Aave is preparing to exit six blockchains and remove 71 lightly used markets, covering $98.1 million in deposits. Founder Stani Kulechov backs the cleanup as a comprehensive review of the protocol's risk exposure, and says it is not a view on the affected networks.
Aave is preparing to exit six blockchains and remove 71 lightly used markets, covering $98.1 million in deposits as the lending protocol narrows its focus toward larger, more productive markets.
Proposal Targets 71 Low-Activity Markets
A governance proposal calls for removing 50 individual asset reserves and 21 matured Pendle principal tokens across 11 deployments. It also recommends a full wind-down of Aave markets on Sonic, Scroll, Aptos, zkSync, Metis, and Soneium.
Together, the changes cover $98.1 million in supplied assets and $15.6 million in outstanding debt. Many of the affected reserves are already frozen or carry sharply reduced deposit and borrowing limits.
Six Networks Face an Orderly Wind-Down
The six network deployments hold 25 reserves with $12.8 million in deposits and $4.1 million in debt, split across Sonic ($7.6 million), Scroll ($2.2 million), Aptos ($1.7 million), zkSync ($0.8 million), Metis ($0.3 million), and Soneium ($0.2 million). The remaining removals account for $85.3 million in supply and $11.5 million in borrowings.
Under the plan, Aave would freeze the affected reserves and cut supply and borrowing caps to nominal levels. For markets with active loans, higher reserve factors and interest rates would push borrowers to repay and depositors to withdraw. The proposal ties each listed market to fixed costs — oracle maintenance, risk monitoring, and liquidation infrastructure — and on the six smaller networks, revenue has fallen below what it costs to run the deployments.
Kulechov: Wind-Downs Aren't a View on L1s or L2s
Aave founder Stani Kulechov said the move follows a comprehensive review and is meant to cut the protocol's economic and technical risk. Asked how often Aave runs such assessments, he replied: "It's a continuous review."
Kulechov cautioned against reading the exits as criticism of the affected chains, saying the wind-downs should not be interpreted as a view on any L1 or L2 network. He said Aave will direct resources toward established markets and new areas such as securities finance, while layer-2 networks remain important to Ethereum's user experience. He pointed to Avalanche's tokenized real-world asset work as an example of that continued role.
Aave remains the largest decentralized lending protocol by total value locked, holding about $14.5 billion across 23 blockchains, according to DefiLlama.
Source: Bitcoin News
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