Aave Considers Shutting Down Low-Usage Markets to Focus on Productivity

Aave's governance is reviewing a proposal to wind down six low-adoption V3 markets and offboard dozens of reserves. The affected markets hold $98.1 million in deposits and $15.6 million in debt, representing less than 1% of Aave deposits.

The LlamaRisk proposal targets Aave V3 markets on Sonic, Scroll, zkSync, Metis, Soneium, and Aptos, as well as offboarding 50 low-use reserves and 21 matured Pendle Principal Tokens. The deployment's operational complexity is a major concern, with each market requiring risk monitoring, oracle support, parameter updates, liquidity oversight, liquidation infrastructure, governance attention, and emergency response capability.

Aave's decision to focus on larger, more productive markets could strengthen the protocol over time. However, this may disappoint users on smaller deployments, but it can make the overall system easier to secure and manage. The proposal is still under discussion, and Aave's governance process is designed to support a gradual, transparent, and parameterized wind-down.