aave/aave-v3-core

Aave V3 is a category-defining infrastructure project in the DeFi ecosystem. Its defensibility score of 10 is justified not just by the code, which is open-source (Business Source License 1.1 transitioning to GPL), but by its massive 'liquidity moat.' With billions in Total Value Locked (TVL), Aave benefits from profound network effects: deep liquidity attracts borrowers, which in turn attracts more lenders. The project's age (nearly 5 years) and high fork-to-star ratio (approx. 70%) indicate it is the industry standard that other protocols (like Radiant or Spark) either clone or integrate with. Frontier labs (OpenAI, Google) have no strategic interest in on-chain liquidity protocols, and traditional platform giants (AWS, Microsoft) are relegated to infrastructure provider roles rather than protocol competitors. The primary threat is displacement by a superior architectural shift in DeFi (e.g., Morpho's peer-to-peer matching or MakerDAO's vertical integration), but Aave's governance (AAVE DAO) and rapid multi-chain expansion make it unlikely to be displaced in the next 3+ years. It functions as a foundational 'money lego' upon which an entire sub-economy of aggregators, yield optimizers, and stablecoins is built.