Zero-Knowledge Rollup 'Bootstrapped' by ConsenSys Claims to Be 'Home to the Most Innovative Web3 Projects,' But Its Largest Project is a Seemingly Low-Effort Fork of Aave

'Forking,' common in DeFi, is the practice of copying an existing project's code for reuse and, ideally, further development.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) is littered with ‘forks,’ but rarely do they top the total value locked (TVL) charts. However, Linea, the zero-knowledge rollup ‘bootstrapped’ by Consensys, claims to be ‘home to the most innovative web3 projects.’ But the largest project, ZeroLend, is a seemingly low-effort fork of Aave, the widely-established lending protocol.

As noted by X (formerly Twitter) user @majinsayan, ZeroLend’s mobile site until very recently even redirected to Aave’s own FAQ section.

The biggest protocol on linea (consensys) is a copy-paste aave-fork that forgot to change hotlinks of documentation which still links to aave docsethereum people should shut the fuck up for 30 days and look at the bullshit they're peddling to the worldgo keep a clean house pic.twitter.com/MibgMXppuo

At $235 million TVL, ZeroLend accounts for over a third of the blockchain’s entire $667 million TVL, according to data from DeFiLlama.

Forking is the practice of copying an existing project’s code for reuse and, ideally, further development. It is common in DeFi.

Oft-forked Aave is the biggest protocol in DeFi — ignoring Lido and Eigenlayer which offer ETH staking and re-staking, respectively — with $11.6 billion of TVL across 12 chains.

Many forks of Aave, and similar lending protocol Compound, have been deployed over the years, and have often fallen victim to hackers. Recent examples include Radiant Capital, which lost $4.5 million in January, and Michael Patryn’s UwU Lend, which was hacked for $20 million one month ago.

Today's hack on @RDNTCapital results in the loss of 1.9k eth (~$4.5m). The root cause is not new: It basically exploits a time window when a new market is activated in a lending market (forked from the popular Compound/Aave). The exploitation also relies on a known rounding… https://t.co/XogWUVO3po pic.twitter.com/x5X9ql8AGA

Read more: Sifu’s UwU Lend reportedly hacked for $20M, Curve’s Egorov among affected

However, the original codebases are widely considered amongst the most secure in the sector, with any changes only possible via decentralized governance and on-chain voting.

While this may be comforting for even the most risk-averse crypto users, such as addresses labeled as the US government, it’s not without its own problems, given that any bug fixes take time to implement.

US gov has 20M of stables in Aave? pic.twitter.com/KlSqssX1ra

Read more: Compound Finance upgrade bug freezes $830M in crypto

Back in March, Aave governance delegate Marc Zeller described ZeroLend as “the Aave codebase with a high inflation shitcoin slapped on top.”

The comment came in response to ZeroLend’s governance forum post suggesting that Aave recognize them as a ‘friendly fork,’ offering to share revenue and a portion of their ZERO token airdrop in return.

Zeller didn’t seem keen on the reputation risk involved in associating Aave with one of the many unsanctioned spin-offs, however, hazarding that ZeroL🧃lend “only has one likely outcome, onboarding the wrong collateral or Oracle, or pushing a wrong config and getting featured in Rekt News.”

ZeroLend had been seeking a similar setup to MakerDAO’s SparkLend, which has been endorsed by Aave under a similar revenue sharing proposal since it passed in March 2023.

However, Spark also found itself on Zeller’s radar last week. He accused MakerDAO of ‘creative accounting,’ leading to a revenue share calculation at “much closer to 1%,” rather than the agreed upon 10%.

Zeller is no stranger to inter-DAO controversy, hitting out at Gauntlet and Morpho earlier this year, and criticizing the same pair’s risk management strategy in the wake of Renzo’s ezETH depeg. He then branded as “reckless” MakerDAO’s decision to onboard Ethena’s ‘synthetic dollar’ as collateral.

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