Summary
Aave's Stable Vaults use a two-chain architecture: an Accounting Chain (handles deposits, withdrawals, share accounting, surplus tracking) and one or more Earning Chains (host yield strategies, send balance snapshots via Chainlink oracle). An off-chain system monitors protocol state and submits rebalance and bridge transactions. This contrasts with Morpho's vault model where curators directly allocate across isolated lending markets. Aave's vaults support per-user rates, allowing partners to differentiate returns by customer tier. The key technical difference: Aave vaults convert variable DeFi rates into fixed rates for end users, absorbing the swings, while Morpho vaults pass through variable rates. Aave's architecture uses a two-step withdrawal flow (request phase mints IOU tokens, execution phase applies fees) and gates interest by the system's trusted surplus.
Key Points
- Aave architecture: Accounting Chain + Earning Chains + off-chain rebalancing
- Morpho architecture: isolated markets + curator vaults with direct allocation
- Aave: converts variable rates to fixed rates for end users
- Morpho: passes through variable rates from underlying markets
- Aave supports per-user rates for partner differentiation
- Aave two-step withdrawal: request (IOU tokens) + execution (fee application)
- Interest gated by system's trusted surplus
- Aave: $3.46T lifetime deposits, $88.44B monthly volume
- Morpho: $7.2B TVL vs Aave $12.2B TVL (June 2026)
- Morpho premium over Aave: 100-300bps when borrow demand is rich, compresses to ~50bps when thin