Aave Labs partners with Ant Digital Technologies to build a custom RWA market on Ethereum

Aave (AAVE) founder Stani Kulechov has announced a collaboration with Ant Digital Technologies in an effort aimed at building a custom RWA market on Ethereum.

Aave Labs is collaborating with Ant Digital Technologies to build a custom RWA market on Ethereum. The partnership will involve Horizon, an institutional-grade decentralized finance products platform launched by Aave Labs earlier this year.

The new market will target qualified users, allowing them to borrow stablecoins with their tokenized real-world assets as collateral, Aave (AAVE) founder Stani Kulechov announced on X on May 9.

“I’m pleased to announce Horizon’s strategic collaboration with Ant Digital Technologies, one of the largest blockchain technology services providers in the world, to build a custom RWA market on Ethereum,” Kulechov said.

Aave Labs launched Horizon in March, aiming to create a custom RWA platform designed to bridge decentralized finance and institutional adoption. The Ethereum-based protocol's first product is tokenized money market funds.

The funds will enable institutional investors to use them as collateral when accessing stablecoin liquidity.

The partnership with Ant Digital Technologies, the digital technology subsidiary of Ant Group, comes as the RWA market experiences significant growth.

Global asset managers, such as BlackRock, have become major players in the market due to increased institutional demand.

Horizon aims to facilitate further adoption of blockchain and crypto across the Aave ecosystem.

“By aligning with institutional standards while preserving DeFi’s core efficiencies, Horizon unlocks a compliant, scalable, and accessible pathway for institutions and tokenization platforms to engage in decentralized finance,” Aave Labs stated in a blog post.

Kulechov highlighted the partnership as a key milestone in the development of the Aave ecosystem.

“This strategic collaboration between Horizon and Ant Digital is a testament to our commitment to driving the future of finance,” Kulechov added.

The Aave ecosystem continues to dominate the DeFi market, with total value locked on the protocol currently exceeding $23 billion.

DeFi TVL stands at over $111 billion, with Aave leading Lido, EigenLayer, and Sky, formerly MakerDAO, in TVL.