Stani Kuleshov, founder and CEO of Aave, revealed the decentralized protocol’s “master plan” for 2026, shortly after it was revealed that the US Securities and Exchange Commission had dropped its four-year investigation into the platform.
In a post to
Pointing to 2026, the CEO outlined a master plan largely focused on scaling the DeFi platform and achieving specific usage metrics, such as $1 billion in real asset (RWA) deposits.
“Right now, our strategy for the coming year is based on three main pillars: Aave V4, Horizon and Aave App,” he said.
AVI V4 is Great promotion It was touted to bring significant improvements to the platform’s borrowing and lending pools, user interface and filtering parameters, among other things.
In his article, Kulichov said V4 would be “the backbone of all finance,” and also pointed to the dedicated lending markets that V4’s Hub and Spoke model would provide.
Under this model, a hub refers to a single, unified liquidity pool that acts as a central location for all assets on the protocol, while spokes refer to highly customizable markets that benefit from the hub’s liquidity.
“This will allow Aave to handle trillions of dollars in assets, making it the perfect choice for any enterprise, fintech or corporate looking to access Aave’s deep, reliable liquidity,” he said, adding:
“In 2026, Aave will be home to new markets, new assets, and new integrations that have never existed before in DeFi. We will continue to engage with fintech companies and work closely with the DAO and our partners on the rollout to gradually scale TVL throughout the year.”
Looking at Horizon’s next pillar, Aave’s real-world decentralized asset market, the CEO explained his intentions to on-board “several major financial institutions” to become a major player in the RWA space.
“Horizon’s net deposits currently stand at $550 million. In 2026, we will look to rapidly scale this to $1 billion and beyond by expanding our work with leading institutional partners like Circle, Ripple, Franklin Templeton, VanEck, and others to bring major global asset classes to Aave.”
The final pillar is the Aave mobile app, which launched on the Apple Store in mid-November, with Kulechov describing it as a “Trojan horse” for bringing decentralized finance into the mainstream.
The CEO said the mobile fintech sector is a “$2 trillion-plus industry” and Aave wants to capitalize on it by making its complex infrastructure as easy to use as possible for people, as well as beating competitors by offering Better savings products.
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“Early next year, we will begin full deployment of Aave and begin the journey to our first million users. This will directly fuel the growth of the Aave protocol through a new and completely untapped market. Aave cannot scale into trillions of dollars without mass adoption at the product level.”
The Securities and Exchange Commission ends a four-year investigation
On Tuesday, Kulichov confirmed the end of the SEC Four-year SEC investigation To Aave, as we shared a letter dated August 12, 2025.
The platform is “thrilled to put this behind us as we enter a new era where developers can truly build the future of finance,” Kuleshov said.
Along with the SEC and masterplan announcement, Kulichov wrapped things up on Tuesday by sharing that he personally purchased $9.8 million worth of AAVE, outside of the US. Proposed buyback of Aave DAO program.
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