Aave, one of the more active decentralized lending protocols, is preparing to phase out support for a range of underused asset reserves and fully wind down its presence on several smaller blockchain networks. The initiative, announced by founder Stani Kulechov, forms part of a broader push to shrink the protocol’s economic and technical risk footprint under newly formalized risk and asset-listing frameworks.
The plan calls for deprecating 50 low-adoption reserves spread across multiple Aave deployments.
In parallel, the DeFi protocol intends to orderly shut down entire markets on Sonic, Scroll, zkSync, Metis, Soneium, and Aptos, which together account for another 25 reserves.
Twenty-one matured Pendle Principal Tokens will also be retired and replaced with newer-maturity versions.
Altogether, the changes affect approximately $98.1 million in supplied assets and $15.6 million in outstanding debt—less than 1 percent of Aave’s overall deposits, which stand in the mid-teens of billions of dollars.
The six full market closures were selected after sharp declines in activity left revenue well below the cost of continued support.
Over the past six months, deposits on Sonic fell roughly 74 percent to about $7.6 million, Scroll dropped 86 percent to $2.2 million, zkSync declined 88 percent to roughly $844,000, Metis fell 79 percent to around $297,000, and Soneium plunged 95 percent to $173,000.
Aptos currently holds about $1.7 million in supply and $719,000 in debt, with available liquidity down approximately 94 percent.
Each of these deployments now generates under $5,000 in quarterly protocol revenue (some under $1,000), insufficient to cover oracle maintenance, risk monitoring, and operational overhead.
Individual reserve removals target assets that have stayed below usage thresholds, experienced steep deposit declines, or become redundant—such as bridged versions of tokens already available in native form, or instruments no longer producing yield.
Larger positions among those flagged include certain Bitcoin-wrapped assets and matured Pendle tokens.
Implementation is designed to be gradual so users can exit without forced liquidations.
Affected reserves will be frozen, blocking new deposits, borrows, or collateral additions, while supply and borrow caps are reduced to the minimum.
On the six retiring deployments, reserve factors are expected to rise to 99 percent (directing nearly all interest to the protocol treasury) and base borrowing rates set at 5 percent, creating incentives for suppliers to withdraw and borrowers to repay.
Once exposure declines sufficiently, live price feeds can be replaced with fixed oracles and the markets fully discontinued.
Kulechov emphasized that the moves should not be read as judgments on the underlying chains or layers themselves.
Instead, they aim to reduce Aave’s overall risk surface so the protocol can concentrate resources on higher-impact markets and future priorities, including potential expansion into areas such as securities finance.
Continuous risk assessment will remain in place across all remaining assets and deployments.
The recommendations were prepared by risk provider LlamaRisk in collaboration with other Aave service providers and are subject to DAO governance approval before taking full effect. If passed, the cleanup marks an early practical application of Aave’s updated Risk Framework and Technical Asset Listing Framework, signaling a more disciplined approach to portfolio management in an increasingly competitive DeFi landscape.