Aave considers closing 6 V3 markets and cutting 50 low-utilization reserve assets

Aave Governance plans to clean up the V3 lending market involving multi-chain inefficient assets

Aave Governance is considering an extensive cleanup of its V3 lending market, with goals including low-utilization reserves on multiple blockchains and retiring some expired token lists. The proposal, detailed in an ARFC (Aave Exposure Draft), plans to initiate an exit process along six chains and remove dozens of assets with low adoption rates, involving $98.1 million in collateral and $15.6 million in outstanding debt (data as of July 28).

Risk services provider LlamaRisk, in partnership with other Aave service providers, recommended retiring 50 low-utilization reserves in 11 deployments and retiring 21 expired Pendle principal token lists. The same proposal also calls for retiring all 25 reserves on Sonic, Scroll, zkSync, Metis, Soneium and Aptos.

Core Points

Aave's ARFC targets low-adoption assets and a list of expired Pendle principal tokens, with a balance snapshot date of July 28. The plan will gradually close six V3 markets on blockchain and retire 50 low-usage reserves in 11 deployments. All proposed chain-level closures are based on previously implemented freezes and early governance decisions for some networks. Aave founder Stani Kulechov positioned the move as reducing the agreement's "economic and technical risk exposure" under the new framework. This ARFC is a proposal step and is not a proof that the final on-chain vote has been passed.

Reasons for advancing the proposal

ARFC is Aave's formal governance phase: it provides detailed recommendations and serves as a preliminary step to Aave's improvement proposals. Therefore, the release of this ARFC does not in itself confirm that the relevant changes have been approved through on-chain voting or implemented by the agreement. Even so, its scope is still worthy of attention. The exit plan described in the ARFC will restructure Aave's V3 deployment on multiple networks-primarily by removing underutilized reserves and retiring a list of expired tokens. In total, the proposal covers $98.1 million in supply assets and $15.6 million in debt, indicating that the affected V3 market is significant, even if its participation is not strong.

Aptos exit follows a brief V3 deployment

The most urgent part of the cleanup effort appears to be the proposed Aptos exit. According to data cited by LlamaRisk, this ARFC recommendation came about 11 months after the V3 market on Aptos was launched. LlamaRisk attributed the weak performance to a sharp contraction in liquidity and extremely low yields. The report showed available liquidity fell 94% in six months, and quarterly revenue fell below $1000. The data, as described in the ARFC summary, provides a rationale for moving from active operations to a complete abandonment of the network. The same recommendation also distinguishes between chains that have actually been deactivated and chains that are still in operation. ARFC pointed out that all reserves on Scroll, zkSync, Metis and Soneium had previously been frozen. In contrast, Sonic and Aptos were still active at the time of the snapshot, and the ARFC recommends freezing and decommissioning these remaining deployments.

How early "temporary inspections" affect current cleanup

The proposal builds on previous governance results and implementation steps of Aave's multi-chain V3 strategy. At an earlier stage, an "interim inspection" on Aave's multi-chain method ended on December 5, 2025. The vote (recorded in Aave governance materials) received 923,400 votes in favor and less than 1%, and covered: increasing the reserve factor for underperforming instances; shutting down instances on zkSync, Metis, and Soneium; and setting a $2 million annual revenue threshold for new instance deployments. In addition, the Aave governance process has accelerated the abandonment of specific chains. In April this year, Scroll was added to the list of affected agreements through an accelerated process. A corresponding governance action described it as completing the retirement of Scroll through a direct to AIP proposal submitted by LlamaRisk after network mobility and Aave market activity deteriorated sharply. In addition to the closure of the instance, Aave's risk stance has also been formalized in updated internal documents. The agreement released an updated risk framework on June 9, covering asset risks, bridging and monitoring risks, chain risks, and criteria for phasing out reserves or deployments. Another governance event later this month showed that the agreement had de facto adopted rules under the new version of Governance Framework v2, pointing to a more structured decision-making approach to when to reduce or remove underperforming deployments.

Aave founders link move to risk framework changes

Aave founder Stani Kulechov publicly commented that the cleanup was aimed at reducing exposure as the agreement applies its new risk approach. In a post on Platform X on Thursday, Kulechov said the decommissioning action would also "reduce Aave's economic and technical risk exposure as part of the new Aave Risk Framework and Technology Asset Listing Framework." While the current action may seem like an exit from certain circumstances, Kulechov's statement suggests that it is not a retreat from the multi-chain strategy itself. He said Aave will continue to conduct ongoing risk assessments of assets across deployments, with the immediate effect of refocusing on selected chains with stronger utilization and performance. The comments come as Aave is also expanding in other areas. It has been previously reported that Aave is launching deployments on Avalanche, and the current governance cleanup seems to be consistent with this broader operational theme: systematically reducing underutilized or deteriorating environments while expanding in a targeted manner to target environments.

Aave V3 users and liquidity providers focus on next steps

If this ARFC makes progress, key questions will be: how quickly the proposed exit process will transition from governance discussions to formal execution, and whether Aave will provide additional updates on how liquidity expectations will migrate after reserves are frozen and retired. Investors and DeFi participants should also watch for signals that the newly adopted risk framework will continue to tighten the threshold for maintaining V3 markets on smaller or less liquid chains.