Aave moves to deprecate 75 reserves as DeFi cleanup targets $98.1 million

Aave proposed deprecating 75 asset reserves and winding down six blockchain deployments, affecting $98.1 million in supplied assets and $15.6 million in debt.

"The review, prepared by risk service provider LlamaRisk, applies the protocol's newly proposed Aave Risk Framework across deployments rather than reacting to any single incident," Aave founder Stani Kulechov said.

The proposal targets 50 low-adoption reserves and 21 matured Pendle Principal Tokens across 11 Aave V3 deployments. Individual reserve removals account for $85.3 million in supplied assets and $11.5 million in debt, while the six deployment-wide deprecations — Sonic, Scroll, zkSync, Metis, Soneium and Aptos — represent an additional $12.8 million in supplied assets and $4.1 million in debt.

The deprecation follows Aave's proposed risk framework introduced in June after the roughly $292 million KelpDAO bridge exploit, which exposed the protocol to potential bad debt after stolen rsETH was deposited as collateral. For affected reserves, Aave plans to freeze new activity, reduce supply and borrow caps to one unit, and raise reserve factors on borrowable assets to encourage users to unwind positions.

The proposal also targets bridged assets that duplicate native token listings, matured Pendle PTs that no longer generate yield, and smaller deployments where protocol revenue no longer covers maintenance costs. A companion proposal from LlamaRisk targets a further group of long-tail reserves flagged for elevated Chainlink price-feed risk, replacing their live feeds with fixed-price adapters.

Aave's token traded at $95.52, down 2.75 percent over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. The governance vote will determine whether the proposed deprecations proceed, with implications for the protocol's total value locked and operational efficiency across its multi-chain footprint.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.