Notes / Findings
Source: data/finding_2026-09-25-aave-guardian-18-chains.md in the repository, rendered here without changes. Source file
2026-09-25. Roadmap item 9 (broad-review round 2), continued after the go-ahead. This project already tracked, on 5 chains it monitors (Ethereum L1, Arbitrum, Base, Plasma, Monad), that the SAME 7 signers hold Aave's PROTOCOL_GUARDIAN/EMERGENCY_ADMIN seat -- a different Safe address per chain, folded into crossExposureScore as a flat 80 since 2026-09-20. The open question the backlog item asked: does the SAME committee also control this seat on the ~18 Aave V3 deployments this oracle does not track at all.
18 of 19 real (non-testnet) Aave V3 deployments checked share the exact same 7-signer, 4-of-7 committee. Beyond the 5 already tracked: Avalanche, Optimism, Polygon, BNB, Celo, Gnosis, Linea, Mantle, Metis, Scroll, Sonic, XLayer, Soneium.
The addresses came from Aave DAO's own published registry (bgd-labs/aave-address-book, src/Misc<Chain>.sol, PROTOCOL_GUARDIAN constant) -- but the address alone was never trusted as proof. Several of the 13 chains share the LITERAL SAME Safe address as each other (CREATE2 determinism): 0x56C1a4b5... on Base/Avalanche/Optimism/Metis, 0xCb45E824... on Arbitrum/Polygon/BNB/Gnosis/Scroll, 0xEf323B19... on Plasma/Soneium. Given this pass's own earlier finding today (data/finding_2026-09-25-controller-concentration.md: the Steakhouse Safe carries a DIFFERENT owner set on each of Ethereum L1/Base/Monad despite an identical CREATE2 address), an address match was never enough -- every chain's owner set was read live from that chain's own RPC (chains/ethereum-l1/scripts/check_aave_guardian_cross_chain.py) before being compared to the known 7.
zkSync's PROTOCOL_GUARDIAN address (0xba845c27...) has real bytecode (2,080 bytes) but does not resolve as a standard Gnosis Safe -- getOwners()/getThreshold() both fail. A different multisig implementation (zkSync's native account abstraction differs from standard Safe bytecode is one plausible reason, not independently confirmed) -- not opened this pass, reported as unread/ unresolved rather than silently skipped or forced into the pattern.
Fantom and Harmony have no PROTOCOL_GUARDIAN entry at all in their Misc*.sol files -- checked, not found, plausibly frozen or deprecated markets, not investigated further.
Aave's own "Risk Steward" design docs (read during today's earlier RISK_ADMIN research, data/finding_2026-09-25-aave-v3-pool-risk-admin-discovery.md) describe emergency powers as "bounded, revocable... governance-owned". The breadth found here is a different, structural point: the emergency-pause capability across virtually Aave's ENTIRE V3 multi-chain footprint (18 of 19 real deployments) sits with one small, unchanging group of 7 individuals, 4 of whom can act. Not a claim that this group has done anything wrong, or that 4-of-7 is an unreasonable threshold for an emergency seat -- a structural fact about concentration, the same "genuine breadth, not decorative" finding this pass has aimed at all day. None of the 5 competitors researched earlier today (LlamaRisk, Chaos Labs, Gauntlet, Hypernative, Blockaid) publishes a comparable cross-chain committee-identity map for any protocol.
crossExposureScore is unchanged on every already-tracked target (the fold convention applies to this oracle's OWN tracked targets sharing a root; these 13 new chains are not tracked targets, so there is nothing to fold them into). The finding is disclosed in the definitional comment (chains/ethereum-l1/scorers.py::_KNOWN_AAVE_PROTOCOL_GUARDIAN_OWNERS_2026_09_20) and chains/monad/scorers.py's own local copy, strengthening the CONTEXT of the already-published 80-cap finding on the 5 tracked chains, not changing any number. No new ecosystem added, no new target tracked, no on-chain push.
python3 chains/ethereum-l1/scripts/check_aave_guardian_cross_chain.py -- read-only, getOwners()/ getThreshold() only on 14 chains, no key, no transaction. Re-derivable end to end; re-run after a committee rotation. Full test suite (6 directories, 2367 tests) green, unaffected (this is a disclosure-only research script, not wired into any score_all()).
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