Greetings, Aave community!
Aave Labs has continued to make steady progress on multiple protocol endeavors in line with its service provider scope, with Aave V4 development as the primary focus.
The below summary highlights developments in the Aave Protocol and reflects Aave Labs’ transparent and collaborative approach of building in public, welcoming community feedback, and fostering auditability through open-source principles.
February update:
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Released Aave V4 v0.5.9 and froze the codebase to security-driven remediations, while strengthening safety via test-suite improvements and finalized security procedures.
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Published three audit reports with zero high or critical findings, and advanced the final security review phase across the Sherlock contest and an additional audit round.
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Progressed Hub-and-Spokes launch readiness with partners on initial risk parameters configuration, while moving key components through review and preparing CoW swap adapters for audit.
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Advanced GHO workstreams through sGHO/ERC-4626 integration reviews, and supported CCIP deployments to Mantle and XLayer.
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Continued institutional-facing progress for Aave Horizon, including new educational materials and engagement with traditional finance stakeholders.
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Delivered meaningful interface and integration improvements across Aave Pro, the SDK, and swap/integration tooling, alongside continued Aave App pre-production testing and pre-launch maturation work.
Aave V4 Updates
Aave V4 work this month advanced through the v0.5.9 milestone, with an emphasis on strengthening safety by improving the test suite and finalizing security procedures in support of broad security review and launch-readiness workstreams. Alongside the release, we froze the codebase and constrained changes to security-driven remediations only, keeping the audit and review scope stable across providers and minimizing late-cycle churn.
In parallel, we published three audit reports, all of which reported zero high or critical findings. This outcome reflects the security-by-design approach applied throughout development and the benefits of early, ongoing collaboration with @Certora.
On the security process track, the Sherlock contest is now in its final stages and will be finalized and made public shortly. We also initiated a final audit round focused on v0.5.9 with @Certora and four additional reviewers, two audit firms and two independent security researchers returning from the first audit round. Re-engaging reviewers already familiar with the protocol is intended to support a concentrated review window that builds on prior context and shortens the feedback loop for any final remediations.
In parallel, a number of supporting components are reaching readiness for external review. Position manager functionality designed to replicate Aave V3’s onBehalf behavior has been completed and is now pending security review. We are also progressing on the CoW swap adapters implementation, with the goal of taking them through audit shortly. Finally, the tokenization spoke is currently going through security review as part of the broader Hub-and-Spokes and launch-readiness effort.
Risk parameters configuration is progressing in parallel as a dedicated launch-readiness workstream. Aave Labs is collaborating closely with @ChaosLabs, @LlamaRisk, and @TokenLogic to align the initial Hub-and-Spokes configuration.
Finally, the licensing framework is nearing readiness for DAO discussion. The goal is to establish durable foundations that protect the IP, protocol, and codebase, while supporting workable, clear terms for ecosystem contributors and integrators.
What else are we working on?
GHO
GHO work throughout February centered on integrating @TokenLogic’s ERC-4626 and sGHO implementations. Multiple engineers participated in reviewing pull requests, tightening documentation, and refining the underlying logic to ensure correctness and maintainability. In parallel, Aave Labs supported @TokenLogic in progressing the GHO CCIP deployment workstream, deploying contracts to Mantle (now live) and to XLayer (pending activation).
From a protocol economics perspective, GHO continued to demonstrate meaningful revenue contribution. By year-end 2025, GHO was confirmed as generating over $14M in annualized revenue, reinforcing its role as a strategic revenue driver for the Aave DAO. GHO also saw notable onchain activity in mid-February, when Vitalik Buterin deposited $5.8M into sGHO, making him the 7th largest sGHO depositor at the time.
Aave Horizon
To support institutional education, Aave Labs published a new blog post, How Aave Horizon is Built to Support Institutions which outlines how Horizon is structured for institutional use cases around tokenized assets and permissioned collateral in a DeFi-native Framework.
In parallel, Aave Labs and Apex Group published a joint eBook that frames institutional DeFi adoption and highlights Aave Horizon’s recent progress, including continued support for tokenized treasury and fund products from VanEck, Janus Henderson, and Superstate. The publication is available here: Institutional decentralised finance at an inflection point.
Aave Software Development Kit (SDK)
SDK work this month progressed through several incremental releases, with versions 4.0.0-next.39, 4.0.0-next.40, and 4.0.0-next.41 shipping in sequence as the integration surface continued to mature. Documentation was updated alongside the releases to make the new flow easier to adopt.
In 4.0.0-next.39, we introduced improved user balance fetching, adding functionality to fetch user balances and swappable tokens for a provided list of token addresses. In 4.0.0-next.40, the SDK added rewards availability in the latest build, extending the developer surface to better cover incentive and rewards-related use cases.
Finally, the most recent SDK line (4.0.0-next.41+) has now been successfully integrated into Aave Pro, aligning the interface and SDK workstreams and strengthening end-to-end readiness for integrators. In parallel, initial Aave App integration work is progressing as the next step toward broader product coverage.
Aave Pro
Work on Aave Pro this month focused primarily on UI/UX refinement. A significant design cleanup was completed, including a move toward “fewer hubs,” resulting in a noticeably cleaner and more navigable interface. In parallel, supporting documentation was updated to reflect the latest product direction and interface changes. Aave Pro continues to mature as a key product, with ongoing iteration aimed at delivering a streamlined, power-user experience for the protocol.
Aave App
Aave App work this month progressed through pre-production testing as we continued preparing the product for a broader rollout. Pre-launch work continued to mature the app, reflecting ongoing iteration and stabilization ahead of the public rollout. The primary focus throughout February was aligning on launch timelines, strengthening financial modeling, advancing key partnerships, and continuing compliance readiness work in preparation for the public release.
Aave Interface
CoW Adapters
CoW Swaps integration work this month focused on fee and routing optimizations. Partner fees for debt swaps were reduced to 0 bps, GHO GSM routes were integrated for the USDC/GHO and USDT/GHO pairs, and CoW’s volume fee for correlated-asset pairs was adjusted.
These changes materially reduce user-facing friction for stable and correlated-asset swap flows. We will continue monitoring routing behavior and execution quality as volumes evolve, with an ongoing focus on improving both the Aave interface experience and the underlying swap mechanics.
Ongoing Integrations
Integration efforts this month focused on reinforcing existing deployments while continuing to evolve the incentives stack that supports them. In collaboration with @ACI and @TokenLogic, we shipped a set of bug fixes, incremental feature improvements, and UX refinements to better support current growth initiatives.
We added network configuration support for MegaETH. In parallel, we expanded Mantle support across both incentives and network configuration, enabling Ethena points, adding srUSDe branding updates, strengthening Mantle market configuration, extending support for bridging GHO to Mantle, and addressing missing Mantle network icons.
What’s coming next?
Our main focus for the coming month will be
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Close out the Aave V4 security effort by consolidating audit and contest outputs, publishing any remaining reports, and completing the final audit round.
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Finalize the initial Hub-and-Spokes configuration with DAO risk managers and prepare the launch configuration for DAO discussion.
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Advance Aave Pro and the SDK toward integrator readiness by finishing UI/UX refinements and polishing supporting documentation.
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Continue Aave App pre-production testing and carry launch preparation workstreams forward, with focus on timelines, partnerships, and compliance readiness.
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Keep iterating on swaps and integrations, while monitoring CoW routing and execution quality and progressing network configuration improvements.
Stay tuned for next month’s update.
Aave Labs