Aave v2 launches liquidity mining program targeting stablecoin borrowers

Aave has launched liquidity mining incentives for its v2 protocol, paying out governance token rewards exceeding 20% to users who borrow stablecoins. 

At the time of writing, users who deposit stablecoins into the protocol can earn an addition yield of between 4.78% and 13.49% on top of their regular gains in the form of staked AAVE (stkAAVE) tokens. Wrapped Bitcoin deposits are also paying an extra 4.59%, while Ether deposits are garnering 2.11% in rewards.

However, the highest rewards appear to be going to stablecoin borrowers, who are currently receiving rewards of between 5.15% and 22.05%

AIP-16 received overwhelming ‘yea’ votes from the community and has officially been executed. This proposal, created by @paraficapital, introduces liquidity mining incentives for Aave V2 ⛏️️https://t.co/ewa2Yvlc3w pic.twitter.com/s7xgz21eZ8

— Aave (@AaveAave) April 26, 2021

The liquidity mining program was passed through a governance vote on April 24, with 2,200 staked AAVE (stkAAVE) set to be distributed to lenders and borrowers until July 15, worth roughly $880,000 at current prices. The program will be reviewed in July.

More than two-thirds of rewards have been designated to the USDC and USDT markets, with the remaining 32.5% being distributed among Aave’s DAI, ETH, wBTC, and GUSD markets. Aave stated:

“AIP 16 increases the liquidity in the Aave Ecosystem Reserve, which can be used to fund grants, devs, and builders through a community-led grants programme.”

Aave said they wanted to reward stable tokens more to discourage risky borrowing and boost stablecoin liquidity.

With roughly 40% of Aave’s TVL still locked in its version one iteration, the v2 rewards campaign is also intended to migrate users to its updated protocol. “By introducing liquidity mining rewards only on Aave v2, liquidity providers and borrowers will naturally migrate toward the optimized version,” Aave said.

The program follows the success of liquidity mining rewards incentivizing users to explore Aave’s deployment on Layer-two scaling solution, Polygon (previously known as Matic). An April 25 tweet noted that Aave’s Polygon deployment had surpassed $1 billion in TVL and 7,200 users within ten days after its launch according to a tweet on April 25.

According to DeFi Llama, Aave is currently the sixth-largest DeFi protocol with a TVL of roughly $7.5 billion.