Aave founder Stani Kulechov says the decentralized finance protocol’s V4 spoke architecture will be key to increasing liquidity and monetization on the platform.
Scalable credit markets
In his last post on According to him, the pace of change in DeFi makes it difficult for Aave to build every feature itself. He noted that DeFi is moving incredibly quickly, and it will take a lot of time for the protocol to expand if it chooses to build it alone.
The Aave V4 spokes allow the protocol to collaborate with specialized external teams. Kulechov noted that such teams have expertise in areas such as AMMs, offenders, fixed loans, crypto or securities custody and liquidity expansion.
Focusing on operations, Kulechov explained that Aave service providers assess implementation, while the Aave DAO collects a fee by examining a sharing structure. He also noted that Aave’s partners have access to the deep liquidity and distribution of the protocol, while the core protocol has access to speed, expertise and new monetization capabilities. He sees the innovation as an advantage in terms of scale, speed and monetization.
Aave’s V4 spokes initial partners
Aave launched the V4 spokes on March 30, 2026 and debuted on the Ethereum mainnet, introducing a modular hub-and-spoke architecture. The initial rollout included specialized spokes for Lido Finance, EtherFi, Athena, Lombard Finance and Kelp DAO. These served as the protocol’s initial partners for the newly launched product.
In addition to the features Kulechov mentioned in his last post on
Analysts believe that the design of the Aave V4 spokes is focused on institutional credit and real assets, which could potentially increase demand for the core protocol. Meanwhile, Aave’s native cryptocurrency, AAVE, is up about 30% over the past seven days and was trading at $74.58 at the time of writing, according to TradingView data.
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