Aave Winds Down Low-Adoption Reserves, Exits Six Blockchain Networks

Aave, one of the largest decentralized lending protocols, is scaling back its operations to reduce risk and focus on high-usage markets. As part of this effort, Aave will remove 75 low-adoption asset reserves across multiple deployments and exit six smaller blockchain networks.

The changes include deprecating 50 underused reserves across major Aave deployments, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Polygon, Avalanche, Optimism, Gnosis, and BSC. Additionally, Aave will exit six smaller deployments, Sonic, Scroll, zkSync, Metis, Soneium, and Aptos, removing another 25 asset reserves.

The affected markets will not be abruptly shut down; instead, Aave will freeze new activity, reduce borrowing and supply limits, and increase reserve requirements to encourage users to gradually close positions. This move is part of Aave's newly established Risk Framework and Technical Asset Listing Framework, which formalize how the protocol evaluates reserves for ongoing support.