs proposed to gradually offboard all wBTC exposure from collateral assets in five steps, with the first one starting on Sep. 26. Each step will be voted on.

"We find that legal due diligence would not provide an adequate level of assurance," BA Labs said in its proposal.

BA Labs recommended onboarding alternative products to the platform if the proposal passes.

A Tron spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

Competitors energized

Currently, there are some $73 million worth of loans collateralized with wBTC on the Sky-affiliated lending platform SparkLend, and some $127 million debt against wBTC in Sky's legacy vaults, according to the BA Labs post.

Tensions flared up around wBTC following crypto custody firm BitGo's announcement earlier this month that it planned to transition control of the asset to a joint operation with a custody platform called BiT Global.

The deal, which distributed control over the project's custody to three entities globally instead of just one, was cast as a way of helping to decentralize the operation.

According to an Aug. 9 press release, BiT Global is a global custody platform with regulated operations based in Hong Kong, registered as a Trust and Company Service Provider (TCSP), and is a "a strategic partnership between BitGo, Justin Sun, and the Tron ecosystem."

BitGo CEO Mike Belshe earlier this month defended the joint firm's autonomy from Sun and Tron.

BitGo CEO Says Wrapped Bitcoin’s Critics Aren’t Being ‘Intellectually Honest’ About Their Concerns

The drama around wrapped bitcoin has energized competitors offering alternative versions of the token, including dlcBTC, Threshold's tBTC and FBTC, which has the support of Mantle Network.

Notably, crypto exchange and custody giant Coinbase debuted its own wrapped bitcoin competitor earlier Thursday.

Edited by Nik De

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Krisztian Sandor is a reporter on the U.S. markets team focusing on stablecoins and institutional investment. He holds BTC and ETH.

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