TRON founder Justin Sun has announced a strategic $20 million USDT liquidity injection into Aave's Core V3 Market, marking a significant push to bring the leading decentralized lending protocol onto the TRON blockchain. The initiative, dubbed "DeFi United," involves both TRON and its affiliated HTX exchange providing the stablecoin injection as a show of support and to prepare the groundwork for Aave's deployment on TRON.
In an X post on April 27, 2026, Sun stated: "TRON and HTX stand together with AAVE jointly supplying $20M USDT to AAVE Core V3 Market in a show of support to bring AAVE to TRON. DeFi United!" The move is more than a simple liquidity provision; it serves as a financial bridge and symbolic alliance between major DeFi players. The supplied capital is intended to buffer slippage and ensure competitive borrowing rates once Aave goes live on TRON.
TRON, with approximately $5.3 billion in deposits, is the fifth-largest blockchain for decentralized finance, with a strong user base across Asia and developing countries. Despite its size, Aave has yet to deploy on TRON, though discussions have been ongoing since April 2025, when the Aave-Chan Initiative ran a successful vote on DAO member interest. A formal request for comment followed with feedback from risk providers like Chaos Labs and LlamaRisk, but little progress was made since.
Sun's $20 million injection comes shortly after a major security incident where North Korean hackers stole roughly $293 million from the KelpDAO protocol on April 18. The hackers deposited $200 million of stolen assets as collateral on Aave and borrowed large amounts of Ether, leaving Aave with at least $177 million in unrecoverable bad debt. A coordinated industry effort has since secured about $160 million (80%) of the needed coverage, helping plug the hole. Sun had previously urged the KelpDAO hackers to return the funds.
For HTX, the participation bridges centralized exchange liquidity with decentralized lending, facilitating capital flow across markets. The $20 million in USDT from both parties is seen as an active approach to building the network—pre-paying liquidity to ensure smooth Aave distribution on the new chain. This example underscores how major networks can attract elite protocols through direct support and investment.
