Aave‘s decentralized autonomous organization has voted overwhelmingly in favor of advancing its V4 protocol toward deployment on the Ethereum mainnet. The proposal received more than 645,000 votes in support, with fewer than one vote against and no abstentions, according to data from the offchain voting platform Snapshot. The vote took place on Monday and represents a significant show of unity within the Aave community following weeks of internal friction.
According to Aave founder Stani Kulechov, the proposal is expected to progress to an Aave Improvement Proposal vote, a binding onchain mechanism that would formally authorize the deployment and activation of V4 on Ethereum. This next step would move the upgrade from a governance signal to an executable protocol change. The near-unanimous result suggests broad alignment around the protocol’s future direction.
Aave V4 was originally proposed by Aave Labs on March 19 and introduces a more modular architecture designed to separate liquidity from market-specific risk. The updated structure relies on shared liquidity pools called “Hubs,” which supply capital, and “Spokes,” which define individual borrowing environments with distinct risk parameters and exposure limits. Aave Labs states the design preserves the efficiency of unified liquidity while enabling more precise risk management.
The new framework is intended to support a wider range of financial use cases, including assets with varying risk profiles, maturities, or offchain dependencies. Under V4, new collateral types and structured credit markets could emerge while a unified liquidity base is maintained. Aave Labs describes this as a foundational shift in how the protocol manages and allocates capital across different market conditions.
The strong vote comes after a turbulent period in Aave’s governance that saw several key contributors announce their departures. On February 20, BGD Labs, a long-standing technical contributor, said it would end its four-year involvement with Aave, citing what it described as an “asymmetric organizational scenario” and an adversarial stance toward its work on the existing protocol version.
Shortly after, on March 3, the Aave Chan Initiative, a prominent governance delegate and service provider, also announced plans to wind down its operations following a dispute over a proposed funding package. ACI founder Marc Zeller cited concerns over governance standards and voting dynamics as reasons for the organization’s exit. The departures had raised questions about cohesion within the DAO ahead of the V4 vote.
The near-unanimous result on the V4 proposal signals that, despite those exits, the remaining community has coalesced around the upgrade. The outcome positions Aave to move forward with formalizing V4’s deployment through the binding onchain vote process. How quickly that next stage proceeds will depend on the governance timeline set by the DAO and Aave Labs.
Originally reported by CoinTelegraph.
