Comment: Revenue Alignment Is Not Enough — We Must Address Value Capture and the Agency Problem
First, credit where it is due: governance worked. As Marc pointed out, this proposal did not appear in a vacuum. Community pressure around revenue alignment, transparency, and structure has clearly influenced the direction. That is a positive signal for Aave.
It is also important to recognize the leadership that brought Aave here.
Aave did not reach 60% lending market share by accident. Over multiple cycles, the team has delivered V2 and V3 as industry standards, built one of the strongest security track records in DeFi, expanded across chains, generated over $100M in annualized protocol revenue, and maintained institutional credibility through complex regulatory environments. That competitive edge has been earned. Execution quality has been a defining strength of this protocol.
For that reason, this discussion should not evolve into reflexive distrust. Aave Labs has demonstrated competence and resilience. That trust has been built through performance — and it matters.
However, there is still a major dimension missing from this debate: value capture for AAVE holders.
We are discussing:
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The definition of “100% revenue”
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Whether deductions are at Labs’ discretion
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The size of the $50M funding request
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The 75,000 AAVE token transfer and its governance implications
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Whether V4 should be ratified now or later
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Whether the vote should be unbundled
All legitimate concerns. But none of them address the core economic question:
How does this translate into structural value accrual for the token holder?
If 100% of product revenue flows to the DAO treasury, that is a meaningful structural improvement. But revenue flowing into a treasury is not the same as value flowing to token holders. Treasury growth without a capital allocation framework can easily become undisciplined spending.
This proposal is clearly growth-oriented. Significant stablecoin funding. Large token transfers. Expansion into new verticals. Acceleration toward V4. That may be strategically sound — and Aave’s leadership has historically executed well — but growth without value capture creates an asymmetry:
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The ecosystem grows
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The operational footprint expands
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Costs increase
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But token holders remain structurally residual and indirect beneficiaries
At some point, we must define whether AAVE is meant to behave like productive capital or purely like governance utility.
We must also acknowledge the agency problem structurally embedded here.
We are in a situation where entities closely connected to product development may also be governance participants and potentially significant token holders. In other words:
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Investors
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Service providers
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Governance actors
may overlap.
This does not imply bad faith — and Aave’s leadership has earned credibility. But strong leadership does not eliminate structural agency risk. It makes it more important to design safeguards that protect the system long term.
Independent revenue verification, full wallet disclosure for funded entities, and clear boundaries around discretionary deductions are not expressions of distrust. They are governance hygiene in a maturing protocol that is scaling economically.
At the same time, we must avoid the opposite risk: turning governance into a coordination bottleneck.
Aave’s competitive advantage has always been its ability to move decisively while maintaining credible decentralization. We should be careful not to penalize that edge. Other protocols have shown how excessive procedural friction, fragmented votes, and political gridlock can weaken even technically superior systems. Governance should protect the protocol — not paralyze it.
Introducing clearer value capture mechanisms for token holders would actually reduce tension in this system. Beginning to return part of the value — whether through buybacks, staking yield, or structured fee capture — would introduce capital discipline without undermining execution speed. It would require prioritization. It would reduce the risk of over-optimization: deploying capital across too many fronts, expanding aggressively in multiple directions, and gradually losing strategic focus.
Many organizations do not lose competitiveness because they underinvest. They lose it because they overextend.
Aave V3 is a $100M+ annualized revenue engine. V4 may well be the future. Product expansion may unlock significant upside. This is precisely why now is the moment to define the long-term economic model of the token.
Revenue alignment is necessary.
Governance safeguards are necessary.
Preserving execution advantage is necessary.
But structural value capture discipline is equally necessary.
If we institutionalize growth without institutionalizing value accrual, we risk building a larger system that does not proportionally reward the capital base that secures and governs it.
This is not an argument against the proposal’s direction.
It is an argument for completing it — responsibly, strategically, and with long-term alignment in mind.