Run Money's Aave Integration Live on Base

Hello Aave Community! :wave:

This is Michael Ghen from Philadelphia and I’m excited to announce that Run Money’s integration with Aave is now live on Base! :man_running::money_with_wings: I’d love to have the athletes in the Aave community try it out and provide feedback.

:computer: Try it out: https://www.runmoney.app


Figure: Run Money’s Dashboard for Athlete Members; An athlete has 10 USDC stake and will earn 14.66% annualized reward this week paid out from interest earned through Aave.

Run Money is a no-loss savings game that combines fitness with decentralized finance (DeFi). Run Money is a run club and savings system that rewards athletes for consistently running 5 KM per week. Thanks to our socialized yield model the athletes that run 5 KM weekly earn the yield forfeited by athletes that did not run. On top of that, all athletes purchase a membership in ETH and weekly the yield from this membership pool is distributed to athletes. Athletes earn higher yields than they would on Aave alone.

api_logo_pwrdBy_strava_horiz_light

Run Money is integrated with the popular athlete social network and activity tracking application, Strava. Members log in using their Strava accounts and grant the Run Money Oracle (offchain) access to receive notifications when they record activities in Strava. Activities such as running are tracked automatically, and the oracle verifies compliance with weekly goals without storing sensitive activity details on-chain.

:man_running: Join the Run Money Club on Strava: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania | Run Money
*You don’t need to be in Philadelphia to join!

How It Works

Run Money’s protocol is simple and effective:

  1. Join the Club - There’s currently one Run Money club with a weekly requirement: run at least 5 kilometers (about 3.1 miles) during the week.
  2. Stake USDC - Members stake USDC, which is deposited into Aave to earn aUSDC yield.
  3. Run and Earn - Members who meet the weekly distance requirement (referred to as compliant members) earn their interest plus a share of the interest forfeited by non-compliant members, along with ETH yield from membership fees.
  4. Claim Rewards Weekly - Athletes who meet the clubs running requirement can claim their rewards weekly.

Why Athletes Earn More

Run Money’s protocol guarantees higher yields than depositing directly into Aave. Above you can see a screenshot of the yield as recorded for last week onchain.

Athletes got a 20% boost, driven by two unique features of Run Money:

  1. Socialized Interest Redistribution - Interest forfeited by non-compliant members (those who don’t run at least 5 km in a week) is redistributed to compliant members.
  2. ETH Rewards - Membership fees are pooled and generate additional ETH yield, which is distributed among compliant members.

Last week, the combined USDC rewards were 7.41%, while the ETH yield added an extra 1.70%, delivering a total effective rate of 9.11% for Run Money members. This advantage underscores why athletes earn more by staying consistent and active in the club.

Simplified Socialized Interest Redistribution Example

Here’s how the rewards would break down in a hypothetical week with these parameters:

  • Total USDC interest earned = 1 USDC.
  • Total ETH interest earned = 0.001 ETH.
  • Compliant members: Alice (50 USDC) and Bob (100 USDC).
  • Non-compliant member: Charlie (50 USDC).

Total compliant stake = Alice’s 50 USDC + Bob’s 100 USDC = 150 USDC.
Total staked USDC (including Charlie) = 50 + 100 + 50 = 200 USDC.

Rewards:

  • Alice earns:
    • 0.33 USDC from her share of the USDC interest.
    • 0.00033 ETH from her share of the ETH yield.
  • Bob earns:
    • 0.67 USDC from his share of the USDC interest.
    • 0.00067 ETH from his share of the ETH yield.

Charlie forfeits 0.25 USDC, which is redistributed among Alice and Bob, further enhancing their rewards.

Club Membership and Positive Churn Dynamics

Run Money is built to be a Regenerative Financial (ReFi) Application by harnessing the natural churn dynamics inherent in the fitness industry, specifically with memberships.

In Run Money, Athletes pay a one-time membership fee in ETH to join the Run Money club. These fees are pooled into a common ETH fund that generates additional yield through DeFi protocols like Aave.

Run Money’s design takes advantage of natural fitness churn. When members leave:

  1. Their membership fee remains in the ETH pool.
  2. Yield from these abandoned fees is redistributed to active members.

This creates a positive feedback loop:

  • New members purchase memberships and contribute ETH to the membership pool.
  • Departing members leave behind their membership fee, increasing the pool size.
  • A larger pool generates higher yields, making the system more attractive to new members.

Run Money turns typical membership churn into a benefit for active participants, creating a system where consistent members are continually rewarded.

Privacy-Preserving Design

Unlike many other applications in this space, Run Money is designed to protect your privacy while ensuring transparency in rewards. Athlete activity is tracked offchain, and only a binary compliance status (compliant or non-compliant) is recorded on-chain. This means no detailed activity data, such as distances or routes, is publicly visible.

Run Money only shows you your own activity and does not share it with anyone else, in line with Strava’s API usage guidelines. Wallet addresses are not linked to Strava accounts onchain. Run Money can be used by all Strava uses and works even if athletes enable all privacy features in Strava. The system is designed to be as private as a bank account, within the constraints of public ledger technology like Base.

What’s Next

We’d love for the Aave community to give it a try! Run Money is live now on Base, combining the best of DeFi and fitness. The Run Money Landing Page now features real-time TVL updates, club pool balances, and Aave rates.

:computer: Try it out: https://www.runmoney.app

Let’s run and earn together! :running_woman::money_with_wings:

– Michael Ghen

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Hello again Aave Community! I’m here with an update on my project Run Money which is currently live on Base mainnet and integrates with Aave’s USDC and ETH pools.

This week, I updated the athlete dashboard so that it now shows how much an athlete will forfeit in interest if they don’t complete their 5 KM distance requirement.

Also last week’s (week ending 2024-11-24) rewards for Athletes were once again great. Thanks to the Run Money interest socialization Athletes earned a yield nearly 20% higher than they would alone on Aave. The bulk of the alpha came from a rapid appreciation in the price of ETH.

I created this plot that shows the alpha between the 30-day Aave USDC average of 8%, the 7-day average of ~12% and the Run Money Member rate of ~14% and what the Tradfi Rates are. Here’s that chart:

You can join Run Money if you use Strava and participate in earning the alpha. Some links:

  1. Run Money App - https://runmoney.app
  2. Run Money Whitepaper - RunMoneyWhitepaper112024.pdf - Google Drive
  3. Run Money Dune Dashboard: https://dune.com/mikeghen1/run-money

Thanks for reading!

Mike

2 Likes

Hello again Aave Community! I’m here with an update on my project Run Money, which is live on Base mainnet and integrates with Aave’s USDC and ETH pools.

This week, I added a new feature to the dashboard! Athletes can now see their Total Claimed Rewards and Total Unclaimed Rewards, making it easier to track earnings over time.

Last week’s (week ending 2024-12-08) rewards for athletes were once again something to admire. Thanks to socialized interest redistribution and ETH rewards, athletes earned yields nearly 60% higher than they would on Aave alone. This alpha comes from the fact that 2 of the members forfeited their yield due to inactivity. I think because it was very cold in Philadelphia last week.

Just like last week, I made a similar chart showing the yields from Run Money (17%), Aave (10.65%) , and what I found to be the best bank rate (4.5%).

Join Run Money to earn the alpha while staying fit! :rocket:

Thanks for reading!
– Mike

2 Likes

Hello again and happy holiday season!! :christmas_tree::gift:

I’m back with another update on how things are going with my project Run Money. I now have a great video where I explain how Run Money works! Check it out in the link below. It has now been live on Base and integrated with Aave for 6 weeks so far. I improved my Dune dashboard to show the weekly stats.

:film_projector: Mike Presents Run Money
:bar_chart: Run Money Dune Dashboard

Below I shared some screenshots to give you the TL;DR.

:lock: Total Value Locked

First of all, this represents the total value Run Money has locked in Aave earning yield.

:rocket: Performance Summary

The rates that active athletes on Run Money earn is higher than they would earn otherwise. A large component of that alpha is the ETH earned by the total membership sales. With 8 members we have 0.20 ETH earning yield. This distributed weekly and on average has increased the overall yield by 2.75%, for all the athletes.

:moneybag: Cumulative Rewards Distributed

:mag: Where’s the alpha?

Let’s look at the Run Money rates earned by active athletes vs. the yields on Aave. You can see this comparison in the chart below, “others” is the 7-day average yield pulled from Aave’s API endpoint. Since the last few weeks were very cold in our city, the USDC portion has also contributed to the increased USDC rates. You see this in weeks 4 onward. Week 2 and 3 everyone ran so most of the alpha is the ETH yield. Weeks 4-6 we have several athletes that forget to run. Some athletes have large stakes so their absence has a big impact.

:crystal_ball: Future Work

  • Second club for “strength training” activity on Strava
  • Integration with MapMyFitness (Under Armor’s activity tracker)
  • Improve landing page for the club

Thanks for reading this far, I hope you’ll consider joining Run Money to earn this alpha while staying fit!

Happy holiday season!
– Mike

2 Likes

Hello Aave Community! :wave:

This is Michael Ghen from Philadelphia with another exciting update for Run Money! :man_running::money_with_wings:

Dune Spellbook for Aave V3 Base Rates Table

I’m happy to share that my PR to the Dune Spellbook was recently merged (link). This adds a brand new aave_v3_base.interest_rates table, providing hourly average deposit and borrow rates for each token on Aave V3 on Base.

What was previously a 70-line query to get this data is now a 1 line query :hocho:

select * from aave_v3_base.interest_rates

I built a Dune Dashboard on top of this table, which visualizes current deposit/borrow rates and their behavior over time. I mainly added this table so it would be much easier to make the Run Money vs. Others chart that I show on the Run Money website (shown below).

DefiLlama Listing & Other Good News

A few quick updates since my last post:

Run Money is on DefiLlama

You can find Run Money among the listed protocols and see exactly what’s going on with the TVL. I developed the adapter and it was merged into the DefiLlama/DefiLlama-adapters repo (link). It was really nice DefiLlama also posted about it on X.

Retweet from Stani

Big thanks to @stani for your support! It’s awesome to see engagement and encouragement from the Aave founder himself. Memberships were stuck around 10 and it’s now added a few more members since the post.

New Members

The Run Money club continues to grow. Run Money welcomed more runners looking to earn higher yields on their USDC while staying active. Thanks to the DefiLlama listing, we can see how the new members joining looks on the TVL.

How to Support Run Money

I’m grateful for the continued support from the Aave community. Let’s keep running and earning together! If you have any questions, drop them here or ping me on Twitter. :medal_sports:

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