The Hub-and-Spoke lending design Aave launched in March has drawn $806 million in supplied assets, with the protocol's dashboard showing peaks near $900 million — about 10% short of a $1 billion milestone. EtherFi Cash on Optimism is the second-largest liquidity component at $257 million, while DeFiLlama's stricter TVL method indexes only $399 million.
Aave's V4 deployment held $806 million in user deposits as of September 9, with the protocol's own dashboard reporting peaks near $900 million, putting the Hub-and-Spoke lending architecture within roughly 10% of a $1 billion milestone six months after its March mainnet launch.
The EtherFi Cash market on Optimism accounts for $257 million of that total, the second-largest single liquidity component inside V4, according to Aave's on-chain dashboard. Aave Labs' governance documentation describes the design as a central Hub vault that holds and accounts for a chain's liquidity, with user-facing Spokes drawing a governed credit line from that shared pool instead of bootstrapping their own.
Deposits crossed $500 million on August 19 and cleared $600 million by the end of that month, per platform historical data, before the September leg added roughly 30% in seven days. Active loans topped $250 million for the first time during the same window, and V4 has grown about 131% over the past 30 days.
The measurement gap matters for anyone tracking the number. DeFiLlama indexes roughly $399 million in strict total value locked for the V4 instances it covers, because its methodology excludes borrowed assets and does not yet span every V4 deployment. Aave's $900 million figure counts total assets supplied. Both are correct on their own definitions, and the $500 million spread between them is the difference between "supplied" and "locked."
The $257 million EtherFi Cash instance is the clearest evidence that the Spoke model is functioning as designed. EtherFi Cash issues a cash-like on-chain product backed by yield-bearing collateral, and rather than standing up its own isolated liquidity pool, it borrows against the Hub's shared capital. That is the specific mechanism V4 was built to enable: specialized markets tapping the same deep liquidity while staying walled off from each other's risk.
The Ethena market, which launched September 7, is the next test of the same pattern. Aave Labs' technical report to governance states that isolating borrowing environments prevents insolvency in a secondary asset from reaching the shared pool, and that variable risk premiums calibrate rates to collateral quality rather than charging every participant the same rate. The liquidation engine replaced V3's fixed close factor with a target health factor model using dynamic bonuses.
Scale calibration is where the story gets less flattering. Aave V3 still holds more than $31 billion in consolidated deposits across 20-plus chains, which makes V4 roughly 2.6% of the protocol's total supplied capital even at the $900 million peak. This is early traction for new infrastructure, not a transfer of the franchise.
Governance is the constraint on the next leg. Aave's DAO maintains conservative deposit caps on V4 while it audits how live credit lines behave, and delegates are set to review raising supply caps for stablecoins and integrating secondary markets across Layer 2 networks in a late-September 2026 vote. That vote, not organic deposit flow, is the most likely trigger for the $1 billion crossing — and the same caps are what would slow it if delegates hold.
The competitive read is straightforward. Morpho recorded an all-time high of $5 billion in active debt on September 1, with stablecoins representing 95% of the total, so the DeFi lending market is expanding rather than consolidating around one venue. Aave's advantage in that race is the $31 billion V3 base it can migrate from; its risk is that V4's caps keep the new architecture too small to matter for another two quarters.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
