Aave V3 Goes Live on Monad With $15M Incentive Plan

Decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Aave has deployed its V3 lending protocol on Monad, expanding the layer-1 blockchain’s lending ecosystem with support for 12 assets at launch. 

On Thursday, Aave announced that the initial market supports USDT0, USDC, Aave’s GHO stablecoin, USDe, mUSD, AUSD, WETH, cbBTC, wstETH, weETH, syrupUSDC and sUSDe. It is also Aave’s first deployment with Chainlink Smart Value Recapture enabled from day one, allowing part of the value generated from liquidations to be redirected back to the protocol.

The deployment expands Aave’s multichain lending network while giving Monad users and developers access to an established borrowing market, Aave’s GHO stablecoin and liquidity incentives intended to support early adoption. 

Monad is compatible with Ethereum’s application environment, allowing existing Solidity contracts and Ethereum tooling to be used with minimal changes, according to Aave’s governance proposal.

Monad’s total value locked as of Thursday. Source: DefiLlama

Aave deployment tests Monad’s liquidity ambitions 

Aave’s governance documents show that the Monad Foundation committed $15 million in incentives during the first 12 months after activation. The foundation also agreed to acquire and retain 10 million GHO for over six months, while Aave DAO committed another 500,000 GHO in incentives to support adoption on Monad.

These incentives could help establish initial liquidity. However, user activity will need to persist after incentives decline. According to a risk assessment by LlamaRisk, Monad’s mainnet launched on Nov. 24, 2025, and had about $359.5 million in total value locked as of June 8. It said early network usage had compressed after a strong start and that liquidity remained concentrated in established protocols.

LlamaRisk supported the deployment with conservative initial parameters, citing Monad’s short operating history.

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The launch also comes as institutions increasingly explore bringing tokenized assets into DeFi lending markets. In June, Standard Chartered said that tokenized assets entering DeFi could drive deposits into Aave, whose deposit base reached about $75 billion at its October 2025 peak. 

In April, Centrifuge revealed plans to bring tokenized Treasurys, private credit and AAA-rated collateralized loan obligations to Monad for use in lending, collateral and secondary-market activity. 

Although Centrifuge has not announced that its assets will be integrated into Aave, the deployment gives Monad an established lending venue that could support tokenized assets as its ecosystem develops.

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