AAVE whales or V3 launch: What will be the token’s masterstroke in 2023?

• AAVE whales have kept the momentum of accumulating the token since the new year started.
• The token might no longer be undervalued as the protocol’s third version could be launched this week.

Over the last few days, the crypto market has slowed down its tremendous two-week 2023 performance, but protocols like Aave [AAVE] have continually enjoyed the interest of whales. According to Santiment, the non-custodial liquidity protocol’s token has had a series of transactions worth $100,000 since the advent of 2023. While others like Litecoin [LTC] and Decentraland [MANA] joined the fray, AAVE came out on top with a 1,100% increase.

🐳 As market-wide pumps have flattened out for now, several #altcoins continue individual runs. $AAVE (+1,100%), $MANA (+871%), and $LTC (+75%) are up big on $100k+ transactions since New Year’s. Watch how the increase in whale engagement impacts prices. pic.twitter.com/wT6pSfYGY7

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) January 17, 2023

Read Aave’s [AAVE] Price Prediction for 2023-2024

Thanks to these whales, AAVE is…

The data from the on-chain analytic platform showed that transactions within the region stated above were at their highest on 17 November 2022. On this day alone, whales transacted AAVE 12 times. However, information at press time showed that the momentum had decreased, as only nine transactions had been recorded at 7:07 UTC.

Still, it might be too soon to assume that these deep pockets would not repeat their activities. Nonetheless, AAVE helped itself to a 36.75% increase in the last seven days. But the uptick in the previous 24 hours has been a slight 2.81% uptick while trading at $84.31. But overall, it outperformed over 80% of the top 10 cryptocurrencies within the period.

Source: Santiment

Additionally, whale effect had spread to the token’s volume. At the time of writing, Aave’s on-chain volume was 250.01 million. An assessment of the data revealed that the volume was at its highest since 8 November 2022. 

Hence, this implied that a monumental number of transactions had passed through the network. But since AAVE had registered consistent upticks in the last 30 days, most token movement would have ended in profits. On the part of its Market Value to Realized Value (MVRV) z-score, Santiment revealed that AAVE had surged to -0.984. 

How much are 1,10,100 AAVEs worth today?

The z-score measures whether an asset is at a fair value or otherwise. Although the MVRV z-score was negative, AAVE cannot be said to be undervalued, considering the condition of the crypto market.

Source: Santiment

V3 is on its way

Meanwhile, the Product Lead at Aave Protocol, Graham Nelson, tweeted that they could launch the third version (V3) “this week.” This was in addition to the projected Q1 launch of the GHO stablecoin.

Big week for Aave. V3 hopefully coming this week 🚀

— 0xGraham.lens 🦇🔊 (@0x4Graham) January 15, 2023

If launched, it would mean that AAVE users could access cross-chain asset functions. Additionally, the V3 would help reduce gas costs by 20% to 25%.