Written by: Tia, Techub News
A recent proposal passed by the Aave community has removed the collateral eligibility of USDS and DAI and raised the risk reserve ratio. The voting results overwhelmingly supported the removal of USDS (formerly DAI) from the platform's collateral list. This seemingly technical adjustment of risk parameters has, in fact, unveiled the harsh competitive rules of the DeFi 2.0 era.
Trigger: Imbalance of Risk-Return Ratio
The Aave proposal document summarizes two core arguments. The primary issue lies in the structural risks of the Sky ecosystem. The transformed Sky is no longer just a stablecoin issuer but has evolved into an "on-chain Federal Reserve," completing cross-domain layouts by providing "internal credit lines" to SubDAOs like Spark and Grove. Aave is concerned that under this parent-subsidiary structure, SubDAOs may acquire funds at zero or very low cost, thereby penetrating high-risk return strategies and ultimately eroding the stable foundation of USDS. Although Sky founder Rune clarified that SubDAOs actually bear an interest cost of about 4.55% and that core subsidiaries like Spark must prioritize injecting protocol income into risk reserves, Aave's risk assessment has clearly not been fully convinced.
The second reason is more pragmatic: the utilization rate of USDS on the Aave platform has remained sluggish, with the economic benefits contributed falling far below expectations. In the actuarial model of DeFi protocols, each piece of collateral occupies risk exposure and liquidity resources. When returns cannot cover potential risks, the rational choice is to cut losses in a timely manner. Behind this is a deeper business logic— as native lending protocols like Spark mature, the Sky ecosystem is gradually "internalizing" its lending business, and Aave's marginal value as an external channel has effectively reached zero.
From Union to Struggle: A Predestined Identity Misalignment
To understand the inevitability of this "breakup," one must trace the evolutionary path from MakerDAO to Sky. In the past, MakerDAO purely played the role of a stablecoin supplier, continuously supplying TVL to Aave, forming a classic complementary relationship. However, the transformed Sky must answer a question: can the CDP model alone support scaled growth? The case of LUSD serves as a warning—its immutable stable model can ensure decentralization purity, but its application scenarios and market value have long stagnated. Sky chose a more traditional path of financial expansion: earning interest spreads by lending to SubDAOs and completing comprehensive layouts in lending, RWA, and other fields through a holding company model.
The preconditions for this model to work are extremely stringent: SubDAOs must capture returns above the 4.55% benchmark interest rate in their respective tracks. This forces Sky to gradually transform from a friendly competitor of Aave into a direct rival. When Spark's SLL (Spark Liquidity Layer) began to take on collateral lending demands that originally belonged to Aave, the foundation of their past cooperation had already weakened. As industry commentary puts it, "Maker forked Spark and stabbed Aave in the back." While this assessment may seem sharp, it accurately captures the essence of the conflict in business models.
Rational Calculations from Three Perspectives
From Aave's standpoint, delisting USDS is a typical defensive strategy. The protocol cannot penetrate the funding operations of SubDAOs but must passively bear their risk transmission; this asymmetric vulnerability is unacceptable within the risk control framework. More notably, the multi-chain strategy optimization proposal that Aave is simultaneously advancing reveals its resource focus logic—chains with annual revenues of less than $2 million will no longer be deployed, while the annual interest spread on the Ethereum mainnet alone reaches $142 million.
Sky's expansion comes with inevitable costs. Choosing growth means embracing complexity; the risk contagion issues of traditional financial holding companies cannot be avoided in the on-chain world either. The only feasible remedy is extreme transparency, allowing users and partners to independently assess the risk-return ratio of each SubDAO. After all, when Sky actively upgrades USDS from a public infrastructure to an ecological competitive tool, it must accept the results of partners voting with their feet.
For users, the actual impact is controlled within a limited scope. The demand for collateral lending of USDS on Aave has always been thin, and the Spark Savings Vault and SLL have already provided complete alternative solutions. The real loss lies in the narrowing of choices—the early DeFi utopian ideal of "any combination" is giving way to a moat built on real commercial interests.
The Eve of DeFi Civil War: Hierarchization Replacing Flattening
The significance of this event lies in its declaration of the end of the "composability honeymoon" of the DeFi 1.0 era. As leading protocols complete their original accumulation, vertical integration of the industry chain becomes an instinctive choice, and the once open and permissionless flat ecosystem inevitably evolves towards hierarchization and territorialization. Aave draws clear boundaries through governance voting, while Sky builds ecological barriers with SubDAOs; both efforts are essentially attempts to internalize external risk.
A deeper question lies in the coordination ability of governance tokens. When the interests of protocols conflict, can cross-community governance voting truly transcend short-term interest games? The delisting of USDS will not be an isolated case but the prelude to a series of DeFi civil wars. Each protocol will face a difficult balance between the spirit of openness and commercial sustainability, and users will ultimately understand: there is no eternal composability, only eternal judgments of risk-return ratios.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
