Aave may soon let users borrow against a piece of Elon Musk’s rocket company. Aave Labs has put forward a governance proposal to accept tokenized SpaceX Class A common stock, trading as SPCXc, as collateral on the protocol’s Aave V4 Equities Hub.
Risk advisory firm LlamaRisk has recommended a set of guardrails for the listing.
What the proposal actually does
The proposal was introduced on October 15, 2026. It targets the Equities Hub, a section of Aave V4 that went live on September 25, 2026.
That hub already supports tokenized shares of the so-called Magnificent Seven, the mega-cap US tech stocks. Those tokens are issued through Coinbase’s B20 standard, which brings traditional equities onchain in a form DeFi protocols can use.
SPCXc would join that lineup with a narrow job description. It would be listed as collateral-only, and the only asset users could borrow against it is USDC.
Pricing would come from Chainlink, which the hub uses for continuous price feeds to track the value of listed assets.
LlamaRisk’s numbers, translated
First, the firm suggests a 55% collateral factor. A collateral factor caps how much you can borrow relative to what you deposit. Here, every $100 of SPCXc would support at most $55 of USDC debt.
Second, it recommends a maximum liquidation bonus of 6.5%. When a loan goes underwater, liquidators repay the debt and seize collateral at a discount. That discount is the bonus, and it exists to make sure someone actually shows up to clean up bad positions.
Third, LlamaRisk proposes a collateral risk premium of 1,000 basis points, or 10 percentage points.
Fourth, is the supply cap of 37,000 SPCXc. At prevailing market prices, that works out to approximately $5.8 million.
LlamaRisk also flagged a structural limit on liquidations. Larger liquidations, according to the firm’s assessment, would depend on redemptions or derivatives hedges, meaning onchain liquidity alone may not be deep enough to absorb a big forced sale without help from offchain mechanics.
The unlock looming over everything
Timing is the reason these dials are turned so tight. SpaceX is heading into a significant share unlock, with an estimated 1.3 billion shares worth around $194 billion set to become available for sale starting October 22, 2026.
Only around 21% of SpaceX shares were previously eligible to trade, and roughly 84% are expected to unlock by early December 2026.
For Aave, the risk is straightforward. If SPCXc drops sharply while loans are outstanding, liquidators need to sell collateral fast. If there are not enough buyers onchain, the protocol could be left holding debt that its collateral no longer covers.
Why tokenized equities keep showing up in DeFi
Aave building a dedicated Equities Hub inside V4 shows the largest lending protocols are treating tokenized equities seriously. Starting with the Magnificent Seven gave the hub liquid, widely held names. Adding SpaceX pushes it toward assets with a very different trading history and a much thinner record of public price discovery.
Coinbase’s B20 standard is the plumbing that makes this possible. It gives protocols like Aave a consistent token format for equities, which matters when you are wiring them into automated lending markets.
What this means for Aave and its users
For borrowers, the proposal offers a new kind of utility. Holders of tokenized SpaceX exposure could unlock USDC liquidity without selling. The trade-off is a lower borrowing limit and a meaningful cost layer from the risk premium.
The liquidation caveat deserves the most attention. If larger liquidations genuinely rely on redemptions or derivatives hedges, then the safety of these markets depends partly on systems outside the blockchain. That is a different risk profile from crypto collateral, where liquidators can typically dump assets onchain without asking anyone’s permission.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Vivian Nguyen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.