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Aave commands DeFi lending, with DefiLlama showing $24.51 billion in total value locked and $17.526 billion in borrowed funds. The margin against Morpho, its closest rival, is roughly 4.1 times. Spark, the third-largest competitor, sits at $967.52 million in borrowed funds. Aave ended 2025 with 61.5% active loan market share and 52.4% lending TVL share, […] The post Aave’s $25 billion lending empire faces a real test as key contributors exit appeared first on CryptoSlate.

A key sticking point is Aave’s V4 upgrade, which introduces a new architecture and significantly expands the scope of risk management.

A Bank of Canada staff paper found Aave V3 avoided bad debt in 2024, but said the model pushed losses onto borrowers during liquidations. A Bank of Canada staff paper found that Aave V3 reported zero non-performing loans in 2024, with overcollateralization and automated liquidations helping prevent lender losses in its Ethereum lending market. Using transaction-level data from Jan. 27, 2023, to May 6, 2025, the study found that positions were typically liquidated before collateral values fell below outstanding debt, helping contain lender losses across the sample. But the model came with a tradeoff, the paper said. While it protected lenders from unrecovered losses, it also shifted risk onto borrowers and constrained capital efficiency compared with traditional lending systems. Read more

The upgrade has been in development for about two years and is designed to make it easier to use Aave for a wider range of lending and borrowing activities.

The rollout includes Aave Pro for advanced users and integrates Chainlink to provide oracle data for V4 markets. Decentralized finance (DeFi) lending platform Aave has launched its V4 protocol on Ethereum after a binding onchain governance vote cleared its deployment.  On Monday, Aave announced the launch of its V4 protocol on Ethereum, introducing infrastructure designed to “expand onchain markets into real-world credit markets.” The company said this includes structured lending, fixed-rate borrowing and tokenized asset-backed credit. The rollout follows a Snapshot vote that gained near-unanimous support for a subsequent Aave Improvement Proposal (AIP), a binding onchain vote that opened on March 26 and closed on Sunday. The proposal passed with about 433,000 votes in favor, or roughly 60%, versus about 282,000 votes against, or nearly 40%. Read more

X hires former Aave chief product officer and Base design lead Benji Taylor as head of design, as the company prepares to roll out its X Money payments product. Elon Musk’s X has hired crypto-native product designer Benji Taylor as its new head of design, ahead of a wider rollout of the platform’s X Money payments product next month.  Taylor announced the move on X on Wednesday, saying he was “honoured” to join the company and looking forward to working closely with Musk and X’s head of product Nikita Bier. Taylor’s crypto-native background is notable, previously founding Los Feliz Engineering, a consumer software studio that was acquired by decentralized lending protocol Aave Labs in 2023. Bier said that he had followed Taylor’s work for years and knew that he was “on track to become one of the best designers in the world,” and that X was “finally teaming up and building the greatest design team in the industry.” Read more

Aave founder Stani Kulechov says the proposal will move to a binding onchain vote to formalize V4’s deployment on Ethereum. Aave’s decentralized autonomous organization backed a proposal to move its V4 protocol toward deployment on Ethereum mainnet, signaling broader support for the upgrade after weeks of governance tension and contributor exits. On Monday, the proposal to deploy Aave V4 on the Ethereum mainnet garnered near-unanimous support from the DAO, with more than 645,000 votes in favor and less than one vote against, and no abstentions, according to data from the offchain voting platform Snapshot. The vote marks a shift from earlier divisions within the Aave community, signaling broad alignment around the protocol’s direction as it moves toward formalizing V4’s deployment. Read more

A small pricing error in wstETH collateral caused $27 million in Aave liquidations, highlighting the critical role of price oracles and automated risk systems in DeFi. A temporary 2.85% pricing discrepancy in wstETH collateral triggered about $27 million in liquidations on Aave, showing how even small technical issues can have major financial consequences in automated DeFi lending systems. The liquidation wave occurred because Aave’s system briefly valued wstETH at about 1.19 ETH instead of its market value near 1.23 ETH, making some borrowing positions appear undercollateralized. Price oracles are critical infrastructure in DeFi because they feed external market data to smart contracts, determining collateral values, loan health and when automated liquidations should occur. Read more

In a post-mortem of the incident, Aave clarified it was not slippage, but an illiquid market that caused the trader to lose over $50 million while swapping USDT for AAVE. Decentralized finance protocol Aave said it is introducing a new feature to block swaps with a price impact above 25% after a user lost $50 million in a trade while interacting with Aave’s interface last week.  “We are soon deploying a new feature, Aave Shield, which provides more protections for users who use the swap feature in the Aave interface aave.com,” Aave said in a post-mortem statement on Saturday. Aave said users would need to manually disable the Aave Shield protection feature to proceed with high-risk trades. Read more

Capo, an external oracle solution used by Aave, triggered around $27 million in liquidations after a pricing glitch, but the lending platform said it is stepping in to cover the losses. A configuration error in a risk-oracle system used by crypto lending platform Aave triggered the liquidation of about $27 million in wrapped staked Ether (wstETH) positions, prompting the protocol to move to compensate affected users. In a post-mortem published Tuesday, Aave said about 10,938 wstETH worth around $27.1 million was liquidated after the protocol applied an exchange rate that was 2.85% below the live market rate for wstETH and Lido staked Ether. The issue stemmed from a mismatch between pricing parameters and timestamp data in the oracle configuration, which caused the system to calculate a maximum allowed exchange rate below the actual rate onchain. Read more

The blockchain data flagged shows a spike in liquidations over the past 24 hours. Some observers believe the event may have been linked to a price update in an risk-oracle system that Aave uses to determine the value of collateral.

Bitcoin bounced back this week as stablecoin inflows surged, and DeFi faced fresh pressure from Aave governance strife, exploits and exchange security moves. Bitcoin and the leading cryptocurrencies staged a recovery this week following initial shockwaves from the outbreak of the US-Israel conflict with Iran. Bitcoin (BTC) initially fell to $63,245 on Sunday, before briefly recovering to $73,000 on Thursday, assisted by renewed demand from US-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which logged $1.1 billion in net weekly inflows leading up to Thursday. In the broader DeFi space, Aave’s governance dispute continued, with the Aave Chan Initiative (ACI) saying it will not renew its engagement with the Aave DAO and plans to wind down operations in the next four months. Read more

Solana (SOL), down 3.1% since Thursday, joined Aave (AAVE) as an underperformer.

Cardano (ADA), down 5.9% from Monday, joined Aave (AAVE) as an underperformer.

The move follows a 52.58% Snapshot vote on a $42.5 million funding package for Aave Labs, now headed to the ARFC stage before any binding onchain decision. The Aave Chan Initiative (ACI), a major governance delegate and service provider within the Aave ecosystem, said it will not renew its engagement with the Aave DAO and plans to wind down over the next four months. In a statement on Tuesday, ACI founder Marc Zeller said the organization would continue governance activity and complete outstanding commitments before transferring its infrastructure and responsibilities to the DAO or successor providers.  “The Aave Chan Initiative was built for Aave. Without a future in the Aave ecosystem, the name no longer applies. ACI will wrap up as our obligations conclude,” Zeller wrote.  Read more

Tokenholders backed a $42.5 million stablecoin package and 75,000 AAVE allocation for Aave Labs under a proposed DAO-funded revenue model. Aave’s “Aave Will Win” framework passed its Temp Check vote, clearing the first formal stage of the protocol’s governance process.  On Sunday, the off-chain Snapshot vote closed with 52.58% voting in favor, 42% against and 5.42% abstaining. The result advances the measure to the Aave Request for Final Comment (ARFC) stage, where terms may be revised before any binding on-chain vote. The framework asks tokenholders to approve up to $42.5 million in stablecoins and 75,000 Aave (AAVE) tokens for Aave Labs. In return, the organization would route 100% of revenue from Aave-branded products to the Aave DAO treasury under a DAO-funded operating model.  Read more

DefiLlama data shows derivatives contribute heavily to DeFi’s $1 billion-plus quarterly revenue as lending and trading infrastructure converge. Decentralized perpetual futures exchange (perp DEX) Grvt said it has integrated the Aave lending protocol to let traders earn yield on collateral posted for margin while keeping their derivatives positions open. The company said Thursday that the feature is designed to reduce the opportunity cost of margin collateral that typically sits idle on trading venues. Perpetual futures are crypto derivatives that track an asset’s price and do not expire. “On most platforms, your capital can only do one thing at a time,” Hong Yea, CEO of Grvt, told Cointelegraph. “Your stablecoins are either earning yield or available to trade, but not both.” He said the integration aims to let users deposit once and use the same capital as active margin while earning lending returns. Read more

Competing reports outline contrasting views on protocol revenue, development and funding accountability. A governance dispute inside the Aave ecosystem intensified after two detailed reports offered contrasting interpretations of the protocol’s past funding and contributions ahead of a vote on a proposed $50 million package for Aave Labs.  Aave Chan Initiative (ACI) founder Marc Zeller on Wednesday published what he called a transparency report reviewing Aave Labs’ historical funding and applied a return-on-investment framework to past DAO grants. Hours earlier, Aave Labs released its own contributions report outlining its role in building the protocol since 2017. The dispute centers on the “Aave Will Win” framework, a proposal asking tokenholders to approve funding worth up to $42.5 million in stablecoins and 75,000 AAVE (AAVE) tokens. In return, Aave Labs would route 100% of revenue from Aave-branded products to the Aave DAO treasury under a DAO-funded operating model, according to the proposal and related ...

Uniswap (UNI) joined Aave (AAVE) as a top performers, gaining 0.5% from Friday.

Core developer BGD will not renew its contract, deepening a governance dispute between Aave DAO and Aave Labs. The post Aave’s “Civil War” Claims First Casualty as Key Developer Walks Away appeared first on Cryptonews.