ether.fi Ties Up with Aave and Optimism for $500m Lending Capacity
ether.fi has partnered with Aave and Optimism to expand its lending capacity for the ether.fi Cash Visa card. The three-way infrastructure partnership aims to reach $500 million in lending capacity by 2027, up from approximately $22 million currently outstanding across its cardholder base.
The company will deploy a dedicated Aave V4 lending instance on Optimism's OP Mainnet, which provides the execution layer for near-instant settlement at a commercially viable price point. This arrangement allows consumer card spending to meet the demand for sub-hundred-dollar transactions.
Mike Silagadze, founder and CEO of ether.fi, stated that Aave and Optimism are the right partners to help scale from tens of millions to half a billion dollars in lending capacity. He added that this partnership makes it possible for anyone holding digital assets to use them like real financial capital without ever having to sell.
The credit-against-crypto model used by ether.fi Cash sits in a structurally interesting position in the payments landscape, competing with other crypto card issuers and collateralised lending products offered by centralised exchanges. The distinction ether.fi stresses is non-custodial ownership, where cardholders retain full ownership of their digital assets while drawing credit against them.