Aave Labs has introduced Horizon, an institutional-grade lending platform that allows qualified investors to borrow stablecoins against tokenized real-world assets. The service extends Aave’s decentralized finance infrastructure to professional counterparties seeking round-the-clock, on-chain liquidity. At launch, institutions can post tokenized U.S. Treasuries, AAA-rated collateralized loan obligations and selected equity funds—among them VanEck’s short-term Treasury ETF VBILL—as collateral. Borrowers receive stablecoins including Circle’s USDC, Aave’s own GHO and Ripple USD (RLUSD), enabling uses from short-term treasury management to DeFi yield strategies. The platform is secured by Chainlink’s SmartData feeds, beginning with NAVLink to provide real-time net asset values for collateral and with plans to add Proof-of-Reserve verification. Asset-tokenization specialists Securitize and Centrifuge are supplying the initial pool of securities, and early deposits exceeded US$10 million within minutes of the service going live. Horizon marks a push by one of DeFi’s largest protocols—holding roughly US$62 billion in net deposits—into the fast-growing RWA segment, which analysts estimate has already tokenized about US$26 billion of traditional assets. By combining compliance features with automated settlement, Aave aims to offer institutions a transparent alternative to conventional repo and credit markets.