Aave, the largest lending protocol in DeFi, plans to focus on a growth strategy through revenue over the next 12 months. This was stated by the project’s founder Stani Kulechov.
In his opinion, this stage should help DeFi move beyond endless token speculation.
On X Kulechov wrote that stable and predictable revenue is the main indicator that DeFi can become not just a speculative market, but a full-fledged business with a sustainable financial model and its own balance sheet.
How Aave’s Revenue Compares to Other Lending Protocols
According to DeFiLlama, over the past seven days Aave collected $7.96 million in fees. At the same time, the total value locked in the protocol exceeds $14 billion.
Among lending protocols, no one comes close to Aave in these two metrics.
The closest competitor by TVL, Morpho, holds about $7.5 billion. JustLend has more than $3.5 billion.
Aave outperforms other lending protocols in key metrics. Source: DeFiLlama.
DeFi—analyst DeFi Tiger drew attention to this gap on X. According to him, Aave V3 alone earned more in fees over the past year than all other lending protocols in the ranking combined.
He also noted that most DeFi platforms are still fighting for market share, while Aave has already become the main lending layer through which a significant portion of DeFi liquidity flows.
Aave V3 leads by a wide margin among lending protocols in revenue over the past 365 days. Source: DeFiLlama.
V4 Launch Gains Momentum
On May 22, the Frax platform, associated with the DeFi project Frax Finance, reported that the total volume of deposits and loans in V4 exceeded $100 million for the first time.
Of this amount, about $80 million was in deposits and another $25 million in loans.
This milestone was reached just one day after Kulechov himself wrote that the liquidity supply in V4 had already exceeded $75 million, and user incentive programs had officially launched.
On the same day, Kulechov also stated on X that Aave plans to expand into institutional lending and borrowing through Aave V4 and the stablecoin GHO.
GHO is the protocol’s native overcollateralized stablecoin Aave.
Aave Continues Aggressive Expansion
This year, Aave actively launched new initiatives that fit well with the growth-through-revenue strategy. And this is despite the April exploit, after which more than $10 billion was withdrawn from the protocol.
The new focus on revenue looks more like a continuation of the course that Aave already began to build in 2026.
Aave considered adding a charitable donation mechanism through yield. The idea was that users could direct interest from deposits to humanitarian projects without touching the principal.
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This proposal was discussed in May at a preliminary governance vote and showed that Aave is trying to go beyond a regular lending protocol.
Earlier, in March, Aave Labs introduced the V4 Reinvestment Module. Its task is to deploy about $6 billion in unused stablecoins into low-risk yield strategies.
In the same update, Aave added registration via email and password inside the app, removing the need to store seed phrases. This significantly lowered the entry barrier for new users.
Interest from institutions is also continuing to grow.
In April, the head of research at Grayscale said that Aave has the potential to become a recognizable brand for the mass market. And a research paper from the Bank of Canada on Aave V3 concluded that DeFi lending, with proper management, can already be considered operationally viable.
What Awaits Aave Next
Now much will depend on whether Aave V4 can maintain its current growth rate.
Several things are important for Kulechov’s strategy: growth in the use of V4, development of the institutional direction, and adoption of GHO within the ecosystem. If all of this continues to grow at the same time, Aave will be able to seriously strengthen its position as the main lending protocol in DeFi.
But there is another issue related to the project’s governance.
The first quarter was quite tense for Aave . Several key participants left the ecosystem at once, including BGD Labs and Aave Chan Initiative (ACI).
Now the protocol will have to not only increase revenue and expand infrastructure, but also stabilize the governance system to maintain the trust of the community and major market participants.
