Just saw this posted on AAVE Discord channel by Ghost.ofstories. I think its valuable context to add it here.
This is what Marc Zellar @MarcZeller has called a Liquid Representative Democracy and has historically supported this system, because, looking at his voting history (and the aci wallet), it’s easy to see he votes in his own interest and for his own bags, using the dao as a Trojan horse. This is further confirmed by his shady merit program that both him and Nandy have confirmed is a way to farm users.
Ignas @Ignas runs a KOL agency, and has a deal to maintain 20k aave to collect orbit delegate funds. So he’s just abusing people who get emotional to drive engagement and make money
Over 90% of ezraels @EzR3aL delegation power comes from one single wallet. So there’s likely a deal here to farm the orbit program as well.
All of this is at the expense of the token holders
ACI doesn’t support this system anymore because they have failed to act upon their duties as a BD service provider, and their attempted coup at the end of 2025 failed.
I originally began trying to work on aave via the dao, but I work at Aave Labs because that’s where all of the innovation happens. Labs built every core version of the protocol, a front end that drives 90+% of aave protocol usage (and thus it’s revenue), and now a consumer app that’s going to reach an audience that ACIand BGD don’t believe is valuable.
Theyve stagnated, V3 is at max capacity for use cases, and there’s nothing left for them to do but cause drama. Just look at their Twitter, Marc hasn’t doesn’t any positive tweets about the protocol in months. It’s all just his own ego and self interest.
Aave Labs never stagnated, while they were jumping on podcasts and tweeting about baseless accusations surrounding governance politics, we secured a 10M deal, got V4 audited again and made significant progress on both V4 and the consumer app.
$AAVE and Aave will win, that is the goal of Labs, and it always has been. I’m not sure the other SPs can say the same, and the orbit delegates are just not even in the required realm of context.