Aave V4 is live on Ethereum mainnet. The launch marks the protocol's most significant architectural overhaul since V2, and comes roughly two years after development began.

The Core Change: Hub and Spoke

Previous versions of Aave grouped all assets into shared or isolated pools with a flat structure. V4 replaces this with a hub-and-spoke model: a central Liquidity Hub holds assets and routes capital, while modular Spoke instances each define their own collateral types, risk parameters, and liquidation rules.

The practical result is that a single pool of liquidity can serve multiple lending markets simultaneously — institutional desks, e-Mode strategies, and specialized ecosystems can all draw from the same capital layer without competing for it.

V4 launches with three Hubs on Ethereum: Core, Prime, and Plus, each targeting a different lending posture. A new dedicated UI, Aave Pro, surfaces all Hubs and Spokes in one unified account view.

The Longer Goal

Aave Labs founder Stani Kulechov framed the launch as an infrastructure bet on bringing traditional finance onchain. Onchain lending today represents less than 0.1% of global financial assets — V4 is designed to lower the barrier for institutional borrowers and real-world asset collateral.

The protocol has processed over $1 trillion in cumulative loans since V1 and currently holds a majority share of the decentralized lending market.

V4 launched with conservative settings and limited initial markets. Additional features and risk parameters will expand through governance votes.