Aave V4 deposits crossed $1 billion around September 16-17, roughly doubling in a month and reaching about $1.16 billion. Deposits rose from below $340 million at the start of August to roughly $577 million by early September, while active loans reached $300 million to $310 million. Growth has been driven in part by the Ether.fi Cash market on Optimism, which passed $300 million in deposits. V4 uses a hub-and-spoke liquidity model, in which specialized markets connect to a central liquidity hub rather than sharing one monolithic pool. Launched on Ethereum mainnet in March 2026, V4 still represents less than 4% of Aave V3's approximately $31 billion deposit base. The AAVE token tested resistance near $145 as adoption increased, although reported deposit figures differ between Aave's interface and external aggregators such as DeFiLlama. The loan balance implies a utilization rate of roughly 26%, a level described as neither dangerously high nor unusually low for a lending protocol.