The Aave DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) has backed a governance proposal to advance the deployment of Aave V4 on the Ethereum mainnet with near-unanimous support.
The vote, known as an Aave Request for Comment (ARFC), closed on March 24. The off-chain Snapshot vote received more than 645,000 votes in favor, fewer than one vote against.
In Aave’s governance, voting is not one person, one vote. Instead, your voting power is weighted by how much AAVE you hold. For example, if someone holds 1.5 AAVE, they get 1.5 votes. If someone holds only 0.7 AAVE, they get 0.7 votes.
The Aave V4 upgrade proposal deployment makes a major shift after weeks of governance tensions, leading to the departure of some major community contributors.
Aave founder Stani Kulechov said the proposal will now advance to the formal Aave Improvement Proposal (AIP) stage. The AIP is the binding on-chain vote needed to actually deploy and activate V4 on Ethereum. Aave Labs aims to complete the mainnet launch by the end of 2026.
What is the V4 upgrade?
Aave V4 proposed a brand-new modular design called the Hub and Spoke architecture. This model includes a Hub, where all assets go into a single liquidity Hub, and creates one big pool of capital.
Separate Spokes then connect to this hub and create different lending markets with their own specific rules, risk levels, collateral requirements, and borrowing limits, solving the fragmented liquidity problem. It keeps the benefits of unified liquidity while allowing much better risk control.
Amid the Aave governance tension
The strong support for V4 comes after tension in Aave’s community. Recently, long-time technical contributor BGD Labs announced it would stop working on Aave after four years, citing differences over the direction of the protocol. In early March, the Aave Chan Initiative (ACI), a major governance delegate led by Marc Zeller, also said it would wind down its operations after disagreements on funding and governance standards.
The DAO had approved a $1.5 million budget to support this work. Final risk parameters will be refined with security and risk advisors during the current feedback phase.
If the final on-chain AIP vote passes, V4 will allow Aave to offer more advanced lending options while keeping liquidity deep and efficient.
