Ending the ACI Frontier program

Governance
1

Title Ending the ACI Frontier program

Author: Marc Zeller, ACI (Aave Chan Initiative)

Date: 2026-04-18

Summary

Given the rsETH collateral situation and the potential risk of a wETH shortfall and bad debt on Aave V3 Core and other instances, the Aave Chan Initiative is ending the Frontier staking program effective immediately.

All ETH currently staked through Frontier will be unstaked and made available to the Aave DAO, to be deployed as governance sees fit to protect wETH depositors. ACI also renounces all latent revenue tied to the service up to the exit.

Context on Frontier

Frontier was introduced in [ARFC] Introducing “Frontier” - Staking as a Service for the Aave DAO (January 2024) as a Staking-as-a-Service product for the Aave DAO, starting with 32 Stader minipools funded with 128 wETH. It was expanded through [ARFC] Expansion of “Frontier” (May 2024), extending the DAO’s direct validator footprint.

Across its lifetime, ACI provided:

  • Yield guarantee at LST index yield

  • Full slashing protection backed by ACI’s treasury

  • Operational management of all validators, keys and infrastructure

The program made the Aave DAO the first DAO to produce blocks and secure the Ethereum consensus layer directly.

Actions

  1. Initiate full voluntary exit on all Frontier validators.

  2. Transfer the full unstaked ETH balance to the Aave Finance Committee, or to any address governance designates.

  3. Renounce all outstanding performance fees and program fees owed to ACI up to the exit.

The Frontier multisig (aci.eth, Tokenlogic, Karpatkey) remains in place to sign exit and transfer transactions during the unwind.

Rationale

Frontier was built on the idea that alignment with the Aave DAO comes before program revenue. When protocol users are at risk, that principle takes priority over the program itself. This contribution might not fully cover a shortfall, but the ETH belongs back with the DAO in this situation, without conditions.

Happy to coordinate execution with Aave Finance, the risk service providers, Labs and BGD here in this thread.

ACI team

15 Likes
2

Strong move and even if small, it will be helpful in one way or another.

7 Likes