Aave Proposes Winding Down Six V3 Markets, Offboarding $98M in Assets

Aave governance is considering a proposal to wind down its V3 lending markets on six blockchains, affecting $98.1 million in supplied assets and $15.6 million in outstanding debt. The move follows recommendations from risk management firm LlamaRisk, which cited low usage and deteriorating network liquidity.

The proposal, an Aave Request for Comment (ARFC), outlines the retirement of every reserve on Sonic, Scroll, zkSync, Metis, Soneium and Aptos. It also recommends offboarding 50 low-use token reserves and 21 matured Pendle principal token listings across 11 deployments.

Balances for these assets were measured July 28. Prior action already froze reserves on Scroll, zkSync, Metis and Soneium. The current ARFC recommends freezing the remaining active instances on Sonic and Aptos.

Aptos' V3 market faces closure just 11 months after launch. LlamaRisk reported a 94 percent decline in available liquidity over the past six months on Aptos, with quarterly revenue falling below $1,000.

This consolidation aligns with an updated risk framework Aave published June 9. The framework covers asset, bridge, monitoring and chain risk, establishing clear criteria for winding down reserves or entire deployments.

A Dec. 5, 2025, temperature check on Aave's multichain strategy concluded with 923,400 votes in favor of increasing reserve factors on underperforming instances and shutting down instances on zkSync, Metis and Soneium. Less than 1 percent of votes opposed the measure, which also established a $2 million annual revenue floor for new deployments.

Scroll was added to the list of affected chains in April through an accelerated process. LlamaRisk filed a direct-to-AIP proposal to freeze all Scroll reserves and raise specific reserve factors, citing rapid deterioration in network liquidity and Aave market activity.

Aave founder Stani Kulechov said the action will "reduce Aave's economic and technical risk surface as part of the new Aave Risk Framework and Technical Asset Listing Framework." The ARFC represents the de facto adoption of those new rules by the protocol.

Kulechov said the proposal does not signal a reversal of Aave's broader multichain expansion strategy, describing it instead as a strategic refocusing on select chains. He added that Aave "will continue applying continuous risk assessment for all assets across all deployments."

Supporting that position, Aave launched a new V3 market on Avalanche earlier this month. The ARFC is a precursor to a formal Aave Improvement Proposal (AIP), which would proceed to an on-chain vote for final execution.