diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 88f94e1c..1c4ee4d6 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 aiohttp~=3.8
-v3io~=0.6.4
+v3io~=0.6.9
 # exclude pandas 1.5.0 due to https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/issues/48767
 # and 1.5.* due to https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/issues/49203
 # pandas 2.2 requires sqlalchemy 2
diff --git a/storey/drivers.py b/storey/drivers.py
index 67ae66d7..8e7ce172 100644
--- a/storey/drivers.py
+++ b/storey/drivers.py
@@ -532,7 +532,7 @@ def _build_simplified_feature_store_request(self, aggregation_element):
 
         if use_parallel:
             for attr_name, d in pexpressions.items():
-                encoded_array = kv_array.encode_list(d["values"][d["first_index"] : d["last_index"] + 1]).decode()
+                encoded_array = kv_array.encode_list(d["values"][d["first_index"] : d["last_index"] + 1])
                 paggregate = self.parallel_aggregates[d["aggregation"]]
                 sliced_array = f'{attr_name}[{d["first_index"]}..{d["last_index"]}]'
                 expressions.append(f"{sliced_array}={paggregate}({sliced_array}, blob('{encoded_array}'))")