Aave is a decentralized money market protocol where users can lend and borrow cryptocurrency across 20 different assets as collateral. The protocol has a native token called AAVE, which is also a governance token that lets the community decide the direction of the protocol in a collective manner. Lenders can earn interest by providing liquidity to the market, while borrowers can borrow by collateralizing their cryptoassets to take out loans from the liquidity pools.