Recently, Tornado Cash was added to the US Sanctions List. Basically, any wallet that interacted with the Tornado Cash contract was added to the list.
So a lot of the defi web servers started blocking these addresses. This included Your Excellency Justin Sun’s wallet address. (Aave has since reverted this)
What can you do if your address is blacklisted and blocked by AAVE?
Self host AAVE. Put simply, you are just running the UX interface on your PC or laptop. This interface will still connect to the AAVE protocol (smart contracts).
When you connect to app.aave.com, you are connecting to an interface that is hosted on a webserver, that will then connect to the AAVE protocol (smart contracts). So app.aave.com is run by an entity that has to compile to the sanction rules. which is why you see addresses being blocked.
Guide to Self Host Aave
1. Install GIT from https://git-scm.com/download/win.
If you know what you are doing, then select your preferred installer. If not, just go with the default one.
Run the installer, and go with the default options, click on Next until you complete installation.
2. Install Node.js from https://nodejs.org/en/
Go with the recommended version.
Run the installer, and go with the default options, click on Next until you complete installation.
3. Search CMD to run Command Prompt and install Yarn
Type npm install --global yarn, and enter.
And you should see package installed (or updated in my case, cause I already had it installed).
4. Create a new folder name ‘aavetest’ and go to that folder in command prompt
Type mkdir aavetest, and press enter, to create the folder.
Type cd aavetest, and press enter, to change directory to that folder.
5. Download the interface source code from https://github.com/aave/interface
Type git clone https://github.com/aave/interface, and press enter.
6. Revert the code for screening addresses.
You need to find the commit id that was done for the blocking the addresses. You can find them here https://github.com/aave/interface/releases This is the commit: https://github.com/aave/interface/commit/01a9666a9b1c0f9f29dccd416dc31071aad509df
Type cd interface and press enter to change directory.
Then type git revert 01a9666a9b1c0f9f29dccd416dc31071aad509df, and press enter.
You will see this VIM editor.
Press esc, and type :wq, press enter
And you should see something like this.
7. Setup the interface code by running Yarn install
Type yarn install, and press enter.
8. Start your local server
Type yarn dev, and press enter.
Go to this URL: http://localhost:3000. And you have managed to self host AAVE site on your laptop/PC.
You will need to start your local server when you want to use it. Just go to command prompt:
Type cd C:\aavetest\interface, and press enter. Then type yarn dev, and press enter to start the server.
DEFI is at a funny stage. First we have to SELF custody. Now we have to SELF host. What is next? 🙂