Lending protocol Aave has partnered with onchain credit platform Maple Finance to connect institutional capital with decentralized liquidity.
Announced on Tuesday, the integration will introduce Maple’s yield-bearing stablecoins — syrupUSDC and syrupUSDT — to Aave. SyrupUSDC will be listed in Aave’s core market, while syrupUSDT will be available in its Plasma instance.
The tokens are backed by assets from Maple’s onchain credit pools, which manage billions of dollars in institutional capital from allocators and borrowers. According to Maple, the move is intended to “stabilize borrow demand and improve capital efficiency” across Aave’s markets.
Aave allows users to deposit crypto to earn yield or borrow against their holdings via smart contracts. By adding Maple’s collateral, the protocol seeks to diversify liquidity sources and balance borrowing activity, though it’s unclear how much institutional capital will flow through the integration.
Aave currently holds over $39 billion in total value locked (TVL), while Maple Finance has around 2.78 billion in TVL, according to DefiLlama data.
The partnership comes less than a month after Aave announced plans to launch its V4 upgrade in late 2025, introducing a modular “hub-and-spoke” design featuring shared liquidity, new risk controls, and an improved liquidation engine.
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Maple expands TVL in 2025
Decentralized lending protocols rose more than 72% between the start of the year and Sept. 3, with the momentum coming from rising institutional use of stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), according to a Binance Research report.
“As stablecoin and tokenized asset adoption accelerates, DeFi lending protocols are increasingly positioned to facilitate institutional participation,” Binance said.
Maple Finance is riding the trend. According to onchain data, the total value locked on the protocol has surged to $2.78 billion from $296.9 million on Jan. 1, 2025.
The company expanded its syrupUSD stablecoin to the Solana blockchain in June, deploying it with $30 million in liquidity.
Maple Finance’s rebound comes after the company faced challenges in 2022 due to the collapse of FTX-Alameda, including loan defaults due to exposure to entities connected with FTX, like Orthogonal Trading.
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