AAVE

Aave

DeFi

The largest DeFi lender, now sending all revenue to its token after a bruising year of governance fights and bad debt.

Leader, rebuilding trust v1.2 · as of 2026-10-20 · framework v1.13 Coinsight · all analyses
Bottom line

Aave is still the default place to borrow on-chain: ~$30B in deposits, ~$12.6B in active loans and V4 live on Ethereum since 30 Mar 2026. The year tested it hard: a Labs vs DAO fight over fees and brand, then $124M to $230M of modelled bad debt from the Kelp rsETH exploit in April, which helped push AAVE to $60.93 in June. Since April all Aave-branded revenue goes to the DAO and buybacks now run automatically, and the token has rebounded ~155% off the low but is still −32% over a year. The case now rests on revenue (~$87M over 12 months) recovering and the rsETH losses being fully closed out.

Scorecard (1–5)
Project
Token performance
Tokenomics
Price
$155.52
+4.2% 24h · +14% 30d · CoinGecko 20 Oct
Market cap
$2.40B
rank #44 · FDV $2.49B
24h volume
$255.5M
10.6% of market cap
From ATH
−76%
ATH $661.69, May 2021
2026 YTD
+6%
$145.98 → $155.52
Revenue 12m
~$87M
protocol revenue · DefiLlama 20 Oct

The last 12 months

$100$200$300Oct 25NovDecJan 26FebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec2025-10-27: $240.7111$240.71 peak2026-06-07: $60.9321$60.93 low2026-10-06: $184.0614$184.062026-10-20: $155.5138$155.521Aave App waitlist2Labs vs DAO brand fight3Aave V4 live on Ethereum4“Aave Will Win” passes5Kelp rsETH exploit hits Aave6Year low at $60.937Aavenomics 3.0 goes live8Deposits back above $30B9Token burn proposal10Native BTC collateral vote
ProductGovernanceTechMarketTokenomicsAdoptionUpcoming

Daily closes from CoinGecko, 21 Oct 2025 to 20 Oct 2026.

Key events
  1. 1
    17 Nov 25 Aave App waitlist. Aave Labs announces a consumer savings app for Apple's App Store; iOS early access only began in 2026.
  2. 2
    16 Dec 25 Labs vs DAO brand fight. After CoW Swap fees were found going to a Labs wallet, a proposal asks Labs to hand the brand to the DAO; it fails over the holidays.
  3. 3
    30 Mar 26 Aave V4 live on Ethereum. Hub-and-spoke redesign activated with conservative caps and no incentive programme.
  4. 4
    12 Apr 26 “Aave Will Win” passes. ~75% yes: 100% of Aave-branded revenue goes to the DAO; Labs gets $25M plus 75,000 AAVE.
  5. 5
    18 Apr 26 Kelp rsETH exploit hits Aave. Unbacked rsETH used as collateral leaves $124M to $230M of modelled bad debt; buybacks pause the next day.
  6. 6
    07 Jun 26 Year low at $60.93. Lowest daily close since Sept 2023 after a high-volume sell-off on 5 Jun.
  7. 7
    27 Jun 26 Aavenomics 3.0 goes live. Buybacks restart as an automated on-chain programme on a $30M-a-year budget.
  8. 8
    14 Aug 26 Deposits back above $30B. Kulechov says “liquidity is back”; V4 passes $400M; AAVE runs from $85.94 (17 Aug) to $141.53 (24 Aug).
  9. 9
    Soon Token burn proposal. Kulechov floated adding a burn to Aavenomics on 28 Sep; details promised for the next quarterly call.
  10. 10
    Q4 26 Native BTC collateral vote. Babylon's ARFC (14 Oct) to accept native Bitcoin on V4 awaits a governance vote; no date set.

How a loan flows through Aave V4

Supplier
Deposits USDC

Liquidity goes into a shared hub and earns variable interest.

Borrower
Posts ETH collateral

Chooses a spoke whose collateral and risk rules fit the asset.

Oracle
Prices the position

Chainlink feeds set the borrowing limit and health factor.

Hub
Lends USDC

Borrower pays interest; most goes to suppliers, a reserve-factor share to the DAO.

Liquidators
Close unsafe loans

If collateral falls, bots repay debt and seize collateral at a discount; bad debt hits Umbrella stakers.

DAO treasury
Collects revenue

Revenue funds operations and automated AAVE buybacks.

Where AAVE comes in: nobody needs AAVE to supply or borrow, so the token is bypassed in the loan itself. It earns value at the end: the DAO's share of interest (and since April all Aave-branded product revenue) funds open-market buybacks. AAVE also votes on risk settings and can be staked for emissions, but Umbrella's aToken stakes, not AAVE, are now the first backstop for bad debt.

Usage and adoption

USD over the last 12 months (≈ Oct 2025 → Oct 2026)
Protocol revenue
~$87M
AAVE buybacks (est.)
~$25M
Safety Module AAVE emissions (est.)
~$11M
Labs AAVE grant vesting
~$2M

Revenue is DefiLlama's trailing-year protocol revenue (gross fees ~$675M mostly go to suppliers); the latest 30 days were ~$4.7M, a slower ~$57M pace. Buybacks are an estimate: ~$1M a week until the March budget cut, a pause from 19 Apr to 27 Jun, then ~292 AAVE a day. Emissions assume ~240 AAVE a day to stkAAVE at the 12-month average price of ~$129; Umbrella rewards are paid in stablecoins and WETH and are not shown. Not shown either: the $25M stablecoin grant to Labs and the rsETH bad debt.

  • strong signal
    Protocol revenue
    ~$87M / 12m

    DefiLlama, 20 Oct. Interest share and liquidation fees that the DAO keeps; down from its peak.

  • strong signal
    Active loans
    ~$12.6B

    Token Terminal, Sept 2026 average. Borrowers paying interest: the core paid usage.

  • medium signal
    Deposits
    ~$30B

    Mid-Aug 2026. DefiLlama's TVL (~$17.6B) nets out borrowing, so the two are not comparable.

  • medium signal
    GHO supply
    ~$0.5B–0.6B

    Mid-2026; flat for most of the year. Sources disagree and none is dated October.

  • medium signal
    Horizon RWA deposits
    ~$550M

    Net deposits, Apr 2026 (Kulechov). Target $1B; a February report of $1B likely used a gross figure.

Aave's adoption shows up as interest paid by borrowers, and it is real: ~$12.6B in loans and ~$87M of protocol revenue over 12 months. The weak spot is the trend, with revenue running at a slower pace lately, and GHO and Horizon are still small next to the core market.

Project

What it is
A non-custodial lending market: users supply assets to earn interest and borrow against collateral at variable rates. It also issues its own stablecoin, GHO, and runs Horizon, a permissioned market for tokenized real-world assets.
Team
Aave Labs (founder Stani Kulechov) builds the products; the Aave DAO owns the contracts and treasury, with service providers such as the Aave Chan Initiative (Marc Zeller). In Dec 2025 they clashed over CoW Swap fees going to a Labs wallet and over who owns the brand. The April 2026 “Aave Will Win” vote (~75% yes) sent 100% of Aave-branded revenue to the DAO and granted Labs $25M plus 75,000 AAVE; ACI voted against.
Technology
V4 (live on Ethereum since 30 Mar 2026) uses a hub-and-spoke design: shared liquidity in Prime, Core and Plus hubs, with separate spokes setting collateral and risk rules. Chainlink is the only oracle at launch. Umbrella, a staked-aToken backstop, covers bad debt.
Traction
~$30B deposits and ~$12.6B active loans (Token Terminal, Sept 2026 average). V4 passed $400M deposits by mid-August. Horizon held ~$550M net deposits in April; GHO roughly $0.5B to $0.6B in mid-2026. Tokenized-stock lending on Base is small (~$9.6M supplied).
Competitors
Morpho (also embedded in Base's Earn & Borrow), Spark, Compound, Kamino and Euler; Maker/Sky, Ethena and Circle for stablecoins; Securitize-style platforms for RWA credit.
Key risks
Collateral risk from outside assets: the Apr 2026 Kelp rsETH bridge exploit left $124M to $230M of modelled bad debt and its final settlement was still open in the sources used. Revenue has fallen from its peak. Labs vs DAO trust is fragile, and Kulechov rejected a reported Payward bid as a “70% discount”.
Roadmap
Announced but not live: Babylon's proposal (ARFC, 14 Oct) to accept native Bitcoin as V4 collateral; a token burn added to Aavenomics, floated by Kulechov on 28 Sep with details promised for a quarterly call; full launch of the consumer Aave App (iOS early access only); Horizon toward $1B; V4 hubs beyond Ethereum while ~50 old reserves and 6 chain deployments are reportedly wound down.

Token performance

1-year return (21 Oct 2025 → 20 Oct 2026, CoinGecko)
AAVE
-32%
BTC
-25%
ETH
-38%

AAVE lagged BTC but beat ETH over 12 months. Over 3 years it is up roughly +140% (from ~$65 in Oct 2023), behind BTC (~+179%, from ~$29.7k) and well ahead of ETH (~+53%, from ~$1.6k). 3-year figures are manual and approximate because the free CoinGecko API covers 365 days.

Range 2026
$60.93 low (7 Jun) to $184.06 high (6 Oct), daily closes; now $155.52
12-month drawdown
−75%, from $240.71 (27 Oct 2025) to $60.93 (7 Jun 2026), the lowest close since Sept 2023
Liquidity
$256M traded in 24h, 10.6% of market cap; rank #44
Relative strength
+155% off the June low, +13.6% in 30 days and +6.5% YTD; over 12 months −32% vs BTC −25% and ETH −38%
ATH check ATH check passed. The $661.69 high (18 May 2021) came about seven months after the AAVE token replaced LEND in Oct 2020, outside the 90-day launch window, so the ATH is used as the reference (now −76.5%).

Tokenomics

Supply
16M AAVE maximum, no minting. 15.44M circulating; the rest sits mostly in the DAO's Ecosystem Reserve.
Emissions
Incentives come from the reserve, not new tokens: Safety Module stakers got 260 AAVE/day in early 2026, with a cut to 220/day proposed. Umbrella rewards are paid in aUSDC, aUSDT and aWETH, not AAVE.
Unlocks
No investor cliffs left. Labs' 75,000 AAVE grant vests linearly over 48 months (~1,560 AAVE a month).
Utility
Governance votes, staking in the Safety Module (stkAAVE), and since April 2026 the claim on all Aave-branded revenue. Not needed to supply or borrow.
Concentration
Votes are concentrated: ~233k AAVE from Labs-linked addresses decided the March temp check (Zeller's claim); ACI cast 166k against the final vote. An address labelled as Kulechov's moved 30.9k AAVE to Uniswap on 26 Sep.
Sinks
Buybacks: 205k AAVE (1.28% of supply) for ~$42M by Feb 2026. Budget cut from $50M to $30M a year in March, paused 19 Apr after rsETH, then automated under Aavenomics 3.0 from 27 Jun (~292 AAVE/day reported). A burn is under discussion.

Bull case

V4 grows into the main market, Horizon and native-BTC collateral bring new borrowers, and revenue climbs back above $100M a year, all of it now owned by AAVE holders and partly recycled into buybacks. Price holds the $150 area, reclaims the $184 October high and heads back toward the $240 level of October 2025.

Bear case

The rsETH loss lands at the high end (~$230M) and drains Umbrella and the treasury, while rates compress and revenue keeps sliding from its peak. Labs vs DAO friction returns, buybacks stay small, and AAVE loses the ~$120 September range on the way back to the $86 August base or the $61 June low.

Watch before the next re-run

  • Final rsETH bad-debt settlement and how much Umbrella and the DAO pay
  • Monthly protocol revenue (30-day was ~$4.7M) vs the ~$87M 12-month figure
  • Buyback pace and any burn proposal from the quarterly call
  • V4 deposits, Horizon and GHO supply; the Babylon native-BTC vote

Where to trade

Krakenlisted

AAVE against EUR · USD · BTC · ETH · GBP

24h $2.41M · ±2% depth $1.12M

OKXlisted

AAVE against EUR · USDT · USDC · TRY

24h $2.55M · ±2% depth $305.2k

Largest exchanges

Exchange24h vol±2% depth
BybitAAVE/USDT$34.4M$205.9k
KuCoinAAVE/USDT$25.0M$309.4k
BinanceAAVE/USDT$14.8M$455.0k
GateAAVE/USDT$12.8M$572.8k
HTXAAVE/USDT$4.90M$101.3k

Deepest DEX pools

Pool24h vol±2% depth
Uniswap V3CLAAVE/WETH · Ethereum$1.06M$462.4k
Balancer V2AAVE/WSTETH · Ethereum$54.9k$127.6k
Uniswap V4CLAAVE/USDC · Ethereum$318.9k$104.6k

Pool size (TVL), fee tier and fee APR are not in yet: they need DefiLlama, which this setup cannot reach so far. CL = concentrated liquidity (higher fees, more impermanent-loss risk).

On-chain share of all AAVE volume: 0.5%.

As of 21 Oct 2026 · CoinGecko tickers (24h volume, ±2% depth). ±2% depth is the money it takes to move the price 2% either way: the real size of a market. Exchanges ranked by volume among well-known venues; pools by depth. Not investment advice.

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