Aave

Aave is a pooled lending protocol. Deposit a supported asset and it joins a pool that borrowers draw from, with rates moving according to how much of the pool is currently lent out. Borrowers post collateral worth more than they take out and get liquidated if that margin thins.

It is the older design compared with the isolated markets Morpho uses, and the trade-off is legible: one shared pool means deep liquidity and simple mechanics, but every asset in it shares the same fate if something breaks. Aave V3 is the version live on Base. The protocol runs on more than twenty chains, so its Base deployment is a fraction of a much larger whole.