# Aave v4 is not a version of Aave v3

> It is a different protocol with a different mental model. You no longer pick a lending market — you pick a spoke, and spokes cannot see each other.

- Source: https://defiloops.com/blog/aave-v4-is-not-a-version-of-aave-v3
- Published: 2026-09-16
- Category: Architecture
- Tags: aave, lending, leverage, xaut
- Author: DeFiLoops

---
The name invites you to read v4 as v3 with improvements. It is not. It is a separate protocol
with a separate deployment, separate liquidity and a different mental model, and the two run
alongside each other rather than one replacing the other.

If you carry a v3 habit into it, the thing that will surprise you is not a changed parameter.
It is that **your positions can no longer see each other.**

## Spokes

Where v3 gives you one pool per chain, with every asset in it counting toward one health
factor, v4 divides lending into **spokes**. A spoke is a self-contained venue with its own list
of assets.

The two we reach:

<Spec rows={[
  ['main', 'WETH, wstETH, WBTC, USDC, USDT. The general-purpose one'],
  ['gold', 'Native XAUt, USDC, USDT. Tokenised gold, which no other venue in this system holds natively'],
]} />

An asset that is not on the spoke's list is refused rather than quietly falling through to a
default — worth knowing because in this design the zeroth entry of a list is a real entry, so
"not found" and "the first one" are dangerously easy to confuse in code that assumes otherwise.

## Spokes cannot see each other

This is the whole change, in one sentence: **a spoke counts only the collateral supplied to
itself.**

Collateral in `main` does nothing for a borrow in `gold`. Two positions in two spokes have two
independent health factors, and a position that is comfortable in one does not help a position
that is struggling in the other.

<Callout type="note" title="Isolation is the feature, not an oversight">
  The reason to build it this way is that a bad asset in one spoke cannot contaminate the
  others. In a single shared pool every listing is a risk to everything else, which is why
  listing anything at all is a governance fight. Spokes make a new venue cheap by making it
  contained.
</Callout>

The cost lands on you as a user: you now choose a spoke, and the choice sticks.

## There is no native way to move between spokes

Nor is there here. A move carries one venue, and no step in this system relocates a position
from one spoke to another.

Aave's own position on this is public — a user asked on the governance forum in July 2026 how
to migrate an existing position between venues and was told no automated tool exists yet, one
is planned, and in the meantime the route is the manual one: repay, withdraw, supply again,
borrow again. Which is exactly the sequence that is
[a deadlock without borrowed money](/blog/moving-a-position-between-lenders-without-selling-it).

<Callout type="warn" title="Do not confuse this with multi-hub borrowing">
  Aave's design does allow collateral in one place to back a borrow in another under certain
  arrangements. That is cross-venue *borrowing*, and it is not the same thing as moving a
  position you already have. The position stays where it was opened.
</Callout>

## A deposit is not collateral until you say so

The second habit v3 teaches you that v4 breaks. In v4, supplying an asset does not by itself
make it back anything — it sits as a deposit until it is explicitly marked as collateral.

So a supply here is three actions, not one: approve the token, supply it, and then mark it as
collateral. Miss the third and everything looks correct — your balance is there, the
transaction succeeded — while your borrowing power has not moved at all.

<Callout type="note" title="This is a good place for an operation rather than a checklist">
  The three calls happen as one step, because a two-thirds-completed supply is a state with no
  purpose that looks exactly like a finished one.
</Callout>

## Where it actually exists

Worth being exact, because the answer has changed twice this year and will change again.

<Spec rows={[
  ['Ethereum', 'v4 live since March 2026. This is where we reach it'],
  ['Avalanche', 'v4 live since July 2026, the first deployment beyond Ethereum'],
  ['Base', 'Under governance discussion as of September 2026'],
  ['Arbitrum', 'No v4 proposal. v3 only'],
]} />

For our purposes the consequence is blunt: **on two of our three chains, v3 is the only Aave
there is.** A plan that shifts a position into v4 has somewhere to go on Ethereum and nowhere
to go on Base or Arbitrum, and that is a property of where Aave has deployed rather than a
limit we chose.

## The gold spoke is the interesting one

Native XAUt as lending collateral is not available anywhere else in this system. It makes a
shape that was previously awkward straightforward: hold gold, borrow a stablecoin against it,
and keep the gold exposure — without selling the metal to raise the cash.

<Callout type="warn" title="What we will not tell you">
  Whether that is a good idea. A gold-collateralised borrow has a liquidation price like any
  other, and a spoke with fewer assets in it is a thinner venue than the general one. The
  survey half of this system will price the position for you; it will not have an opinion about
  it.
</Callout>