# Aave V3 Revenue Methodology

## 1. Overview

The portion of fees that are retained by Aave V3, as determined by the protocol's take rate, is measured by the Revenue metric. The protocol's share of interest paid by borrowers, a portion of flash loan fees, liquidation protocol fees, GHO stability module fees, Smart Value Recapture (Chainlink SVR) distributions, and positive slippage from Velora are captured by this metric. These earnings are accumulated in the Aave Collector (the DAO treasury) rather than being distributed to supply-side participants. This metric is used to evaluate the financial performance and earning power of Aave V3 before operating expenses are deducted.

## 2. Data sources

- **Blockchain events**: `MintedToTreasury`, `FlashLoan`, and `LiquidationCall` events from `LendingPool` contracts; `ReserveDataUpdated`, `Mint`, and `Burn` events from `VToken` contracts; `ReserveFactorChanged`, `ReserveInitialized`, and `LiquidationProtocolFeeChanged` events from `LendingPoolConfigurator` contracts; `Mint`, `Burn`, and `BalanceTransfer` events from `AToken` contracts; `ReserveDataUpdated` events from `PoolLogic` contracts; `ReserveInitialized` events from `PoolTokenLogic` contracts; `ReserveFactorChanged` and `LiquidationProtocolFeeChanged` events from `PoolConfigurator` contracts; `Mint` and `Burn` events from `TokenBase` contracts; `FlashLoan` events from `FlashLoanLogic` contracts; `LiquidationCall` events from `LiquidationLogic` contracts; and ERC-20 token transfers and native transfers, covering Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Polygon, Aptos, and 11 other chains
- **External data**: End-of-day price feeds and asset metadata

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Aave V3 interest revenue calculation (EVM)
- **Purpose**: Calculate the protocol's share of interest accrued on active loans across EVM chains.
- **Logic**: Daily treasury accruals are extracted from state snapshots for most chains. For Monad, where state snapshots are unavailable, accruals are reconstructed. Scaled variable debt balances are tracked using `Mint` and `Burn` events from `VToken` contracts. Index updates from `ReserveDataUpdated` events are applied to these balances, and reserve factors from `ReserveFactorChanged` and `ReserveInitialized` events are multiplied. Cumulative treasury mints are tracked using `MintedToTreasury` events from `LendingPool` contracts and are added to the accrued interest. Daily revenue is calculated as the daily change in the sum of treasury accruals and treasury mints.
- **Key fields**: `accrued_to_treasury`, `liquidity_index`, `amount`, `reserve_factor`

### Component B: Aave V3 interest revenue calculation (Aptos)
- **Purpose**: Calculate the protocol's share of interest accrued on active loans on Aptos.
- **Logic**: Outstanding variable debt is tracked by aggregating `Mint` and `Burn` events from `TokenBase` contracts. Daily interest is calculated by multiplying the outstanding debt by the change in the variable borrow index, which is extracted from `ReserveDataUpdated` events from `PoolLogic` contracts. The protocol's revenue is then calculated by multiplying the daily interest by the reserve factor, which is determined from `ReserveInitialized` events from `PoolTokenLogic` contracts and is updated via `ReserveFactorChanged` events from `PoolConfigurator` contracts.
- **Key fields**: `variable_borrow_index`, `cumulative_balance`, `reserve_factor`

### Component C: Aave V3 treasury yield calculation

- **Purpose**: Calculate the interest earned on aTokens held in the protocol treasury.
- **Logic**: The treasury's real aToken balance is tracked by aggregating `Mint`, `Burn`, and `BalanceTransfer` events from `AToken` contracts. This real balance is combined with the virtual balance (accrued but unminted treasury interest) to determine the total scaled balance. Daily yield is calculated by multiplying the previous day's total scaled balance by the daily change in the liquidity index, which is normalized by decimal precision.
- **Key fields**: `real_scaled_balance`, `accrued_to_treasury`, `liquidity_index`

### Component D: Aave V3 flash loan fee collection

- **Purpose**: Capture the protocol's share of fees generated from flash loans.
- **Logic**: Flash loan premiums are extracted from `FlashLoan` events from `LendingPool` contracts (EVM) and `FlashLoan` events from `FlashLoanLogic` contracts (Aptos). The protocol's revenue is calculated by applying a fixed split of 0.0004 (representing the protocol's take rate of 4 basis points) to the total flash loan premium amount.
- **Key fields**: `amount` (premium)

### Component E: Aave V3 liquidation protocol fee extraction

- **Purpose**: Calculate the protocol's share of liquidation penalties.
- **Logic**: For EVM chains, liquidation events are identified using `LiquidationCall` events from `LendingPool` contracts, and the corresponding protocol fee transfers are tracked via aToken transfers from the liquidated user to the treasury. For Aptos, liquidation events are identified using `LiquidationCall` events from `LiquidationLogic` contracts. The protocol's revenue is calculated by multiplying the liquidated collateral amount by the liquidation protocol fee factor, which is tracked via `LiquidationProtocolFeeChanged` events from `LendingPoolConfigurator` (EVM) or `PoolConfigurator` (Aptos) contracts.
- **Key fields**: `liquidated_collateral_amount`, `liquidation_factor`

### Component F: Aave GHO (Ethereum) stability module and auxiliary revenue streams

- **Purpose**: Capture revenue from GHO stability modules, Smart Value Recapture (Chainlink SVR), and Velora positive slippage.
- **Logic**: GHO stability module revenue is calculated by tracking ERC-20 transfers of GHO to and from the stability module contracts, where outflows to the treasury are subtracted to determine net fees accrued. Smart Value Recapture (Chainlink SVR) revenue is captured by tracking native ETH inflows to the Aave Collector from the Chainlink SVR Safe. Velora positive slippage revenue is captured by tracking ERC-20 and native ETH transfers from Velora Fee Claimer contracts to the Aave Collector.
- **Key fields**: `amount` (transfers), `revenue`

### Component G: USD conversion and normalization

- **Purpose**: Normalize all revenue components to USD.
- **Logic**: All collected revenue amounts are normalized by their respective asset decimal precisions. The normalized amounts are then multiplied by end-of-day asset prices to convert them to USD. Daily values are aggregated using UTC day boundaries.
- **Key fields**: `revenue`, `price_usd`, `decimals`

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

fees * take_rate (illustrative — revenue is observed directly per project, not derived from take_rate)

Fee revenue retained after supply-side payouts. Before cost of revenue (e.g. L2 DA fees) and before operating expenses.

Revenue

Lending

Lenders deposit funds into Aave and receive interest payments from borrowers (supply-side fees).

Aave is a non-custodial lending protocol built on Ethereum and other adjacent blockchains. Aave was founded by Stani Kulechov and launched in 2017.

AAVE tokenholders own and govern the protocol. They currently take a cut of the total interest paid by borrowers (revenue). Aave’s investors include ParaFi Capital, Framework Ventures, Three Arrows Capital, etc.

Aave V3

Revenue

Revenue

Chain breakdown