Aave Pledges Support for Lido Alliance, Plans to Launch StETH-Focused V3 Instance

Aave and Lido have historically seen symbiotic growth, with stETH being one of the premier collaterals on Aave and leveraged staking being one of the most profitable use cases for both Aave DAO and Lido users

Web3’s largest lending protocol is showing support for the recently-formed Lido Alliance, an initiative to drive the adoption of the stETH liquid staking token (LST).

On June 20, the Aave community passed an initial temperature check proposal to launch an instance of Aave v3 “centered around the Lido ecosystem.”

“Aave and Lido have seen symbiotic growth historically, with stETH being one of the top collaterals on Aave and leveraged staking being one of the most profitable use cases for both Aave DAO and Lido users,” the proposal reads. “Lido has committed incentive programs and ecosystem support for this instance in order to bootstrap liquidity and promote additional programs within the Lido Alliance.”

The proposal aims to launch a version of the Aave v3 protocol “designed and optimized to support stETH leverage loopers.” The deployment will only support wETH and Lido’s wstETH assets, with a 90% borrowing cap on wETH to ensure that stETH/wETH loops are “consistently profitable and can’t go into negative territory.”

According to DeFi Llama, Aave is the third-largest DeFi protocol with a total value locked (TVL) of $12.3 billion. StETH is the largest LST, with a TVL of $33.6 billion, accounting for 28.8% of staked Ether, according to Dune Analytics.

The price of AAVE is down 2.3% in the past 24 hours, according to The Defiant price feeds. Lido’s LDO token is up 3.2% over the same period.

Lido AllianceLido first announced plans to launch its Lido Alliance in mid-May.

The alliance aims to foster the development of infrastructure around Lido’s stETH, with a focus on restaking use cases. The alliance was formed in response to EigenLayer’s rising dominance, the pioneering Ethereum restaking protocol, which coincides with a sustained trend of heavy outflows from Lido, with users pulling $1.4 billion from the protocol in April.

However, the trend has recently reversed, with 349,920 ETH (nearly $1.23 billion) flowing into Lido over the past 30 days, according to Dune Analytics.

The Lido Alliance quickly spawned a competing restaking ecosystem, utilizing the Symbiotic protocol. On June 13, Lido announced that Mellow, a Symbiotic-based liquid restaking protocol, had joined its alliance. The news came as Symbiotic hit its initial TVL ceiling of roughly $245 million, two days after going live.

Aave to deploy on ZkSync EraThe proposal was passed alongside several other governance measures.

On June 20, the project’s community passed a governance proposal to deploy Aave v3 on ZkSync Era, a top ten Layer 2 network by TVL. The launch will mark Aave’s eighth deployment on an Ethereum scaling solution and only its second on a zkEVM network after Scroll.

“The current ARFC proposes deploying Aave V3 on zkSync to utilize the scalability and cost-effectiveness of zk-Rollups,” the proposal reads. “By integrating with zkSync, Aave can offer users faster and cheaper transactions while maintaining the security and decentralization of the Ethereum mainnet.”

ZkSync Era is the fifth-largest L2 with a TVL of $1.38 billion — which surged 85% in the past week following ZkSync’s long-awaited airdrop. The ZK token has slid 42% since launch day to currently trade at a market cap of $686 million, according to CoinGecko.

For context, Scroll is the eighth-ranked L2 by TVL with $759 million. Besides Ethereum, Aave is already live on Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon, Base, BNB Chain, Gnosis, Avalanche, Fantom, Harmony, Scroll, and Metis.

Proposals were also approved by Aave’s community to deploy its GHO stablecoin on Arbitrum, launch USDC.e pools on Gnosis Chain, and issue a third round of funding of 600,000 GHO to the Aave Liquidity Committee over the next three months.