After months of deliberation over protocol revenue control, the Aave community has resolved their dispute by voting in favor of consolidating all revenue from Aave-branded products back into the DAO. The governance system adopted the ‘Aave Will Win’ (AWW) proposal, as described by founder Stani Kulechov as a pivotal moment for Aave’s history. This change mandates that 100% of earnings be redirected to the DAO treasury and governed under the AAVE token.
The passed proposal also sanctioned a $25 million stablecoin grant along with an allocation of 5,000 AAVE tokens (valued at approximately $6.8 million) for Aave Labs’ future activities. The governance system, known as Aave DAO, oversees decision-making processes within the Aave lending protocol, allowing token holders to influence key aspects like upgrades and fee structures.
CoinDesk reported in December that a dispute arose when swap fees were redirected from the community treasury following the integration of CoWSwap into Aave’s interface. This conflict highlighted underlying tensions over whether Aave Labs or the DAO should control revenue from user-facing products.
The ‘Aave Will Win’ proposal clarifies this by favoring token holders, ensuring protocol revenue—projected to hit $140 million in 2025 and potentially matching that figure in 2026—is supplemented with revenue from applications like Aave Pro, Aave App, Horizon, and Aave Kit. Swaps on platforms such as Aave.com are already contributing an additional $10 to $20 million.
Aave App aims to attract mainstream users by providing a “fintech-like experience” with protections of up to $1 million per account, alongside a forthcoming card that generates treasury fees. The proposal also addresses the issue of ‘value leakage,’ which sparked the initial controversy in December. Service providers must exclusively build for Aave, eliminating any practices detrimental to token holders.
Service providers are required to have measurable goals, and governance processes will be refined to minimize political friction. Technically, Aave V4 introduces a reinvestment feature that transforms idle capital into yield-generating positions—a capability absent in V3.
Expanding collateral options through new ‘Spokes’ aims to meet DeFi liquidity demands, alongside investments in agentic AI infrastructure for developers utilizing Aave. The protocol holds roughly $25 billion across various chains, marking it as the leading lending platform in DeFi and one of the few protocols generating nine-figure revenue annually.
Kulechov envisions scaling Aave’s total value locked from $40 billion to $1 trillion, positioning the platform not merely as a bank but as a comprehensive financial network accessible to fintechs, banks, or asset managers.