Over the weekend, the Aave DAO successfully launched the GHO stablecoin on the Ethereum mainnet.
The dollar-pegged stablecoin was proposed in July 2022 as a way to allow users to mint GHO by supplying crypto collateral to Aave v3 in a similar system to MakerDAO’s DAI.
The team said GHO was slightly different from other stablecoins because repaid interest on it is redirected to the Aave DAO treasury, adding:
“This supports the sustainability of the protocol and the ongoing development of new features.”
It added that AAVE token stakers would get a discount for minting GHO. According to the official website, 2.2 million have already been minted on Ethereum. However, at the time of writing, the stablecoin was trading just below its peg at $0.992, according to CoinGecko.
Aave explained that minting GHO requires “Facilitators” that are approved and governed by Aave Governance. “Governance-approved facilitators will be able to mint up to a specified amount of GHO agreed upon by the DAO,” it added.
Furthermore, the multi-collateral token can be minted with any collateral on the Aave v3 protocol.
Aave’s native token of the same name was trading flat on the day at $77.51 but has gained 10% over the past week.
GHO is entering an already crowded stablecoin market, with one player commanding the lion’s share of it.
The stablecoin market is currently worth around $128 billion, which represents about 10% of the total crypto market capitalization.
Tether is the dominant player with a 65% market share and $83.7 billion USDT in circulation. Its supply has grown by 27% since the beginning of 2023 as its U.S. treasury collateral has made a steady income.
Conversely, rival stablecoin issuer Circle has seen its supply of USDC decline by 38% over the same period as regulatory pressure in the United States mounts.
USDC has a market share of 21%, with $27.3 billion in circulation. The third largest stablecoin in the market is DAI, with $4.3 billion.