Summary
LlamaRisk supports onboarding USAT to Aave V3 Core on Ethereum and to the Aave V4 Core Hub as a borrowable, non-collateral reserve priced at a hardcoded $1 as an initial configuration. USAT is a fiat-backed US-dollar stablecoin issued by Anchorage Digital Bank, N.A., a national trust bank chartered by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, with Tether supplying the Hadron tokenization platform as technology partner. Reserves are US-dollar cash and reverse repurchase agreements collateralized by US Treasury securities, held in a segregated fiduciary trust at Anchorage and attested monthly by Deloitte & Touche LLP since January 31, 2026, with every report to date showing reserves above tokens outstanding.
On-chain depth is one Curve USAT/USDT pool of about $10M, therefore Anchorage’s A1 desk is the primary flow venue which swaps USAT and USDT 1:1 in both directions with no size limit for onboarded clients, settling same day to T+1. Custody sits with one broker-dealer counterparty and one cash institution, neither named in the public attestation. The HadronToken source carries two third-party audits, OtterSec in October 2024 and ChainSecurity in November 2024. A bug bounty is live over the contract surface, but upgrade authority and every privileged function sit with one 3-of-5 multisig with no timelock and no pause lever.
With collateralization disabled and the price hardcoded, transient depegs cannot cause liquidations and the caps keep Aave’s exposure within a small multiple of what a liquidator can source at par. A timelock and role separation over the owning multisig, and publication of the audit reports reconciled to the deployed commit, are the gaps to be closed before widening the listing, in line with Aave’s Risk Framework. A collateral path is gated on a robust Chainlink USAT/USD feed but is not a precondition for this borrow-only listing.
The full assessment can be found in its corresponding thread.
Aave V3 Specific Parameters
Recommended Parameters
| Parameter | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Borrowable | Yes |
| Collateral Enabled | No |
| Supply Cap | 20,000,000 USAT |
| Borrow Cap | 18,000,000 USAT |
| LTV | 0% |
| LT | 0% |
| Liquidation Bonus | 0% |
| Liquidation Protocol Fee | 0% |
| Reserve Factor | 10% |
| Base Variable Borrow Rate | 0% |
| Variable Slope 1 | 4.4% |
| Variable Slope 2 | 20% |
| Uoptimal | 90% |
| E-Modes | None |
| Flashloan Enabled | No |
Oracle
We recommend listing USAT against a hardcoded $1 price adapter.
The liquidator carries the same exposure from the other side. A liquidator repays USAT debt that Aave values at $1 with USAT bought at market, so a premium over par comes out of the liquidation bonus, and a pool with no USAT left stalls the liquidation until the market maker or an onboarded arbitrageur refills it. On the other hand, a discount in USAT price would lead to a liquidator buying USAT below the $1 the debt is valued at and let them keep the difference on top of the bonus. Since May 9, 2026 the premium has not exceeded 1.5 bps, and the 89 bps excursion on March 12, 2026 lasted three hours. A 5M purchase from the Curve pool never cost more than 6 bps over the window, and the pool’s USAT side, between 5.2M and 8.4M over that period, is the most a liquidator can buy in one transaction.
Aave V4 Specific Parameters
We recommend adding USAT to the Aave V4 Core Hub as a borrow-only reserve on the Main Spoke, with collateral status withheld and no credit line extended from another hub.
Spoke Parameters
| Hub | Spoke | Reserve | Collateral Factor | Max Liquidation Bonus | Borrowable | Collateral Risk | Liquidation Fee | riskPremiumThreshold | receiveShares |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core Hub | Main Spoke | USAT | 0.00% | - | TRUE | - | - | 0 | TRUE |
Add and Draw Caps
| Hub | Spoke | Reserve | Add Cap | Draw Cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core Hub | Main Spoke | USAT | 5,000,000 | 4,000,000 |
Interest Rate Model
| Parameter | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Optimal Usage Ratio | 90% |
| Base Drawn Rate | 0% |
| Rate Growth Before Optimal | 4.4% |
| Rate Growth After Optimal | 20% |
| Liquidity Fee | 10% |
Oracle
We recommend listing USAT against a hardcoded $1 price adapter. With no robust Chainlink USAT/USD aggregator deployed and the only meaningful on-chain venue a single Curve pool, a market feed would carry that pool’s composition swings into the borrow side.
Disclaimer
This review was independently prepared by LlamaRisk, a DeFi risk service provider funded in part by the Aave DAO. LlamaRisk is not directly affiliated with the protocol(s) reviewed in this assessment and did not receive any compensation from the protocol(s) or their affiliated entities for this work.
The information provided should not be construed as legal, financial, tax, or professional advice.