Aave’s governance passed the first formal vote toward deploying Aave V4 on Ethereum with 100% support Monday, clearing a path for the protocol’s most significant upgrade in years. The unanimous result carries extra weight given how divisive V4 had become within Aave’s leadership structure just weeks earlier.

Monday’s vote was a non-binding request for comment, the first stage in Aave’s governance process. A binding Aave Improvement Proposal vote will follow in the coming weeks. If approved, V4 will launch with what the proposal describes as “conservative parameters and minimal assets,” with the DAO able to expand the protocol as conditions allow.

The upgrade’s central feature is a hub-and-spoke architecture. A unified Liquidity Hub consolidates supplied assets, while individual Spokes connect to that pool with their own lending rules, risk parameters, and collateral policies. The design is meant to improve capital efficiency and support more tailored lending markets without fracturing liquidity, a persistent weakness of DeFi lending. V4 also deepens integration with Aave’s native GHO stablecoin and introduces a revamped liquidation engine. The upgrade reportedly underwent 345 days of cumulative security review backed by a $1.5 million DAO-ratified security budget.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

The backstory complicates the celebration. Last month, Aave Labs proposed pausing improvements to V3, which holds more than $25 billion in user deposits, to pressure users toward V4. Contributor Bored Ghosts Developing called the idea “borderline outrageous” and Labs withdrew the plan. Both Bored Ghosts and Aave Chan Initiative have since announced they will not renew their DAO contracts this year, departures that followed Aave Labs CEO Stani Kulechov’s “Aave Will Win” restructuring proposal. Monday’s unanimous vote suggests the conflict has settled, at least for now.