Aave Labs acquires Stable Finance to expand consumer DeFi push

San Francisco-based Stable Finance has acquired Aave Labs, the developer behind the Aave lending ecosystem, as the firm expands into consumer-facing onchain services.

Founded in 2023, Stable Finance mobile app allows users to deposit funds from bank accounts, cards or crypto wallets and earn stablecoin returns through re-collateralized decentralized markets.

agreement, he announced Thursday also brings Stable Finance founder Mario Baxter Cabrera and his engineering team to Aave Labs. The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Coinbase, Stablecoin, Aave — *Source:* *Spirit*

The deal signals Aave’s effort to balance retail services with its continued push into institutional markets. The protocol recently announced an integration with Maple Finance stablecoins yielding and the launch of Horizon, its institutional marketplace for tokenized assets.

Stani Kulechov, founder of Aave Labs, said the acquisition “reinforces our commitment to transform onchain finance into everyday finance”.

Aave, which launched in January 2020, has more than $37.25 billion in total value locked (TVL) as of this writing, according to data by DefiLlam.

Debate on yield-bearing stablecoins

Aave is not the first protocol or company to offer users revenue generated through overcollateralized DeFi markets and stablecoin lending strategies.

In September, Coinbase integrated DeFi borrows the Morpho protocol directly into their app, allowing customers to lend USDC and earn a return. The update gave users access to onchain lending markets that offer returns of up to 10.8%, more than double the 4.5% available through Coinbase’s standard USDC rewards program.

A similar collaboration between Crypto.com and Morpho was revealed in early October, bringing Morpho’s stablecoin lending markets to the blockchain of the Cronos exchange. The integration allows users to deposit packaged ETH into Morpho vaults and borrow stablecoins against their collateral to earn a return.

While The law of GENIUSapproved in July 2025, it bans income-bearing stablecoins, does not explicitly limit DeFi lending protocols, or prevent exchanges from offering income through onchain markets.

This loophole in regulation has caused an uproar from traditional banks, who argue that loopholes in stablecoins allow for unfair competition that could siphon off trillions in deposits from the US banking system.

But many in the crypto space see it differently. On September 16, Coinbase released a blog post arguing that “the institutions now warning of ‘systemic risk’ are the same institutions that are appropriating tens of billions in card processing fees that stablecoins could bypass entirely.”