Aave, the leading DeFi lending platform holding $14.3 billion in deposits, is scaling back its operations by retiring 50 low-usage asset reserves and shutting down deployments on six blockchains: Sonic, Scroll, zkSync, Metis, Soneium, and Aptos. This move, initiated through a governance proposal by risk assessment group LlamaRisk, impacts $98.1 million in supplied assets and $15.6 million in outstanding debt, representing less than 1% of Aave's overall deposits.
Founder Stani Kulechov clarified the decision on social media, stressing that this reduction isn’t a commentary on the potential of any Layer 1 or Layer 2 blockchains involved. Instead, the aim is to streamline operations and reduce technical and economic risks. The focus will shift toward bolstering markets with higher activity and exploring growth in sectors like securities finance.
The protocol is handling the retirement carefully to avoid abrupt disruptions. Each reserve set for removal will be frozen, with supply and borrow caps lowered to one, and reserve factors boosted significantly, discouraging new activity. The six blockchain markets being retired will see the same treatment on a broader scale, prompting suppliers to withdraw funds and borrowers to settle debts gradually.
Performance figures highlight the reasons behind these exits. Sonic’s deposits dropped 74% over six months to $7.6 million, Scroll’s fell 86% to $2.2 million, zkSync’s plummeted 88% to $844,000, and Soneium’s tanked 95% to just $173,000. With protocol revenue from these chains falling below $5,000 quarterly, maintaining oracle feeds and operational support became unsustainable.
Among individual assets, two Ethereum-based Bitcoin liquid staking tokens, FBTC and eBTC, stand out. Their combined supplied balances plunged from $72 million six months ago to $16.3 million, underscoring declining user interest.
Aave’s native token saw a mild uptick, trading at $98.61, up 0.5% in the last 24 hours, roughly matching Bitcoin’s modest 1.1% gain according to CoinGecko.
