What's Driving Token Prices? April 1, 2026

AAVE (-12%) - Aave, the largest on-chain lending protocol, launched its V4 version on Monday. The V4 upgrade, dubbed Aave Pro, introduces a hub-and-spoke model that allows for liquidity to be spread across different credit lines. Essentially, the hubs will be the central sources of liquidity, and each “spoke” can tap into those liquidity sources, but will have its own set of risk parameters, independent borrowing environments, and governance-controlled features. Aave believes that this new design will better support newer types of credit markets backed by real-world assets and that use features such as fixed-rate lending. Aave Pro is being rolled out in stages, with only a few hubs open at launch. Some of the bigger-name DeFi projects, including Ethena, Lido, EtherFi, and others, intend to operate spokes of their own. So far, Aave Pro has attracted about $5.8M in deposits compared to $24B in V3.
AERO (-3.3%) - On Monday at the EthCC conference in France, decentralized exchange Aerodrome shared some major project updates. The first is that the project plans to merge with its sister exchange, Velodrome, and launch the Aero 2.0 exchange in July of this year. With the launch, Aerodrome is planning to expand to the Ethereum mainnet and all EVM chains as a unified trading liquidity layer. The team also announced that it will be getting rid of “voting epochs,” and any rewards that voters earned will be distributed in real time, something that is a unique innovation for rewards distribution mechanisms.
CC (+2.9%) - Last week, Canton Network announced a partnership with LayerZero for interoperability and a partnership with Visa. Canton Network has grown in reach over the last year, signing many traditional finance giants in a bid to create an institutional Layer-1 blockchain. Canton’s main selling point is its privacy features, which many institutions may require to transact regularly on-chain. Visa is expected to act as a super validator on the Canton Network (there are 40 super validators) and joins other institutions participating in the network, such as Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas, BNY, HSBC, Tradeweb, and Citigroup.

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