Aave Founder Stani Kulechov Says Aave V4 Could Support On-Chain Securities Financing

Aave founder Stani Kulechov said Aave V4 could be used to rebuild on-chain securities financing markets, citing the scale of traditional securities financing across repos, margin financing, and securities lending. According to ChainCatcher, he described securities financing as a large but less-discussed Wall Street market, noting figures including about $12.6 trillion in average daily exposure in the U.S. repo market, $1.3 trillion in margin financing, more than $400 billion in wealth-management securities-backed lending, and roughly $4.6 trillion of assets on loan in securities lending, which he said generated a record $15 billion in revenue in 2025. Kulechov said Aave V4’s “liquidity hub plus modular markets” design would allow shared liquidity at the base layer while enabling segmented markets with different risk parameters, asset scopes, and rules. He said the structure could support three securities financing use cases: securities-backed lending, repo transactions, and securities lending. He added that tokenized securities could be used as collateral to borrow GHO or stablecoins; repo transactions could borrow stablecoins against tokenized securities with atomic settlement; and in securities lending, tokenized securities could themselves become borrowable assets, with lending income flowing directly to asset holders. Kulechov said Aave V4 could operate with a single shared liquidity hub or multiple hubs split by asset class and risk, with the former offering deeper liquidity and the latter stronger risk isolation. He said a likely path would start with unified liquidity and evolve toward multiple hubs as collateral types expand.