Pseudonymous Wallet Deposits $128.8 Million USDC Into Aave V3 on May 31

Verified on-chain data shows a pseudonymous Ethereum wallet deposited nearly $128.8 million in USDC into Aave V3 on May 31, adding a large block of stablecoin liquidity to one of decentralized finance’s biggest lending protocols.

Records on Etherscan and Whale Alert show the transaction occurred at 00:13:11 UTC and sent 128,791,822.781167 USDC from Ethereum address 0x56957E411Ea83a0B4A0689C1fB0D1e5eA0d20149 to the contract Etherscan labels “Aave: USDC V3.” The transaction hash is 0x42994b65a8dd8f06d854d35c8a1a74c3878e4bb579e98336f9b65d1b74f94cc9.

The on-chain record shows this was not just a large wallet transfer. Etherscan says the transaction called Aave Pool V3’s supply() function, and the logs show the sender received Aave’s interest-bearing aToken in return. In Aave’s words, “Suppliers, also known as liquidity providers, supply their cryptocurrency into Aave’s liquidity pools.” In practice, that means the USDC was deposited into Aave’s lending pool.

That distinction matters because a slightly different figure circulated in alert posts tied to the transfer. The original lead referenced 128,831,088 USDC, but that exact amount could not be independently matched in the on-chain records reviewed. The closest verified single transaction is the May 31 deposit of 128,791,822.781167 USDC. Whale Alert’s page for that transaction described it as “128,791,822 #USDC (128,837,157 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to #Aave.”

The size of the deposit is material, though not unprecedented for Aave. DeFiLlama showed Aave’s total value locked, or the amount of crypto deposited across the protocol, at about $13.86 billion across chains when checked. Its Ethereum Aave V3 market accounted for more than $11.26 billion. Against that backdrop, a roughly $128.8 million USDC supply is significant but does not radically change the scale of the platform on its own.

The same wallet made a similar deposit four days earlier. On May 27 at 00:12:35 UTC, records show it supplied 128,634,066.768382 USDC to Aave V3 in transaction 0x8c8b62171cff85971cd7484e58ebc2d90d4fbdf03445f17cf1c8d9efbfa8704b. Whale Alert also published multiple May alerts showing transfers between the same wallet and Aave in the roughly $128 million to $150 million range.

Those repeated nine-figure moves suggest an ongoing liquidity or yield strategy, but on-chain data alone does not show the wallet owner’s motive. The address is labeled “Unknown Whale 1” by Whale Alert, but there is no verified public identity attached to it.

Aave is one of the largest DeFi lending protocols, letting users deposit tokens such as USDC into shared liquidity pools and receive interest-bearing tokens in return. The protocol drew added scrutiny in April after a major exploit-related drop in total value locked, making unusually large stablecoin deposits more closely watched. Public blockchain records, however, identify only the transactions — not the person or entity behind this wallet.