So @StaniKulechov wants Aave V4 to go after the securities lending market.

Let users deposit tokenized equities like AAPL and TSLA as collateral, and capture the yield that prime brokers currently keep for themselves.
~$35B in annual revenue against $4.6T in lendable assets. That's the market.
Today, prime brokers sit in the middle, manage the collateral, and retain a large share of the lending fee before passing the rest back. No real-time visibility. No liquidity access outside market hours.
V4's hub-and-spoke architecture changes the flow:
1️⃣ A tokenized equity gets deposited into an isolated spoke with its own LTV parameters and oracle feeds
2️⃣ Borrow interest flows directly to the depositor and Aave's reserve
3️⃣ The depositor can borrow GHO against their equity collateral without selling the position
The part that convinced me this is executable rather than theoretical is Horizon. @aave's institutional RWA market is already doing this for tokenized Treasuries.
$450M+ in net deposits and still climbing, with more RWA partners coming live. VanEck's VBILL, Centrifuge, and Superstate are live as collateral. Partners include Securitize, WisdomTree, Hamilton Lane, and Circle. The rails exist and they're being used.
On the tokenized equity side, supply is building fast.
🔸 Ondo Global Markets: growing toward $1B+ in AUM across 200+ assets
🔸 Backed Finance (xStocks): $193.7M, 74 stocks including AAPLx and TSLAx
🔸 Robinhood: 200+ US stocks tokenized for EU customers on Arbitrum
🔸 xStocks Alliance: $12B+ in trading volume, 47,000 unique wallets by early 2026
The SEC clarified in December 2025 that broker-dealers can custody tokenized equities. The DTCC Russell 1000 pilot, expected H2 2026, is the next regulatory step.
@GHO ties it together. Every institution that borrows GHO against equity collateral puts that GHO to work across the Stability Module, sGHO staking, and DEX pools. 1 GHO minted generates roughly 10x the protocol revenue of 1 USD borrowed on Aave.
What's interesting here isn't just the multiplier - it's that every new tokenized equity spoke compounds this flywheel further. More collateral types → more GHO demand → more surfaces generating revenue simultaneously.
$23B in liquidity. 61.5% of DeFi's active loan market share.
The yield was always there. Prime brokers just had the only venue worth using. Until now.
@aixbit thoughts?