Decentralized lending protocol Aave is preparing to consolidate its operational footprint by winding down deployments on six blockchain networks and deprecating dozens of underutilized asset reserves. Announced on July 30, 2026, by Aave founder Stani Kulechov, the governance proposal seeks to optimize protocol efficiency by retiring markets that generate insufficient revenue to cover maintenance, price feeds, and risk monitoring costs.
After a comprehensive review, Aave is deprecating 50 low adoption asset reserves across multiple deployments.
In addition, Aave is orderly winding down deployments on Sonic, Scroll, zkSync, Metis, Soneium, and Aptos, covering another 25 asset reserves.
As part of this process,…
— Stani (@StaniKulechov) July 30, 2026
In total, the proposed measures cover approximately $98.1 million in supplied assets and $15.6 million in outstanding debt across 11 Aave deployments.
Streamlining Low-Activity Deployments
The proposal outlines a complete wind-down of Aave deployments across six smaller networks: Sonic, Scroll, zkSync, Metis, Soneium, and Aptos. Together, these six complete deployments account for 25 reserves holding $12.8 million in supplied assets and $4.1 million in active debt.
Deposits on these networks have experienced steep declines over the past six months. Sonic represents the largest affected deployment, with $7.6 million supplied and $2.7 million borrowed despite a 74% drop in deposits. Meanwhile, liquidity on Scroll dropped 86% to $2.2 million, and zkSync fell 88% to $844,000. Metis, Soneium, and Aptos recorded similar contractions, with Aptos liquidity dropping 94% to $1.7 million. Risk provider LlamaRisk concluded that maintaining price feeds and operational infrastructure on these chains generates too little revenue to justify ongoing costs.
Beyond whole-network closures, the proposal targets 50 individual low-adoption reserves and 21 matured Pendle principal tokens across larger deployments. These targeted removals represent $85.3 million in supply and $11.5 million in debt, focusing primarily on low-use collateral, older bridged tokens, and duplicate assets like legacy bridged USDC variants. The largest affected single positions are the FBTC and eBTC wrappers on Ethereum, which hold $16.3 million in combined supply but only $63,000 in borrowing.
Phased Exit Mechanics and Risk Management
To ensure an orderly unwinding process, Aave will implement structured risk controls rather than forcing immediate liquidation. Affected reserves will initially be frozen, with supply and borrowing caps set to one unit. Existing positions can remain open initially, but users will be unable to deposit fresh funds, expand debt, or post affected assets as new collateral.
For markets scheduled for complete closure, the reserve factor will be increased to 99% alongside a 5% base borrowing rate, directing interest to the treasury while incentivizing borrowers to repay loans and depositors to withdraw. If positions remain open, risk managers may further raise borrowing rates and adjust liquidation thresholds before replacing live price feeds with fixed-price oracles to facilitate complete market retirement.
Governance Process and Strategic Pivot
The proposal is currently at the Aave Request for Comment (ARFC) stage and requires community discussion, an off-chain Snapshot vote, and a binding Aave Improvement Proposal (AIP) on-chain vote before implementation.
This strategic consolidation marks a shift away from broad multi-chain expansion across emerging networks. Instead, Aave is concentrating its resources on core high-volume deployments, institutional liquidity products, and the development of Aave V4, backed by $25 million in DAO funding. Aave remains the market-leading decentralized lending platform, securing roughly $14.5 billion in total value locked across 23 chains.
