Spark scores 9 points above Aave, led by oracle liquidation price, blast radius, and rate authorship. Spark ranks #2 and Aave #8 of 8 published lending & borrowing. Every term of the gap is on the ledger below; the inputs are on the audit receipt.
Spark80
vs
AAAave71
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99 · ranks #2 and #8 of 8
Spark scores 9 points above Aave, led by oracle liquidation price, blast radius, and rate authorship.
Spark #2 of 880
AAAave #8 of 871
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99; a bar is empty at 41 and full at 99.
Why, term by termSpark leads on 3 of 4 published criteria; Aave on 0. The terms sum to the gap.
TermSparkAaveWeightPoints
Oracle liquidation price8/106/107.7+4.0for Spark+2.0 of 32
Blast radius8/106/105.8+3.0for Spark+1.5 of 32
Rate authorship10/109/105.8+1.5for Spark+0.8 of 32
Net of the terms+8.5
Criteria roundingThe criteria block is rounded to whole points before it is spread+0.1
Reproduced gap+8.6
Published gapAfter score rounding and bounds — see the note below8071+9.0
Weight is in points of the 86-point weighted total. Points are score points of the gap between the two.
SparkScore 80SparkLend is an Ethereum-only Aave v3 fork run as Sky's in-house money market: prices come from a three-oracle median of RedStone, Chainlink and Chronicle with a Uniswap TWAP as last resort, your deposit is never re-routed by a curator, and the borrow rate is an immutable per-reserve IRM — SSR-anchored on the stablecoin reserves — that Sky governance can only change by redeploying the contract.Strength: Rate authorship — 10/10Watch-out: Read the oracle-type field on your collateral in the app before you post it, and read the liquidity line before you supply. SparkLend does not price every asset at market: 'stablecoins such as USDS and DAI use a fixed price of 1.00 USD, which does not deviate even if the asset's market price moves away from this value' (https://docs.spark.fi/products/sparklend/guides/oracles). If you post USDS or DAI as collateral, a real-world depeg will not move your health factor at all — and the peg-ratio killswitch that exists for exactly this failure covers only 'wstETH, rETH, weETH, cbBTC, WBTC, LBTC', not the fixed-price stablecoins (https://docs.spark.fi/products/sparklend). USDS is issued by Sky, whose governance both sets that $1.00 constant and authors your borrow rate, so the protection and the exposure share a controller. Second, the USDC supply rate you are being shown was deliberately engineered by thinning the withdrawal buffer, and Spark's own risk body said so before the vote: 'At 98% utilization, only about 2% of supplied USDC is immediately available before new deposits, repayments, liquidations, or other liquidity sources are needed. Withdrawals become more fragile', and 'The proposal improves the displayed supply rate by accepting a thinner liquidity buffer' (Spark Risk Council, 2026-06-22, https://forum.skyeco.com/t/july-2-2026-proposed-changes-to-spark-for-upcoming-spell/27982).AaveScore 71The reference shared-pool money market: it publishes the loss waterfall, the risk-steward mandate and its own incident arithmetic in more detail than anyone in the category, and publishes no deviation threshold or heartbeat anywhere for the price that actually liquidates you.Strength: Rate authorship — 9/10Watch-out: Read the April 2026 rsETH incident report before you supply anything to a WETH reserve — https://governance.aave.com/t/rseth-incident-report-april-20-2026/24580 — but read it together with its 2026-05-09 sequel, because the outcome was better than the report's models. An exploit entirely outside Aave (a 1-of-1 DVN bridge on someone else's LRT) put 89,567 rsETH ($221.39M) of collateral into Aave markets against $190.86M of WETH borrows. LlamaRisk modelled $123.7M-$230.1M of bad debt landing on ordinary WETH suppliers by reserve write-down — but those were explicitly labelled hypothetical scenarios, and per https://governance.aave.com/t/direct-to-aip-weth-unfreeze-and-ltv-restoration-across-aave-v3-instances/24878 the attacker's Aave positions were liquidated on 2026-05-06, all 89,567 rsETH was recovered, and the residual was covered by the DeFi United coalition. What you should still price is the machinery the event exposed, which has not changed: the Umbrella backstop covers Ethereum Core only and was PAUSED rather than drawn, so an Arbitrum, Base or Mantle supplier has no backstop at all; every affected WETH reserve sat at 100% utilisation with "idle balances below $20 on every chain", meaning a supplier with a perfectly healthy position could not withdraw; and the collateral that caused it was priced by an oracle whose deviation threshold and heartbeat appear nowhere in Aave's 91-page documentation corpus. None of this appears on https://aave.com/security, which still says "zero bad debt".
Quick facts
At a glance
3 of 4 rows read the same for both.
FactSparkAave
PricingSnapshotSparkLend's stablecoin reserves price off the Sky Savings Rate (SSR) plus a fixed spread up to the kink, and suppliers receive the borrow interest less a 10% reserve factor; there is no deposit or curator fee. The 10 September 2026 spell proposal (https://forum.skyeco.com/t/september-10-2026-proposed-changes-to-spark-for-upcoming-spell/28208, posted 31 August 2026, fetched 28 September 2026) reads the rate on-chain at Ethereum block 25,861,675 (29 August 2026): "getVariableRateSlope1() returns 3.9594644783474038423088%, which equals the SSR of 3.4594644783474038423088% plus the 0.50% spread exactly." For USDT, the largest reserve, it cuts that spread "from 0.005e27 (+0.50%) to 0.001e27 (+0.10%)" and states the effect: "The borrow rate at the kink falls from 3.9595% to 3.5595%" and "At 95% utilisation and a 10% reserve factor that is a supply rate of about 3.04%"; at the time of posting "The live borrow rate is 3.4824% and the live supply rate 2.6186%." The same post gives the other stablecoin curves: "USDC runs a 98% kink with a +1.00% spread". These are SSR-linked and move with every SSR change and with utilisation; they are not a fixed price. The 2 July 2026 SSR figure this note previously carried is superseded.Aave charges no deposit or curator fee; suppliers earn borrower interest net of each reserve's reserve factor, and both rates float on a two-slope utilisation curve. The Interest Rate Strategy page (https://aave.com/docs/aave-v3/smart-contracts/interest-rate-strategy, fetched 28 September 2026): "Implements the calculation of the interest rates depending on the reserve state. The model of interest rate is based on two slopes" around the OPTIMAL_USAGE_RATIO kink. Aave's docs carry no live values (https://aave.com/docs/resources/parameters still shows only an SDK pointer); the numbers are published per change on the governance forum. LlamaRisk's Risk Steward post of 28 September 2026 (https://governance.aave.com/t/risk-stewards-cap-and-irm-changes-on-aave-v3-2026-09-28/25718) gives USDT on Aave V3 Core: "At the current 92.8% utilization, the post-change variable borrow rate would be 4.34% APR, down from 4.39% under the current IRM, and the supply rate would be 3.63% APR, down from 3.67%." It also states the protocol's take on one asset: "the 25% reserve factor that applies to USDe on all five reserves". Rates reprice every block with utilisation; these are point-in-time figures, not a quote.
Asset coverageEditorial——
Region fitSnapshotglobalglobal
Custody modelEditorialNon-custodial: no company holds the coinsNon-custodial: no company holds the coins
From the published criteria
Which should you pick?
Spark
80#2 of 8
Leads
Pick it when
Pick Spark if oracle liquidation price matters most — it scores 8/10 to Aave's 6/10 there (weight 32).
Strength
Rate authorship — 10/10
Tradeoff
Read the oracle-type field on your collateral in the app before you post it, and read the liquidity line before you supply. SparkLend does not price every asset at market: 'stablecoins such as USDS and DAI use a fixed price of 1.00 USD, which does not deviate even if the asset's market price moves away from this value' (https://docs.spark.fi/products/sparklend/guides/oracles). If you post USDS or DAI as collateral, a real-world depeg will not move your health factor at all — and the peg-ratio killswitch that exists for exactly this failure covers only 'wstETH, rETH, weETH, cbBTC, WBTC, LBTC', not the fixed-price stablecoins (https://docs.spark.fi/products/sparklend). USDS is issued by Sky, whose governance both sets that $1.00 constant and authors your borrow rate, so the protection and the exposure share a controller. Second, the USDC supply rate you are being shown was deliberately engineered by thinning the withdrawal buffer, and Spark's own risk body said so before the vote: 'At 98% utilization, only about 2% of supplied USDC is immediately available before new deposits, repayments, liquidations, or other liquidity sources are needed. Withdrawals become more fragile', and 'The proposal improves the displayed supply rate by accepting a thinner liquidity buffer' (Spark Risk Council, 2026-06-22, https://forum.skyeco.com/t/july-2-2026-proposed-changes-to-spark-for-upcoming-spell/27982).
AA
Aave
71#8 of 8
Pick it when
Aave leads Spark on no published criterion and no score dimension — pick it only if a fact outside the score (country, funding rail, custody) decides for you.
Strength
Rate authorship — 9/10
Tradeoff
Read the April 2026 rsETH incident report before you supply anything to a WETH reserve — https://governance.aave.com/t/rseth-incident-report-april-20-2026/24580 — but read it together with its 2026-05-09 sequel, because the outcome was better than the report's models. An exploit entirely outside Aave (a 1-of-1 DVN bridge on someone else's LRT) put 89,567 rsETH ($221.39M) of collateral into Aave markets against $190.86M of WETH borrows. LlamaRisk modelled $123.7M-$230.1M of bad debt landing on ordinary WETH suppliers by reserve write-down — but those were explicitly labelled hypothetical scenarios, and per https://governance.aave.com/t/direct-to-aip-weth-unfreeze-and-ltv-restoration-across-aave-v3-instances/24878 the attacker's Aave positions were liquidated on 2026-05-06, all 89,567 rsETH was recovered, and the residual was covered by the DeFi United coalition. What you should still price is the machinery the event exposed, which has not changed: the Umbrella backstop covers Ethereum Core only and was PAUSED rather than drawn, so an Arbitrum, Base or Mantle supplier has no backstop at all; every affected WETH reserve sat at 100% utilisation with "idle balances below $20 on every chain", meaning a supplier with a perfectly healthy position could not withdraw; and the collateral that caused it was priced by an oracle whose deviation threshold and heartbeat appear nowhere in Aave's 91-page documentation corpus. None of this appears on https://aave.com/security, which still says "zero bad debt".
Self-identify in 10 seconds
Which one is actually for you?
SparkLeads
Choose Spark if oracle liquidation price matters most
Oracle liquidation price: 8/10 against 6/10 for Aave (weight 32)
Rate authorship: 10/10 against 9/10 for Aave (weight 24)
Blast radius: 8/10 against 6/10 for Aave (weight 24)
SparkScore 80SparkLend is an Ethereum-only Aave v3 fork run as Sky's in-house money market: prices come from a three-oracle median of RedStone, Chainlink and Chronicle with a Uniswap TWAP as last resort, your deposit is never re-routed by a curator, and the borrow rate is an immutable per-reserve IRM — SSR-anchored on the stablecoin reserves — that Sky governance can only change by redeploying the contract.Strength: Rate authorship — 10/10Watch-out: Read the oracle-type field on your collateral in the app before you post it, and read the liquidity line before you supply. SparkLend does not price every asset at market: 'stablecoins such as USDS and DAI use a fixed price of 1.00 USD, which does not deviate even if the asset's market price moves away from this value' (https://docs.spark.fi/products/sparklend/guides/oracles). If you post USDS or DAI as collateral, a real-world depeg will not move your health factor at all — and the peg-ratio killswitch that exists for exactly this failure covers only 'wstETH, rETH, weETH, cbBTC, WBTC, LBTC', not the fixed-price stablecoins (https://docs.spark.fi/products/sparklend). USDS is issued by Sky, whose governance both sets that $1.00 constant and authors your borrow rate, so the protection and the exposure share a controller. Second, the USDC supply rate you are being shown was deliberately engineered by thinning the withdrawal buffer, and Spark's own risk body said so before the vote: 'At 98% utilization, only about 2% of supplied USDC is immediately available before new deposits, repayments, liquidations, or other liquidity sources are needed. Withdrawals become more fragile', and 'The proposal improves the displayed supply rate by accepting a thinner liquidity buffer' (Spark Risk Council, 2026-06-22, https://forum.skyeco.com/t/july-2-2026-proposed-changes-to-spark-for-upcoming-spell/27982).
AAAave
Aave leads Spark on no published criterion
Choose it only if something outside the published criteria decides for you — your country, a funding rail, or custody.
AaveScore 71The reference shared-pool money market: it publishes the loss waterfall, the risk-steward mandate and its own incident arithmetic in more detail than anyone in the category, and publishes no deviation threshold or heartbeat anywhere for the price that actually liquidates you.Strength: Rate authorship — 9/10Watch-out: Read the April 2026 rsETH incident report before you supply anything to a WETH reserve — https://governance.aave.com/t/rseth-incident-report-april-20-2026/24580 — but read it together with its 2026-05-09 sequel, because the outcome was better than the report's models. An exploit entirely outside Aave (a 1-of-1 DVN bridge on someone else's LRT) put 89,567 rsETH ($221.39M) of collateral into Aave markets against $190.86M of WETH borrows. LlamaRisk modelled $123.7M-$230.1M of bad debt landing on ordinary WETH suppliers by reserve write-down — but those were explicitly labelled hypothetical scenarios, and per https://governance.aave.com/t/direct-to-aip-weth-unfreeze-and-ltv-restoration-across-aave-v3-instances/24878 the attacker's Aave positions were liquidated on 2026-05-06, all 89,567 rsETH was recovered, and the residual was covered by the DeFi United coalition. What you should still price is the machinery the event exposed, which has not changed: the Umbrella backstop covers Ethereum Core only and was PAUSED rather than drawn, so an Arbitrum, Base or Mantle supplier has no backstop at all; every affected WETH reserve sat at 100% utilisation with "idle balances below $20 on every chain", meaning a supplier with a perfectly healthy position could not withdraw; and the collateral that caused it was priced by an oracle whose deviation threshold and heartbeat appear nowhere in Aave's 91-page documentation corpus. None of this appears on https://aave.com/security, which still says "zero bad debt".
Criterion by criterion
Scorecard
Published criteria · weight in points of 868 of 8 cells scored. Strength is read from the evidence file; the weight is the published one. Methodology
Oracle liquidation price
by 2 of 10weight 7.7 of 86Spark leads
Spark8/10 out of 10
Aave6/10 out of 10
Rate authorship
by 1 of 10weight 5.8 of 86Spark leads
Spark10/10 out of 10
Aave9/10 out of 10
Blast radius
by 2 of 10weight 5.8 of 86Spark leads
Spark8/10 out of 10
Aave6/10 out of 10
Shortfall record
weight 4.8 of 86Tie
Spark7/10 out of 10
Aave7/10 out of 10
Score dimensions
weights sum to 86
The published score is five dimensions, each weighted for the category. "Published criteria" is the criteria block above; the other four are the engine's own terms — availability, friction, trust record, measured data. Each bar is one side's points out of that dimension's maximum; the weight beside the name is its points of the 86-point weighted total. The published criteria above can fill 24 of the block’s 30. A weight marked “constant here” belongs to a dimension every ranked product in the category holds at the same value: it still counts in the total, and it orders nothing here.
Availabilityweight 20 of 86 · constant here
Spark14/20Aave14/20
Tie
Published criteriaweight 30 of 86
Spark19.9/30Aave16.6/30
Spark leads
Frictionweight 10 of 86 · constant here
Spark2.7/10Aave2.7/10
Tie
Trust recordweight 8 of 86 · constant here
Spark3.2/8Aave3.2/8
Tie
Measured dataweight 18 of 86 · constant here
Spark8.3/18Aave8.3/18
Tie
Decision rulePublished order
Choose Spark unless the term Aave leads on is the one you are buying.
Aave leads Spark on no published criterion and no score dimension — pick it only if a fact outside the score (country, funding rail, custody) decides for you.
The published order weighs every criterion the same way for everyone. To weigh them your way, run .
From the published order
Next best action
If this isn't your case
Other matchups worth comparing
How you can lose money here, and what the ranking scores
Control failure: a key or vote changes the rules, freezes or mints.
Scored by Who sets your rate — a utilisation curve or a curator? · 24% (Spark 10/10, Aave 9/10)
Oracle failure: a wrong price or outcome liquidates or settles a position.
Scored by What price gets you liquidated, and how far can it drift? · 32% (Spark 8/10, Aave 6/10)
Insolvency failure: the firm or issuer that owes you cannot pay.
Scored by If one market goes bad, how much of yours goes with it? · 24% (Spark 8/10, Aave 6/10)
Scored by Has it lost lender money before, and did it publish it? · 20% (Spark 7/10, Aave 7/10)
Not assessed by this ranking: Contract failure, Regulatory failure, Execution failure, Exit failure. A high place says nothing about these; the Methodology tab says what each means.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Spark scores 9 points above Aave, led by oracle liquidation price, blast radius, and rate authorship. Published scores, out of 100: Spark 80 (rank 2 of 8 lending & borrowing), Aave 71 (rank 8 of 8).
Reviewed means both products compared here was read against its sources on or after that date; every ranked category is re-read at least every 45 days. Models research, extract and parse. A deterministic engine ranks. Every quote passes an adversarial refute pass.
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