The economics behind Aave proposal to ditch 6 chains that earn loose change in revenue

Aave, the largest decentralized lending protocol, is planning to exit six blockchains—Sonic, Scroll, zkSync, Metis, Soneium, and Aptos—that currently hold about $98 million in deposits. These six chains collectively represent under 1% of Aave’s roughly $14 billion in assets across 23 chains and generate less than $5,000 in quarterly revenue each. For example, Metis, Soneium, and Aptos each bring in under $1,000 per quarter, which is insufficient to cover the operational costs such as maintaining price feeds, liquidation systems, and monitoring.

Deposits on these six blockchains have sharply declined over the past six months, with falls ranging from 74% to 95%. Sonic, the largest among them, declined 74% to just under $8 million in deposits, while other chains like Aptos and zkSync saw their available liquidity drop by more than 85%. This reduction in deposits and the resulting minimal revenue contrast starkly with Aave’s Ethereum mainnet, which generates more than $142 million annually, or the Base chain with about $4.7 million per year.

The proposed exit strategy involves freezing these markets to new deposits, borrowing, and collateral use while making borrowing prohibitively expensive through measures such as high base rates and routing 99% of borrower interest to Aave’s treasury. Existing positions would not be forcibly closed but users would be incentivized to unwind voluntarily. The broader rationale is both financial and risk-related: maintaining these low-performing markets is not economically viable, and the cleanup aligns with a prior decision from December to only deploy on chains demonstrating at least $2 million in annual revenue.

This move is part of a broader shift in Aave’s strategy away from low-adoption blockchains that don’t fit the product market. It follows a decline in overall revenue from $198 million in the first quarter of 2026 to $156 million in the second quarter, with further slowdown in the third quarter. The company treats this cleanup as both cost-cutting and risk-reduction, reflecting the diminishing returns and increased operational complexities associated with maintaining fragmented, low-usage deployments.