Aave to Retire 50 Asset Reserves, Exit Six Blockchains
Security & Exploits ·
The lending protocol is scaling back its footprint, cutting low-usage markets tied to $98.1 million in supplied assets and $15.6 million in outstanding debt.
Aave has begun offboarding 50 asset reserves with minimal trading activity across its lending markets, alongside a phased exit from deployments on Sonic, Scroll, zkSync, Metis, Soneium and Aptos, according to CryptoPotato. The changes, tied to $98.1 million in supplied funds and $15.6 million in debt, stem from a governance framework outlined in an Aave governance forum post that recommends removing reserves that have fallen out of active use.
Risk management firm LlamaRisk backed the wind-down, arguing that each of the six departing chains generates limited quarterly revenue for Aave, insufficient to offset the ongoing costs of running oracle feeds and monitoring infrastructure. Under the standard deprecation process, affected reserves are frozen and their supply and borrowing limits are reduced, a mechanism intended to let existing users close out positions gradually rather than face abrupt liquidity shocks.
The retirements follow a broader decline in activity on several of the targeted networks, with deposits thinning out over recent months even before governance action was proposed. Bitcoin-linked liquid-staking tokens and legacy bridge assets are among those being wound down, reflecting migration toward native token versions and reduced demand for older wrapped formats.
Separately, Aave is revising its oracle infrastructure, with changes expected to touch 10 deployments and $6.76 million in supplied assets tied to price feeds flagged as carrying elevated operational risk due to thin liquidity in the underlying long-tail assets. The overhaul also folds in the retirement of a batch of matured yield-bearing Pendle position tokens, which are set to be replaced by newer maturities as part of the same governance cycle.
Multiple governance summaries and market digests have echoed the same $98.1 million and $15.6 million figures, indicating consistent reporting across the proposal's rollout, though the exact reserve count has varied slightly between accounts describing 50 versus 75 affected markets. What remains unresolved is the precise timeline for completing the six-chain exits and whether additional low-liquidity assets could be added to the deprecation list as governance review continues.