According to CoinMeta, on October 14, 2025, the founders of AAVE, Ethena, and Hyperliquid discussed their biggest competitors at a roundtable meeting in Token2049 in Singapore. The founder of AAVE, Stani Kulechov, identified them as “banks,” while the founder of Ethena, Guy Young, believed they were “Circle,” and the co-founder of Hyperliquid, Jeff Yan, replied “none.” They also mentioned common mistakes made by the founders of DEFI, including focusing too early on infrastructure, overemphasizing their existing small user base, and lacking combinability. There were also clear disagreements among the three regarding directions such as tokenized stocks, liquidity mining, and intentions.