High-profile decentralized finance protocol, Aave, has officially launched its own stablecoin, GHO, on Ethereum mainnet, following a five-month period on Ethereum’s Goerli testnet.

The update was announced by Aave’s official Twitter account on July 15, and the community's response has been positive so far.

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Just two days after the announcement, some 2.52 million GHO has already been minted, according to data from Dune Analytics. 

GHO - Under the Hood

GHO is a decentralized stablecoin, unlike USDC and USDT, which are minted and controlled by centralized companies. GHO was first approved by the Aave community in Q3 2022 and has now been in development for approximately one year.

Unlike some decentralized stablecoins, GHO can be minted using any token as collateral that is also accepted by Aave’s lending and borrowing product. What’s more, collateral used to mint GHO continues to earn yield, which Aave hopes will make GHO more attractive than other stablecoin competitors. 

Aave Protocol

Launched in 2017, originally as ‘EthLend’, Aave Protocol is the industry’s largest decentralized lending and borrowing platform. It boasts nearly $6 billion in Total Value Locked, across multiple chains, and its governance token, AAVE, holds a market capitalization of $1.1 billion at time of writing.

Over recent months and years, Aave has expanded its offering to include a decentralized social media protocol, Lens Protocol, as well as its more recently launched stablecoin, and there is already community speculation regarding how Aave’s growing suite of decentralized products will interact in the future.

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