Aave Labs Launches Horizon With Leading Financial Partners, Unlocking Onchain Liquidity for Real-World Assets

Aave Labs today announced the launch of Horizon, a new institutional platform enabling stablecoin borrowing against tokenized real-world assets (RWAs).  Built on Aave, the largest and most trusted decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol with over $62 Bn in net deposits, Horizon operates 24/7 through onchain lending markets, pairing institutional-grade compliance with deep, decentralized liquidity. 

For the first time, Aave users can utilize traditional financial assets such as U.S. Treasuries and institutional funds as collateral to borrow stablecoins, unlocking new liquidity.

Horizon launches with a network of leading institutions, tokenized asset providers, stablecoin issuers, asset managers, and infrastructure leaders. In its initial phase, this includes Centrifuge, Superstate, Circle, and RLUSD alongside Ant Digital Technologies, Ethena, KAIO (formerly Libre), OpenEden, Securitize, VanEck, Hamilton Lane (Nasdaq: HLNE), WisdomTree, and Chainlink, the standard for onchain finance. These partners anchor Horizon’s markets in high-quality institutional assets. 

At launch, eligible collateral will include the Superstate Short Duration US Government Securities Fund (“USTB”), Superstate Crypto Carry Fund (“USCC”), Circle’s Hashnote International Short Duration Yield Fund Ltd. (“USYC”), and Centrifuge’s Janus Henderson Anemoy AAA CLO Fund (“JAAA”) and Janus Henderson Anemoy Treasury Fund (“JTRSY”), with plans to expand into additional tokenized products over time. Among the tokenized products represented by Horizon’s partner network is the VanEck® Treasury Fund, Ltd. (“VBILL”), which exemplifies the regulated, high-quality assets that can gain new utility through Horizon’s infrastructure.

“Horizon is built for the growth of tokenized real-world collateral, enabling lending and borrowing at institutional scale,” said Stani Kulechov, Founder of Aave Labs. “Horizon delivers the infrastructure and deep stablecoin liquidity that institutions require to operate onchain, unlocking 24/7 access, transparency, and more efficient markets. With Horizon, Aave is at the forefront of the move to onchain global finance, powered by its trusted, resilient technology and ecosystem partners.”

Institutions are quickly adopting tokenization, with over $25 billion in real-world assets already tokenized. However, most of these assets are underutilized. They remain in legacy systems that are slow, opaque, and costly, hindering real-time liquidity and their use in decentralized finance markets as collateral to borrow stablecoins, thereby unlocking liquidity. 

Horizon changes this by enabling institutions to borrow stablecoins in real time against tokenized RWAs (such as U.S. Treasuries, AAA-rated collateralized loan obligations (CLOs), and institutional funds with plans to expand to additional asset classes over time) through an instance of Aave V3. Qualified institutions can post tokenized RWAs as collateral and access predictable, capital-efficient stablecoin liquidity such as USDC, RLUSD and GHO, on demand. This means institutions can use their tokenized assets to get capital quickly and efficiently, enabling new institutional use cases from short-term financing to DeFi yield strategies. 

To power onchain institutional lending at scale, Horizon has adopted Chainlink SmartData, starting with the deployment of Onchain NAV, a foundational dataset that enables the automated delivery of accurate net asset value directly onchain to securely value tokenized RWA collateral such as treasury bills and money market funds. This enables real-time, overcollateralized stablecoin loans within a compliant DeFi framework. The adoption of Onchain NAV is the first step in a broader integration strategy of Chainlink data services, including Proof of Reserve to verify reserves transparently and SmartAUM for granular asset composition tracking. Ultimately, Chainlink enables Horizon to leverage a modular onchain data infrastructure and risk management system tailored to power the next generation of institutional-grade tokenized assets.

Issuer-enforced permissioning is designed in a way that regulatory compliance is at the token level, while permissionless stablecoin markets preserve the openness and composability of DeFi. Supported by its network of institutional partners, Horizon expands Aave’s reach into institutional finance, positioning the Aave ecosystem as a core source of liquidity for the growing global tokenization market and laying the groundwork for a more connected, decentralized financial system.