Aave is moving from a lending protocol to a full-stack financial platform. The protocol has a structural problem at scale. USDC borrowers in Prime pay 3.7% while Core USDC borrowers pay 3.4%. The two instances are completely isolated. Prime has roughly $532M in market size and Core has $35B, and the rates drift away from what an efficient market would produce. Aave v4 is built to fix this. Its Hub & Spoke architecture turns instances like Prime and Core into hubs that can share liquidity with each other through approved credit lines. Prime can then borrow from Core and the rates converge. v4 extends Aave's network effects across every current and future instance, but it does not rebuild the core trust model. Governance still authorizes every spoke and grants every credit line. The bigger question is whether Aave can build the consumer products on top of it at scale.(Delphi Digital)