Aave's Launch on Aptos: A Multichain Milestone

Aave, the largest provider in decentralized finance, has officially launched on Aptos, making it its first venture into a non-EVM blockchain and significantly advancing its multichain strategy. With this deployment, Aave now supports native USDC, USDT, APT, and sUSDe on Aptos. Additionally, the Aptos Foundation plans to incentivize users with rewards and liquidity incentives to encourage adoption. Chainlink Price Feeds have been integrated to ensure secure oracle markets, as reported exclusively by The Block. Aave operates as a decentralized liquidity protocol governed by the Aave DAO, currently holding over $50 billion in net deposits and nearly $37 billion in total value locked, according to data from The Block’s dashboard. It allows users and institutions to earn interest on deposits and borrow cryptocurrency against collateral, all while issuing the overcollateralized GHO stablecoin. Aptos is a proof-of-stake Layer 1 network utilizing Move, a Rust-based smart contract language designed to optimize low-latency finality and high throughput, appealing to new on-chain developers. “This launch on Aptos is a significant milestone in Aave’s multichain strategy,” stated Aave Labs founder Stani Kulechov. He emphasized that operating across various blockchains is essential for developing a global financial system. Ash Pampati from the Aptos Foundation described the launch as a major achievement for their Global Trading Engine vision, while Johann Eid from Chainlink Labs noted that this collaboration extends a longstanding integration between the oracle provider and Aave. For this launch, Aave Labs re-implemented Aave V3 in Move, developed a new front-end and SDK, and conducted reviews, testing, and audits to meet performance and security standards on the Aptos network. Risk parameters were established by Chaos Labs and LlamaRisk, with security assessments performed by Zellic, Ottersec, SpearBit (Cantina), and Certora. Additionally, Aave is offering a $500,000 bug bounty in GHO, complementing previous security contests with Cantina. This launch aims at Aptos’s growing stablecoin market, valued at approximately $1.3 billion and primarily influenced by Tether’s USDT. It also seeks to unlock new collateral opportunities, especially involving liquid staking tokens. Presently, only about 8.1% of APT is in liquid staking tokens compared to 76% directly staked, which Aave and Aptos view as a substantial opportunity to enhance borrowing and lending activities. Aptos is positioning itself as a high-performance Layer 1 solution for consumer applications, digital finance, stablecoins, and real-world assets, with increasing participation from traditional financial institutions. The Aave launch is expected to serve as a liquidity engine for Aptos’s expansion. Historically, chains integrating Aave have experienced quicker total value locked (TVL) growth compared to those that haven’t, as pointed out by the involved teams. Aptos will likely capitalize on this trend, especially considering the significant drop in user transactions over the past year. Both protocols anticipate that this integration will give developers direct access to Aave’s lending infrastructure on Aptos, complete tooling support, and a pathway to creating on-chain financial applications that leverage a protocol known for securing tens of billions in net deposits across various networks. For users and institutions, this offers familiar borrowing and lending options, MEV-resilient oracle feeds, and incentive programs right from the start. Looking ahead, Aave and Aptos plan to expand their supported assets, adjust risk parameters as markets evolve, and fortify security measures for this new deployment. The teams also view this launch as a model for future expansions into non-EVM ecosystems, which will be overseen by Aave DAO governance.