Primary Reasons for the Wind-Down
Published 7/30/2026, 7:49:24 AM
As of July 2026, Aave is winding down its deployments on Sonic, Scroll, zkSync, Metis, Soneium, and Aptos primarily due to low adoption, insufficient revenue to cover operational costs, and the departure of key technical service providers. This strategic consolidation aims to focus resources on high-utility networks and the upcoming transition to Aave V4 [Source: https://governance.aave.com/t/arfc-low-adoption-asset-deprecation-on-aave-v3/25401].
Primary Reasons for the Wind-Down
The Aave DAO has shifted toward a "revenue-first" strategy, identifying several chains that no longer meet the protocol's economic or security standards:
- Economic Viability: The Aave Chan Initiative (ACI) proposed a $2M annual revenue floor for maintaining chain deployments. Many of the targeted chains fell significantly short; for example, Metis was generating only ~$3,000 per year, while the entire group of nine underperforming instances accounted for only ~1.5% of total protocol revenue [Source: https://governance.aave.com/t/arfc-low-adoption-asset-deprecation-on-aave-v3/25401].
- Operational Burden: Maintaining these instances requires constant monitoring from risk and security providers (e.g., LlamaRisk, Certora). The departure of BGD Labs in April 2026 further reduced the DAO's technical capacity, making it necessary to offboard low-utility markets to preserve engineering bandwidth [Source: https://governance.aave.com/t/bgd-leaving-aave/24122].
- Governance and Technical Risks:
- Scroll: Faced "governance turmoil" following the resignation of its DAO lead in late 2025, prompting Aave to raise the Reserve Factor to 90% as a protective measure [Source: https://app.aave.com/governance/v3/proposal/?proposalId=470].
- zkSync: Despite resolving initial technical hurdles, the deployment failed to find significant product-market fit [Source: https://governance.aave.com/t/arfc-low-adoption-asset-deprecation-on-aave-v3/25401].
Impacted Chains and Metrics (July 2026)
The following table outlines the chains included in the wind-down and their status at the time of the deprecation proposal:
| Chain | Supply at Deprecation | Primary Reason for Offboarding |
|---|---|---|
| Sonic | $7.6M | Low adoption / Stagnant growth |
| Scroll | $2.2M | Governance instability / High risk |
| Aptos | $1.7M | Low utility (First non-EVM experiment) |
| zkSync | $0.8M | Technical friction / Lack of PMF |
| Metis | $0.3M | Negligible revenue (~$3k/year) |
| Soneium | $0.2M | Negligible revenue (~$50k/year) |
[Source: https://governance.aave.com/t/arfc-low-adoption-asset-deprecation-on-aave-v3/25401]
Current Status of the Wind-Down
As of the latest governance updates on July 29, 2026, the DAO has initiated Asset Freezing across these markets. Borrowing has been disabled, and supply caps have been reduced to 1. Aave is utilizing its V4 "Automated Assets Offboarding" tool to gradually lower liquidation thresholds, encouraging users to migrate their positions to more liquid chains like Ethereum Mainnet, Base, or Arbitrum [Source: https://governance.aave.com/t/arfc-low-adoption-asset-deprecation-on-aave-v3/25401].
While the research identified six specific chains (Sonic, Scroll, zkSync, Aptos, Metis, and Soneium), the original proposal mentioned "nine underperforming instances," suggesting three additional minor asset reserves or sub-markets are also being deprecated to reach the full scope of the wind-down.