2. Aave (AAVE)

It is a decentralized lending platform where people can borrow, lend, and earn interest on their crypto assets.

It's similar to what a traditional bank does with money you deposit, but since there's no middleman, you earn a higher percentage of the loan interest.

Aave remains top of DeFi Llama's list of lenders in terms of total value locked. It upgraded to Aave v2 at the end of 2020 and now operates on Ethereum (ETH) , Avalanche (AVAX), and Polygon (MATIC) networks -- which means users don't have to pay Ethereum's huge gas fees for each transaction.