Aave is removing a broad set of underused markets after what founder Stani Kulechov described as a full review. In a post on X on July 30, Kulechov said the protocol will retire 50 low-adoption asset reserves across multiple deployments. At the same time, Aave is winding down its deployments on Sonic, Scroll, zkSync, Metis, Soneium and Aptos, affecting another 25 asset reserves. The cleanup also covers 21 expired Pendle PT tokens, which Aave said will be removed to make room for new expiry products. In total, the changes touch $98.1 million in supplied assets and $15.6 million in debt. Kulechov said the move is part of Aave’s new risk framework and its technical asset listing framework, with the goal of reducing the protocol’s economic and technical risk exposure. He added that Aave will keep conducting ongoing risk reviews for all assets across all of its deployments.

Aave founder Stani Kulechov said in a post on X that the CLARITY Act would give banks statutory authority to use digital assets and distributed ledgers without prior notice or approval. He said the scope would cover custody, staking, and lending, which he described as a major expansion of the market reachable by the crypto industry. Kulechov also said earlier that the bill is not perfect and that much will depend on how the follow-on authorization rules are written. Even so, he called it the first regulatory framework to touch DeFi and said it would create certainty for institutions, fintech companies, and banks using onchain services. He added that, if passed, the CLARITY Act would bring onchain business the same kind of tailwind and investment that the GENIUS Act brought to stablecoins.

A packed 24-hour news cycle brought fresh signals from crypto markets, policymakers, security researchers and public companies. CryptoQuant analyst Axel Adler said Bitcoin’s rebound is still facing four pressures: compressed volatility, weak U.S. spot demand, thin buy-side liquidity and continued loss realization by investors. In Washington, Aave founder Stani said the CLARITY Act has entered the "last mile," arguing that even in imperfect form it could become the first U.S. law to directly address DeFi and give institutions, fintechs and banks a clearer legal path into on-chain finance. In Europe, attention is shifting from winning a MiCA license to paying the ongoing cost of compliance. Market participants cited in the report said that dynamic could push the sector toward consolidation, including mergers, joint ventures and bank partnerships, with the U.K. likely to follow a similarly strict path through its own framework. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, meanwhile, said acquisitions of smaller centralized exchanges remain possible, but post-deal security incidents are hard to attribute, making due diligence and risk controls much harder. Other major developments included updated figures on public-company Bitcoin holdings, Lido’s response to a stETH reward calculation issue, Cascade’s statement that funds tied to the CLS incident had been recovered, and new reports on wallet-targeting malware campaigns and U.S. crypto seizure actions.

Aave founder Stani said on X that the crypto industry needs broader alignment to help move the U.S. CLARITY Act through the legislative process. He described the bill as imperfect in its current form and said many details would still need to be written by regulators, but argued it would still mark the first piece of legislation to directly address decentralized finance, or DeFi. According to Stani, the bill could give institutions, fintech companies, and banks a clearer legal framework and more regulatory certainty for participating in onchain finance. He added that, if passed, its impact on the onchain financial ecosystem could resemble the opportunity that the GENIUS Act created for the stablecoin sector, potentially drawing more investment and institutional capital into the space. Stani also said the Aave team has spent the past year, especially in recent weeks and days, staying in close contact with policymakers in Washington and that the effort has now entered the “last mile.”

Bitcoin steadied near $60,000 after a weekly sell-off, while AAVE and several Solana ecosystem tokens led the rebound as DeFi strength and tokenized stock trading picked up.

The crypto market cap fell to $2.14 trillion on June 26, with BTC down 2.58% and ETH off 3.8%. Fear & Greed stayed at 13, while MemeCore surged 71.84%. BitGo layoffs, Polymarket’s hack, Kraken-Aave reports, and the CLARITY Act also shaped the day’s news flow.

Aave founder Stani Kulechov confirms the 'Aave Will Win' Temp Check passed, proposing to route all Aave Labs product revenue to the DAO treasury and tie benefits to AAVE token holders.

Aave CEO Stani Kulechov published a framework detailing how DeFi can fund global infrastructure via asset-backed lending, targeting sectors like solar, data centers, GPUs, and space. He estimates $100-200 trillion capital needs by 2050 and positions Aave V4 as a base liquidity layer.