Latest news with #Avara
Irish Times
28-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Data centre king takes Dalata stake ahead of sale
Data centre millionaire Barry English has taken a stake in hotelier Dalata, as investors circle Ireland's biggest hospitality business. Joe Brennan reports. Despite the threat from US tariffs, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (Ifac) believes corporate tax receipts will increase in the short term, shoring up the Government's budgetary position. Eoin Burke-Kennedy has the story. Decentralised finance company Avara has opened its new European headquarters in Dublin as it seeks to build up its presence in the EU. 'Dublin can be a leader in the space,' said Stani Kulechov, the founder of Avara, noting that the Irish capital 'is a great place to have a European headquarters'. He spoke to Hugh Dooley. A new think tank aimed at influencing energy policy is to be launched in Dublin on Tuesday. The group, called Trifecta Ireland, is founded by renewable energy practitioner and investor Lesley O'Connor. Colin Gleeson reports. READ MORE How does Ireland do banking inquiries? In his column, John McManus outlines the five stages of such a process in Ireland. It's not too different from grief. RTÉ director general Kevin Bakhurst is expected to tell a Dáil committee on Wednesday that the broadcaster has to date handed over more than €4 million in unpaid social welfare contributions related to the misclassification of some workers in the organisation as self-employed contractors. Ian Curran has the story. Irish bookings to the US are strong into 2026, according to the industry, following a brief collapse in travel across Europe widely attributed to political tensions and concerns over border controls. Mark Hilliard reports. Staying with travel, how can you maximise your time on holidays? In Money Matters, Joanne Hunt shows your options to maximise your annual leave. Mark also reports that Limerick Mayor John Moran has sought the Government's blessing to introduce a hotel tax or levy in line with fundraising abilities of other European cities with directly elected mayors. In Commercial Property, Ronald Quinlan reports that the former AIB branch in Donnybrook in south Dublin has gone on the market for €2.5 million, while jeweller Paul Sheeran is seeking €5.25 million for its longtime base just off Grafton Street. If you'd like to read more about the issues that affect your finances try signing up to On the Money , the weekly newsletter from our personal finance team, which will be issued every Friday to Irish Times subscribers.
Irish Times
28-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
‘Dublin can be a leader' in blockchain, says digital finance founder Stani Kulechov
Decentralised finance company Avara has opened its new European headquarters in Dublin as it seeks to build up its presence in the EU. 'Dublin can be a leader in the space,' said Stani Kulechov, the founder of Avara, noting that the Irish capital 'is a great place to have a European headquarters'. The company opened its Dublin office a number of weeks ago, initially hiring eight developers, but has already outgrown its space through hiring additional electronic engineering roles. Avara has 90 employees globally, and is anticipating further growth in its Dublin office in the coming months. Mr Kulechov came to Dublin to headline two separate conferences as part of Dublin Tech Week, ETH Dublin and Blockchain Ireland, which he said is evidence of the 'strong blockchain community here in Dublin' and the enthusiasm towards the adoption of the technology. READ MORE 'Ireland has had blockchain developers that have been around since the beginning of Ethereum , there is quite a strong ecosystem with a lot of very strong talent.' Blockchain technology is a system in which information is channelled through a series of independent computers allowing, in one use case, for a decentralised financial system that does not require a central bank. 'As a company that wants to build this technology, we want to have a base somewhere that we can actually test things out locally before scaling them across the whole European Union,' Mr Kulechov said. Avara is headquartered in London and has an office in New York. It expects the Dublin office to be a catalyst for growth in the EU. 'Our goal is to be one of the biggest market participants, not just in the European Union, but globally,' Mr Kulechov said. He expects the company to grow to rival the biggest financial technology companies in the world: 'Obviously, it is going to take a while to get there but that is the mission.' [ John Collison of Stripe: 'I am baffled by companies doing an about-face on social initiatives' Opens in new window ] Avara's Aave decentralised lending protocol has recorded €40.3 billion in net deposits so far and is targeting €100 billion total value by the end of 2025. Mr Kulechov welcomed the recent implementation of EU regulation frameworks on the wider cryptocurrency industry, saying it gives 'clarity on the rules and creates a level playing field for everyone on how to build in that market'. He warned, however, that 'regulation can be overly excessive' and could slow innovation in the industry and would especially hit smaller companies in the space. Avara, alongside its subsidiaries, is a registered Virtual Asset Service Provider with the Central Bank of Ireland, with Mr Kulechov saying, 'It is important to choose the regulatory path, because that creates certainty, but also expectations for the customers on the safety and security.' Mr Kulechov anticipates that decentralised finance services will have a 'significant opportunity' as Central Bank interest rates decrease in the coming years and sees stable coins, cryptocurrencies linked to traditional currency, as the 'next big thing in decentralised finance'.
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Creators of DeFi Firm Aave Launch Social Media Developer Network Lens Chain
Avara, the parent company of decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Aave, has announced the arrival of Lens Chain mainnet, a fast and inexpensive Ethereum overlay blockchain for developing decentralized social media applications. There are now several blockchain-oriented, or 'Web3,' startups looking to provide users with an alternative to the giant, centralized social media companies like Facebook and Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter). To offer better alternatives to existing social media giants requires a fertile protocol level, according to Avara CEO Stani Kulechov. This means offering a developer-friendly layer 2 environment, propelled by composable features designed to unleash the economic potential of decentralized 'SocialFi.' 'The direction we have taken with Lens in the past 12 months is to bring the best developer tooling for building on chain social experiences,' Kulechov said in an interview. 'We chose the optimal stack to run Lens Chain where we get the lowest possible transaction in cost, but a sufficient amount of security for these social transactions.' Lens Chain, a system that uses mathematical proofs to check the veracity of batched off-chain transactions, has its own dedicated stablecoin, Aave's GHO, to handle gas fees, and its own decentralized data storage. A range of application building blocks are on offer to create things like composable social graphs, custom feeds, token-gated communities etc. The blockchain has cemented partnerships with several DeFi and infrastructure projects including Uniswap, Balancer, LayerZero, Circle, Consensys and Chainlink.
