Technology 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 operations and compliance 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.
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“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.”
The Aave decentralised lending protocol, originally developed by Avara, 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”.
