Aave founder announced plans to relaunch ETHLend in 2026, emphasizing that Bitcoin collateral will consist of actual Bitcoin, not wrapped assets. ETHLend, the precursor to Aave, was restructured during the 2018 bear market due to liquidity and matching inefficiencies in its early P2P model. The team upgraded ETHLend to Aave, a multi-chain DeFi protocol utilizing a liquidity pool model.