In Vert.x 3.8.0, the Verticle method void start(Future<Void> startFuture) is deprecated in favor of void start(Promise<Void> startPromise). However, if you override that in a Verticle that you want to inject via vertx-guice, the start method will not be called, because GuiceVerticleLoader overrides void start(Future<Void> startFuture), and directly calls the same start method on your Verticle.