Aave’s launch on Monad is drawing attention for how quickly it hit scale, over $100 million in deposits within just 48 hours. But the speed itself isn’t the full signal. At launch, Aave supported a dozen assets, including USDC, USDT0, GHO, WETH and cbBTC, which gave users familiar collateral and borrowing options from day one.
That lineup matters, but so do the incentives behind it. The Monad Foundation put up $15 million to be distributed as rewards over the first year, and committed to buying and holding 10 million GHO for more than six months. The Aave DAO added another 500,000 GHO to the pot. Those are real incentives, and in DeFi that kind of subsidy can pull capital in fast, often faster than actual borrower demand builds up.
So, while $100 million in TVL is an achievement, it’s not a full measure of sticky adoption yet. Early deposits in incentive-heavy launches can be mercenary, with funds shuffling in to capture rewards rather than making long-term bets on usage. What comes next is more telling: whether balances hold beyond the initial rush, borrowing picks up, and GHO actually gets used as intended. For Aave, it’s a test of multichain reach; for Monad, it’s proof-of-life as a DeFi chain. The headline numbers set expectations, but real durability gets revealed by what happens after the first wave of capital.