Aave founder Stani Kulechov returns to Twitter after ban

Quick Take

  • Aave founder Stani Kulechov has returned to Twitter following a ban that lasted more than 15 hours. 
  • The ban came a day after Kulechov tweeted that he was joining Twitter as interim CEO.
  • “It is this exact type of action… that led myself and the Aave Companies’ team to build the Lens Protocol,” Kulechov told The Block.

Aave founder Stani Kulechov returned to Twitter on Thursday after the social media firm reversed a ban it had imposed after failing to see the funny side of a tweet.

Kulechov's account was reactivated following a ban that lasted more than 15 hours. He appeared to run afoul of Twitter's moderators after tweeting "BREAKING: Joining Twitter as interim CEO" on Wednesday. His first tweet back following the suspension read "I'm back as interim CEO of Twitter."

Kulechov runs a competing social media platform to Twitter, which accepted a $44 billion takeover offer from Elon Musk on Monday. The founder of the popular DeFi lending platform, who has more than 170,000 followers on Twitter, had earlier hit back against his suspension in comments to The Block. 

"Musk has claimed that he believes Twitter should be an unregulated global town hall, and Twitter has long prided themselves on being the arbiters of public conversation," Kulechov said. "But if that was truly the case, then the digital town hall would be owned by the public as well, not just hosted by a centralized force that could close their doors to people at their choosing."

Lens launch

He argued that this type of action – "the removing of a profile and a following that one has spent years building" — had inspired Aave to launch its own decentralized social media ecosystem in February, dubbed Lens Protocol. 

"A user should have full ownership over their content. That means that no centralized entity can take it away from you. With apps powered by Lens, if you do not like the policy of one platform, you can take your profile with you to another one," Kulechov said. 

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Twitter's decision to ban Kulechov had faced criticism from some notable names, especially as Musk, Tesla's billionaire CEO, had argued that one of his main motivations for buying Twitter was to promote free speech.

"Stani is an entrepreneur who created a Twitter competitor. He got banned yesterday from Twitter for making what was obviously a joke," tweeted Chris Dixon, head of a16z Crypto. 

Hayden Adams, the founder of the Uniswap decentralized exchange, posted, "There is plenty of spam, harassment, etc to go after — let’s keep jokes on this platform and #FreeStani."

Before the decision was reversed, Kulechov's account had been hit with a permanent suspension. That meant he wouldn't even be allowed to create new accounts, according to Twitter's rules.

Violators can appeal permanent suspensions if they believe Twitter has made an error. Upon appeal, if Twitter finds that a suspension is valid, it responds to the appeal with information on the policy that the account has violated.

Twitter didn't respond to The Block's earlier requests for comments.


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About Authors

Andrew Rummer is executive editor for The Block Pro, based in London. He was previously managing editor at Bloomberg News and led special projects at Finimize. He has a degree in engineering from the University of Oxford. Follow him on Twitter at @AJRummer.
Yogita Khatri is a senior reporter at The Block, covering all things crypto. As one of the earliest team members, Yogita has played a pivotal role in breaking numerous stories, exclusives and scoops. With nearly 3,000 articles under her belt, Yogita holds the records as The Block's most-published and most-read author of all time. Prior to joining The Block, Yogita worked at crypto publication CoinDesk and The Economic Times, where she wrote on personal finance. To contact her, email: [email protected]. For her latest work, follow her on X @Yogita_Khatri5.