📝 Editor’s Note:

Welcome to OurNetwork's latest, an onchain look at some of crypto's top lending protocols. Below we have Chaos Labs digging into Aave, DeFi's largest protocol by total value locked. Integrations with Ethena and Pendle have been particularly instrumental in Aave's recent growth.

We also have Seoul Data Labs, checking out Spark, a spinoff from MakerDAO which has entered the top 10 DeFi protocols by TVL. Miguel dropped in to cover Euler's growth story and Ayham chronicled Silo's recent rise on the Sonic blockchain.

– ON Editorial Team

Aave | Spark | Euler | Silo

• Aave is a decentralized, non-custodial protocol that enables users to lend and borrow crypto assets permissionlessly. Aave has over $58B in TVL across Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Avalanche, and Base deployments. Ethereum remains the dominant network for Aave, adding over $24B in TVL and accounting for over 85% of all growth during this period. Base nearly doubled its TVL with a 93% increase, marking the most substantial growth among Layer 2s.

• Pendle's PT tokens have amassed $3.2B in TVL on Aave, driven by Ethena-related assets and powered by Chaos Labs’ dynamic risk oracle, which enables real-time pricing and collateral adjustments to protect capital and support market efficiency.

• Ethena's sUSDe & USDe have seen sharp growth, driven by liquid leverage strategies on Aave. Users can supply a 50-50 sUSDe–USDe position, borrow against it, and recursively loop to amplify exposure, capturing the full staking yield. This dynamic has fueled demand for both assets.

• Spark, MakerDAO’s flagship lending protocol, is a key piece of MakerDAO's Endgame plan to restructure the DAO into multiple subDAOs. The protocol is showing strong signs of resurgence, alongside a sharp rally in its governance token, SPK, which is up nearly 80% year-over-year. After dipping below $2B in April 2025 amid a broader market downturn and deleveraging, Spark has steadily recovered. As of early August, its TVL has reached $4.3B, trending back toward its previous all-time high.

• Spark’s collateral mix is heavily weighted toward liquid staking assets. wstETH (Lido's wrapped liquid staked ETH) leads by a wide margin, accounting for 45.2% of total supply with nearly $3B deposited. Wrapped ETH (WETH) follows with just over $1B in deposits.

• Despite having the largest share of supply, wstETH utilization sits at just 0.74%. In contrast, WETH shows strong demand with a 90% utilization rate and nearly $970M borrowed, which accounts for 45.8% of all outstanding borrows.

• Announced in May, EulerSwap, is a new decentralized exchange combining lending, swapping, and leverage. Built on Euler’s lending infrastructure and integrated with Uniswap v4, it lets liquidity providers (LPs) earn yield, borrow against positions, and deepen liquidity with less capital. Still in beta, EulerSwap hit $1B in volume in 29 days and $1.8B in under 2 months. The UI is now live too.

• Euler crosses $1B in borrows, driven by stablecoin demand across Yield USDC ($142M), RLUSD ($61M), and Prime USDT ($33M). Utilization now exceeds 54%, a clear sign that Euler’s modular design and capital efficiency are working at scale.

• In July, Avalanche ($1.07M), Unichain ($489k), and BNB Chain ($235k) pushed fees to $4.29M. Avalanche even outpaced Ethereum in revenue ($174k vs $125k), though Ethereum still led in fee generation with a strong $1.98M showing.

• Silo followed a non-linear growth trajectory with distinct peaks and troughs from successfully targeting narratives followed by a refractory period as the main hype fades. Of note, the 2024 peak can be attributed to crvUSD ($223M; 58% TVL share) and Pendle PT-ETH ($142M; 37% TVL share) alignment while the 2025 peak can be attributed to Sonic dominance. Refractory periods have also decreased significantly with rapid diversification to new chains from the 2025 peak.

• Silo v2's deployment on Sonic saw rapid dominance of v2 vs. v1 liquidity, with Silo v2 achieving 73.9% TVL share 1 month from deployment. Liquidity migrations have been sustained with current v2 TVL share at 95.4% while total TVL continues to trend upwards.

• Monthly volumes have grown disproportionately relative to TVL growth. TVL grew 73% with volume growing by 375%. This indicates that liquidity is deeper and more efficiently utilized. This is likely attributable to a higher share of yield-bearing assets with greater propensity to borrow.