Aave Labs said on Friday that it has acquired the team and technology behind Avon, a specialist in fixed-rate onchain lending, to help add fixed-rate loans and related market design to the Aave network. According to Aave Labs’ blog post, the deal covers Avon’s fixed-rate and floating-rate lending protocols, its onchain order book, domains and related assets. Financial terms were not disclosed. Fixed-rate markets on Aave are described as a capability to be built, not as products already live.
Prince Sinha and Ayush Kaul are joining Aave Labs’ engineering team, and Omar el-Ashaal is joining business development. The Block reported, citing a statement shared Friday, that the Avon team will initially work on fixed-rate lending. Aave Labs is a core contributor in a network governed by the Aave DAO; the buyer is the Labs entity, not a DAO treasury purchase described in the post.
What Avon built
Avon was founded by Prince Sinha. The Aave post says the team built fixed-rate and floating-rate lending markets and a purpose-built onchain order book for new structures in decentralized credit, with work on interest-rate pricing, risk isolation and more sophisticated credit products. “The Avon team will continue developing this technology in the Aave ecosystem under Aave Labs,” the company said.
Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of Aave Labs, said: “Aave’s goal is to bring the best of finance to everyone, and that means offering the kinds of products users already rely on, including fixed rates.” He added that the Avon team has “spent time working on some of the hardest problems in onchain lending” and will help bring Aave to institutions, fintechs and everyday users.
Sinha said: “Aave has led onchain lending for years, and joining Aave Labs is an exciting opportunity to work on what we do best.” “We started Avon to bring the depth of global credit markets onchain, and Aave is the best place to continue that work, where it can reach institutions, fintechs, and everyday users at scale.”
Why fixed rates matter — and the deposit figures
Most Aave borrowing today uses floating rates that move with utilization. Fixed-rate loans lock in a cost of capital for a term, which matters to institutions, fintech partners and borrowers who need a set payment rather than a rate that can jump when demand spikes. That is also why fixed-rate DeFi has been hard: matching term liquidity, pricing risk and isolating bad debt are non-trivial. Smaller fixed-rate venues have struggled; AltcoinReporter previously covered Term Finance’s $8.5 million loss after an attacker bought control of the protocol, a reminder that fixed-rate market design and governance both carry risk.
Scale claims in Friday’s materials do not all match. In the acquisition section of its blog, Aave Labs said Aave is “the largest onchain lending network, with more than $33 billion in deposits and more than $13 billion in active loans.” In the same page’s About Aave Labs blurb, it said Aave has “more than $30 billion in net deposits.” The Block, working from a statement shared Friday, wrote that Aave has more than $30 billion in deposits and over $12 billion in active loans. The company did not explain the gap between “deposits,” “net deposits” and the two loan figures.
A live check of DefiLlama’s Aave page for this article showed about $16.2 billion in total value locked and about $11.8 billion in active loans. DefiLlama defines TVL as coins held in the protocol’s contracts and excludes borrowed amounts, so that TVL figure is not the same metric as Aave Labs’ “deposits” or “net deposits” lines and does not resolve the company’s $33 billion / $30 billion gap. The borrowed total sits nearer The Block’s “over $12 billion” loans figure than the blog’s $13 billion. Treat the dashboard as a cross-check with different labels, not a substitute for Aave’s own wording.
Labs, the DAO and what to watch
Aave Labs builds products including Aave App, Aave Pro, Aave Kit and Aave Horizon, the last described as an institutional platform for borrowing stablecoins against tokenized real-world assets. The network itself is governed by the Aave DAO, where AAVE holders vote on network and treasury changes. That separation matters for readers tracking whether new markets need DAO parameter votes once Labs ships code.
AltcoinReporter has covered other Aave network moves this year, including a proposal to deprecate 50 reserves and exit six chains in a $98 million cleanup and the rollout of Aavenomics 3.0 with automated AAVE buybacks. Those pieces were about risk and tokenomics, not fixed rates; Friday’s deal is about expanding loan types.
What to watch next is whether Aave Labs publishes a timeline for fixed-rate markets, whether the Avon order book appears in a public test environment, and whether Aave DAO forums take up parameter or deployment votes. Until then, treat fixed-rate lending on Aave as planned work, not a live product launch. The purchase price remains undisclosed.
FAQ
What did Aave Labs buy? The team and technology behind Avon, including fixed-rate and floating-rate lending protocols, an onchain order book, domains and related assets. Terms were not disclosed.
Are fixed-rate loans live on Aave now? No. Aave Labs said the Avon team will help build capabilities such as fixed-rate lending; The Block said that work is the initial focus. The posts do not describe live fixed-rate markets on Aave.
How big is Aave? Aave Labs’ blog cites more than $33 billion in deposits and more than $13 billion in active loans in one section, and more than $30 billion in net deposits in another. The Block cited more than $30 billion in deposits and over $12 billion in loans. DefiLlama showed about $16.2 billion TVL and about $11.8 billion borrowed when checked for this story; its TVL definition is not the same as Aave’s deposit wording.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
