GHO

Overview

GHO comes into existence when someone borrows it. A user posts collateral in an Aave V3 market, borrows GHO against that collateral, and the token is minted at that moment. Repaying the loan burns it.

Aave's documentation defines it as "a decentralised, over-collateralised stablecoin that is fully backed, transparent, and native to the Aave Protocol", pegged to the US dollar. It is governed by Aave DAO, which controls every parameter that sets how much can exist.

Minting runs through facilitators, contracts approved by Aave Governance and assigned a bucketCapacity that caps how much GHO each may mint. Four are listed: the Aave V3 Ethereum market, the CCIP cross-chain facilitator, the GHO Stability Module, and the flash minter.

Sources: Aave Protocol Documentation, GHO ecosystem overview, Aave help centre, What are GHO facilitators?, Aave help centre, GHO Stablecoin

Backing and reserves

What stands behind it

GHO has no bank account and no custodian. Its backing is collateral posted by borrowers inside Aave lending markets. Aave states the requirement plainly: "The collateral supplied is greater than the value of the stablecoins issued."

What is not published

Aave's GHO documentation does not publish a breakdown of which collateral assets back the outstanding supply. It does not publish the current bucket level of each facilitator either. Both values sit in contract state.

What the audits cover

The gho-origin repository lists security reviews by OpenZeppelin, ABDK, Certora, Sigma Prime and independent reviewer Emanuele Ricci, dated between August 2022 and September 2024. Aave's security page names the GHO items directly, including Sigma Prime's "GHO Smart Contract Security Assessment Report" of 6 July 2023 and its "GHO Stability Module Contract Review" of 23 October 2023. These are smart contract audits, not reserve attestations.

Sources: Aave help centre, GHO Stablecoin (overcollateralisation wording), Aave security page, audit register, aave-dao/gho-origin repository, audit list

Peg behaviour

The borrow rate on GHO is set by Aave governance, not by pool utilisation. GHO Stewards, created in April 2024, hold that lever. Aave's documentation describes them as members from Growth (ACI), Risk (ChaosLabs), and Finance (TokenLogic and karpatkey) Service Providers operating "a 3 of 4 multi-sig".

The trigger is a price band. If the trailing 30-day average price of GHO stays outside a range of $0.995 to $1.005, the stewards may adjust the borrow rate by no more than 500bps per two-day period, up to a maximum of 25% APR.

The second lever is the GHO Stability Module, which mints and burns GHO against USDC and USDT at predetermined ratios. DIA's own registry records GHO at about $0.998 on Ethereum.

Sources: Aave Protocol Documentation, GHO Stewards and Stability Module

Risks

The collateral is Aave's collateral

GHO's backing is whatever the Aave V3 Ethereum market accepts from borrowers, priced by that market's oracles and unwound by its liquidation logic.

Who can mint

Two roles govern supply. FACILITATOR_MANAGER_ROLE adds and removes facilitators. BUCKET_MANAGER_ROLE sets the bucketCapacity of existing ones.

Off-Ethereum supply depends on one bridge

Aave's developer documentation states that "All GHO tokens are originated on Ethereum mainnet." Balances on Arbitrum, Base, Avalanche and the other approved networks are minted by Chainlink CCIP against a lock on mainnet.

Peg defence is a governance action

The rate lever fires on a 30-day average, and it moves at most 500bps every two days.

Sources: Aave Protocol Documentation, GHO facilitator roles and steward parameters, Aave Protocol Documentation, GHO developer reference and cross-chain design

What this map tracks

What the map reads

The Global Stablecoin Map tracks GHO on Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base and Avalanche, and records it as a crypto-backed stablecoin. Supply, price and holder count are DIA's own first-party registry data: about 699 million GHO outstanding, roughly $698 million at a price of about $0.998, held across about 7,900 addresses. All of the tracked supply sits on Ethereum. The Ethereum token contract is 0x40D16FC0246aD3160Ccc09B8D0D3A2cD28aE6C2f.

What falls outside the map

Aave's developer documentation lists nine networks for GHO: Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Avalanche, Gnosis, Mantle, Monad, Plasma and XLayer. Five of those fall outside this map, so GHO held on Gnosis, Mantle, Monad, Plasma or XLayer is not counted in the figures above. Every coin in the map can be compared side by side in the stablecoin explorer.

What is not tracked

Facilitator bucket levels and the composition of the collateral behind each borrowed GHO are not tracked.

Sources: Aave Protocol Documentation, GHO deployed networks and contract addresses, Blockscout Ethereum API, GHO token contract

Common questions