Aave V4 went live on Ethereum mainnet on March 30, 2026, marking the protocol’s first major infrastructure upgrade in two years. Announced at EthCC in Cannes, the release positions Aave to expand beyond crypto-native lending into broader credit markets, including structured lending, tokenized asset-backed credit, and collateralized credit lines for institutions.
Hub-and-Spoke Architecture Ends Liquidity Fragmentation
Previous versions forced developers to choose between entering new markets and maintaining shared liquidity—pushing different risk profiles into the same pool or splitting liquidity across separate deployments. V4’s hub-and-spoke model centralizes capital in a single hub while allowing individual “spoke” markets to operate with their own collateral rules and risk parameters. Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of Aave Labs, explained: “Aave V4 shifts the focus to the demand side, putting that liquidity to work across real credit markets — from crypto-native lending to tokenized assets, structured credit, and institution-specific borrowing models.”
Aave currently holds billions in net deposits. The V4 architecture gives governance-controlled spoke markets access to that liquidity pool while isolating risk by collateral type and borrowing environment.
Launch Partners and Supported Assets
At launch, dedicated spokes are live from Lido, EtherFi, Kelp, Ethena, and Lombard. Supported assets include USDT and XAUT from Tether, USDC and EURC from Circle, cbBTC from Coinbase, frxUSD from Frax, and USDG from Paxos. Chainlink serves as the exclusive oracle provider across all V4 markets. Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov called the launch “progress toward connecting onchain finance to global capital markets.” Ethena CEO Guy Young credited Aave’s deep liquidity as a core part of Ethena’s growth and called V4 “an important next step.”
Security Audits and Gradual Rollout
Before going live, the protocol underwent third-party audits, formal verification, invariant testing, and a six-week public security contest involving hundreds of independent researchers. The initial deployment uses conservative parameters and a limited scope to allow the system to harden under real market conditions before expanding. V4 is a superset of V3, preserving all prior functionality while enabling a more modular design. This gives Aave governance time to observe liquidity behavior before progressively widening credit lines and market types.
Alongside V4, Aave Labs launched Aave Pro, a new web interface for advanced users that serves as the primary access point for V4 markets at launch. Multi-chain deployment is under consideration, with Avalanche being evaluated given Aave’s operational history there and available liquidity. Any expansion would require Aave DAO governance approval. Revenue from Aave-branded products flows to the Aave treasury, funding development and security, and aligning incentives across users, developers, and the protocol as new markets are introduced.
Aave began as ETHLend in 2017. With V4, the company positions itself as credit infrastructure for onchain financial markets rather than a standalone lending protocol. At press time, it is the largest DeFi protocol by total value locked (TVL).