The lending protocol Aave has teamed up with the onchain credit platform Maple Finance to bridge institutional capital with decentralized liquidity.
Announced on Tuesday, this collaboration will bring Maple’s yield-bearing stablecoins—syrupUSDC and syrupUSDT—to Aave. The syrupUSDC will be featured in Aave’s core market, whereas syrupUSDT will be accessible in its Plasma instance.
These tokens are supported by assets from Maple’s onchain credit pools, which manage billions of dollars in institutional capital sourced from allocators and borrowers. According to Maple, this initiative aims to “stabilize borrow demand and enhance capital efficiency” throughout Aave’s markets.
Aave enables users to deposit cryptocurrencies to earn yield or borrow against their holdings through smart contracts. By incorporating Maple’s collateral, the protocol aims to diversify its liquidity sources and balance borrowing activities, although the extent of institutional capital flowing through this integration remains uncertain.
Aave currently possesses over $39 billion in total value locked (TVL), while Maple Finance reports approximately $2.78 billion in TVL, according to DefiLlama data.
This partnership comes less than a month after Aave revealed plans for its V4 upgrade slated for late 2025, which will introduce a modular “hub-and-spoke” architecture featuring shared liquidity, new risk controls, and an enhanced liquidation engine.
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Maple expands TVL in 2025
Decentralized lending protocols have surged over 72% from the beginning of the year to Sept. 3, driven by increased institutional demand for stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), according to a report by Binance Research.
“As the adoption of stablecoins and tokenized assets accelerates, DeFi lending protocols are increasingly positioned to facilitate institutional participation,” Binance stated.
Maple Finance is capitalizing on this trend. Onchain data reveals that the total value locked in the protocol has skyrocketed to $2.78 billion from $296.9 million on January 1, 2025.
In June, the company expanded its syrupUSD stablecoin to the Solana blockchain, launching it with $30 million in liquidity.
Maple Finance’s resurgence follows difficulties faced in 2022 due to the collapse of FTX-Alameda, including loan defaults linked to entities associated with FTX, such as Orthogonal Trading.
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