Kulechov was born in 1991 in the former Soviet Republic of Estonia, before his family emigrated to Finland and settled in Helsinki amid the economic crisis that followed the Soviet Union’s collapse. In 2015, while at Helsinki University School of Law, he came across Ethereum and started learning about smart contracts. Kulechov built “ETHLend,” the precursor to the Aave Protocol, while in his dorm room at the same university. Kulechov now lives in London, where Avara is based.