Sentora, the DeFi risk management firm formerly known as Gauntlet, has proposed operating an isolated Aave V4 lending market on Ethereum in exchange for 50% of the instance's protocol revenue, while leaving Aave DAO with contract ownership and the power to revoke Sentora's roles through on-chain governance.

The proposal, posted as an ARFC on Aave's governance forum on Sept. 28, asks the DAO to let Sentora run a dedicated Hub and its lending Spokes through revocable operational roles. Sentora would select collateral, interest-rate curves, liquidation parameters, and oracles. In return, the DAO's Governance Short Executor would keep admin control over the Hub, Spokes, and AccessManager, retaining contract upgrades and role grants. Sentora would own none of the contracts.

The commercial split covers reserve-factor earnings and protocol liquidation fees, with 50% going to Sentora and 50% to the DAO.

Aave V4's architecture separates the Hub, which holds liquidity, from the Spokes where loans originate against collateral. Sentora proposes one Ethereum Hub with no credit lines to or from other Aave DAO Hubs. Borrowable assets would be limited to RLUSD, PYUSD, and OUSD, explicitly excluding USDC and USDT.

The operating roles create uneven response dynamics. Sentora could pause or freeze a reserve, halt an asset or Spoke, reduce a collateral factor, or tighten a cap immediately. Risk increases and ambiguous changes, including rate model and liquidation configuration updates, would execute after a 48-hour on-chain delay. The proposal sets no limit on the size of an increase and no cooldown between updates.

That delay exposes a structural gap in the DAO's recourse. The scheduled action becomes visible on-chain, but no mechanism exists to cancel that individual action inside the 48-hour window. Revoking Sentora's roles requires a separate governance proposal and only removes authority going forward.

For new Hubs or collateral assets, Sentora would post a risk analysis and wait two weeks. Any appointed Aave DAO service provider could object, which would pause the rollout and trigger a binding Snapshot vote. The same proposal states that no service provider is scoped or compensated to review these submissions, and the instance sits outside providers' existing monitoring, parameter-recommendation, and incident-response mandates.

Providers could still raise concerns on their own initiative. But the proposed veto depends on someone noticing a problem and choosing to object during the review window — a quiet window would not establish that anyone examined the change at all.

Sentora CEO Anthony DeMartino argued in a November 2025 essay that risk management requires measurable controls and continuous monitoring. The proposal assigns that operating role to Sentora while leaving the DAO's providers free to speak up, without requiring them to watch the market.

The loss-absorption mechanics carry the most consequential detail for prospective suppliers. If a liquidation exhausts a borrower's collateral while debt remains, the Spoke reports the shortfall to the Hub from which it drew the debt asset. The Hub records the deficit against that asset, and under TokenLogic's V4 Umbrella proposal, suppliers of that Hub asset bear the loss.

Aave's separate Umbrella ARFC proposes deficit offsets and staked coverage for Core WETH, Core USDC, and Core USDT. That coverage does not name Sentora's proposed Hub, and Sentora's ARFC specifies no Umbrella market, no deficit offset, and no Sentora-funded first-loss layer. A future proposal could close the gap, but the DAO's contract ownership and fee share provide no protection a lender can infer.

The proposal's own documentation contains inconsistencies on the initial collateral set. Sentora's narrative says USDe and PST would back the first RLUSD yield loans, with PRIME and mWIN added later, while its specification lists all four. Its Bluechip description names RLUSD borrowing against kBTC, but the table lists RLUSD, PYUSD, and OUSD. The OUSD oracle remains unconfirmed before launch.

The ARFC is still at the discussion stage. Before any approval, it must pass a Snapshot vote and then an on-chain Aave Improvement Proposal, where the DAO will weigh granting operating rights with no assigned independent watcher and no stated first-loss protection for the isolated Hub.