Aave V4's total value locked rose 81.7% during September, reaching $653.8 million on Sept. 30, up from $359.9 million in DefiLlama's Sept. 1 reading. Circle's newly launched Arc blockchain accounted for more than a quarter of that tracked total.

Arc held $180.9 million, or 27.7% of V4's TVL, according to DefiLlama. Circle launched Arc's public mainnet on Sept. 16 with Aave among its initial lending protocols, giving V4 a fresh venue for supplying assets and borrowing. The latest snapshot, dated Sept. 30 at 8:04 a.m. ET, covers Ethereum, Arc and Avalanche — but not V4's newly launched Base market.

Borrowing grew in step with locked assets. Active loans in the tracked markets reached $366.4 million, up 75.7% from $208.5 million in the Sept. 1 daily reading, according to The Defiant's calculations using DefiLlama data. Because DefiLlama excludes borrowed coins from TVL, the figures should not be read as gross user deposits or a complete tally of every V4 deployment.

Where is V4's TVL concentrated?

Ethereum remained the largest tracked market, with $444.1 million locked, an increase of $98.1 million, or 28.4%, from the start of the month. Avalanche rose from $13.9 million to $28.8 million. These are changes in dollar-valued balances, not a measure of net inflows independent of asset price moves.

V4's expansion is also broadening its collateral types. Aave Labs said on Sept. 25 that its Base Equities Hub was live with seven Coinbase tokenized stocks — AAPLc, AMZNc, GOOGLc, METAc, MSFTc, NVDAc and TSLAc — that users can pledge to borrow USDC. The securities are available only to eligible non-U.S. persons in permitted jurisdictions.

The equity tokens are collateral-only: users cannot borrow the tokens themselves or open equity-against-equity positions. USDC suppliers to the dedicated hub explicitly take on stock-collateral lending exposure, which the deployment documentation says is segregated from other Aave markets.

How does the Base market manage weekend risk?

The Base market operates around the clock, but its Chainlink equity price feeds hold the last published price over weekends and U.S. market holidays. LlamaRisk's assessment notes that reopening prices incorporate information accumulated during the closure in a single step — a hazard for borrowers whose collateral has declined in value while markets were shut.

That structure builds on the architecture introduced when V4 launched on Ethereum in March. Rather than V3's market-per-pool design, V4 uses liquidity hubs connected to borrowing modules called spokes, each with its own risk settings and limits.

Can V4 catch V3 on revenue?

V4's larger balances have not displaced V3 as Aave's primary revenue engine. In DefiLlama's trailing 30-day window retrieved Sept. 30, V4 generated $103,745 in protocol revenue — about 2.04% of Aave's $5.07 million total. V3 generated $4.66 million, or 91.8%, over the same window.

TVL is not itself income. DefiLlama measures V4 protocol revenue as its retained share of borrower interest and liquidation bonuses. Of V4's $103,745 in trailing 30-day revenue, Ethereum contributed $99,837 while Arc contributed just $1,754.

On Base, Aave Labs says additional tokenized stocks and GHO borrowing remain subject to governance and risk review, while supply and borrowing caps will be revisited through the risk-steward process as token supply and trading depth grow — a pipeline that will determine how quickly V4's balance-sheet growth converts into protocol income.