Aave V4 deposits surpass $400M, setting a new all-time high

Aave V4 has crossed $400 million in total deposits, marking a new all-time high for the protocol version that only went live on mainnet a few months ago.

The milestone lands shortly after Aave V4 recorded $350 million in deposits on August 3, 2026, a figure publicly acknowledged by Aave founder Stani Kulechov as a stepping stone toward the $400M threshold now crossed.

From zero to $400M in under a year

The Aave DAO approved the V4 activation on May 4, 2026, following an extended testnet period. Deposits sat near $50 million in early May, climbed to roughly $100 million by June, and pushed into the $200M-$300M range between late June and July before breaking $350M at the start of August.

As of mid-August 2026, V4’s total value locked sat in the $217M-$225M range, primarily concentrated on Ethereum. The gap between that TVL figure and the $400M deposit headline reflects the difference between net locked capital and gross deposits flowing through the system.

V4’s TVL grew roughly 26-36% over a single 30-day period leading into mid-August.

What V4 actually changes

V4 is not a cosmetic upgrade. The core architectural shift is a move to what Aave calls a Liquidity Hub and Borrow Spokes model, essentially a hub-and-spoke design where liquidity pools are managed centrally while individual borrowing markets branch off as spokes. Each spoke can be configured independently, meaning a problem in one lending market does not automatically contaminate others.

V4 also introduces native support for real-world assets alongside traditional crypto lending, a capability that significantly expands Aave’s potential user base beyond on-chain native borrowers and into institutional participants who need compliant exposure to tokenized assets.

V3 continues to operate in parallel with V4 rather than being shut down. As of April 2026, V3 carried roughly $19.4 billion in TVL across chains.

Why this matters beyond the headline number

For AAVE token holders, deposit growth translates into fee generation and protocol revenue, which flows back through governance-controlled mechanisms. A protocol sitting at $400M in deposits on V4 while simultaneously running $19.4B on V3 is generating revenue from both systems simultaneously, a dual-engine structure that gives the DAO significant flexibility on how it manages the V3-to-V4 transition timeline.

Aave’s decision to run V3 and V4 in parallel rather than forcing a cutover lets users migrate at their own pace rather than under deadline pressure.

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