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Aave aims to rebuild securities finance on V4
22 June 2026 US
Image: Tanvir/stock.adobe.com
Aave Labs, a software technology firm launched in 2020, has announced its plans to rebuild securities finance via Aave V4, bringing this market onchain.
Aave V4 is a lending protocol designed to expand Aave’s lending capabilities and establish the foundation for lending market structure for all finance.
It was first launched on the Ethereum mainnet, a primary, production-ready blockchain network, on 30 March.
Commenting on X, Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of Aave Labs, said: “Securities-backed lending and securities lending is a large opportunity to remove inefficiencies from TradFi.
“Aave proved efficient cost structure for onchain lending on crypto-backed assets and now it’s time to expand to all assets.”
According to the firm, securities finance has been waiting for a settlement and collateral layer that can function without a stack of intermediaries.
V4 hosts securities-backed lending, repo, and securities lending on one architecture, whether that is a single deep hub or a mesh of category-and-risk hubs that spokes route across, with the liquidity, the stablecoin cash leg, and the institutional pipeline already live.
A hub is a deep pool of capital, and spokes are the modular venues (i.e. markets) that plug into it, each with its own risk parameters, asset scope, and rules.
Kuleschov states that securities finance is one of the largest markets “that almost nobody outside Wall Street thinks about”, and it is already starting to move onchain.
Lending against securities collateral is a multi-trillion-dollar business, he adds. Repo alone averages around US$12.6 trillion in daily exposures in the US, margin lending sits at a record US$1.3 trillion, and wealth-management securities-based loans add over US$400 billion on top of that.
He highlights that securities lending, counted separately, keeps roughly US$4.6 trillion of assets on loan and generated a record US$15 billion in revenue in 2025. “Almost none of this activity touches a blockchain today, which presents an opportunity.”
As noted in the firm’s recent announcement: “The plumbing finally gets an upgrade, the value flows to the people who own the assets, and the market that runs on it is measured in trillions. This is the market Aave can capture.”
Aave Labs is the original author and key contributor of the Aave Protocol. The team builds blockchain-based products that power decentralised finance, including the Aave Protocol, the Aave-native stablecoin GHO, and Horizon, an institutional platform for borrowing against tokenized real-world assets.
Aave V4 is a lending protocol designed to expand Aave’s lending capabilities and establish the foundation for lending market structure for all finance.
It was first launched on the Ethereum mainnet, a primary, production-ready blockchain network, on 30 March.
Commenting on X, Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of Aave Labs, said: “Securities-backed lending and securities lending is a large opportunity to remove inefficiencies from TradFi.
“Aave proved efficient cost structure for onchain lending on crypto-backed assets and now it’s time to expand to all assets.”
According to the firm, securities finance has been waiting for a settlement and collateral layer that can function without a stack of intermediaries.
V4 hosts securities-backed lending, repo, and securities lending on one architecture, whether that is a single deep hub or a mesh of category-and-risk hubs that spokes route across, with the liquidity, the stablecoin cash leg, and the institutional pipeline already live.
A hub is a deep pool of capital, and spokes are the modular venues (i.e. markets) that plug into it, each with its own risk parameters, asset scope, and rules.
Kuleschov states that securities finance is one of the largest markets “that almost nobody outside Wall Street thinks about”, and it is already starting to move onchain.
Lending against securities collateral is a multi-trillion-dollar business, he adds. Repo alone averages around US$12.6 trillion in daily exposures in the US, margin lending sits at a record US$1.3 trillion, and wealth-management securities-based loans add over US$400 billion on top of that.
He highlights that securities lending, counted separately, keeps roughly US$4.6 trillion of assets on loan and generated a record US$15 billion in revenue in 2025. “Almost none of this activity touches a blockchain today, which presents an opportunity.”
As noted in the firm’s recent announcement: “The plumbing finally gets an upgrade, the value flows to the people who own the assets, and the market that runs on it is measured in trillions. This is the market Aave can capture.”
Aave Labs is the original author and key contributor of the Aave Protocol. The team builds blockchain-based products that power decentralised finance, including the Aave Protocol, the Aave-native stablecoin GHO, and Horizon, an institutional platform for borrowing against tokenized real-world assets.
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