I appreciate the detailed response from Labs. It moves the conversation forward. Let me address what it actually resolves and what it doesn’t.
Revenue deductions
The response says Labs needs “flexibility” for “sustainable unit economics” and proposes “independent third-party verification.” That sounds reasonable until you ask: who selects the third party? What’s the audit scope? What happens if the DAO disagrees with a deduction? The original concern was sole discretion over deductions. The answer is still sole discretion, now with a reporting layer. Reporting isn’t oversight.
AAVE tokens
Aave Labs will not use any AAVE tokens received as part of this funding package to vote in Aave governance.
Good. But the question this thread keeps asking isn’t about future tokens. It’s about existing holdings. I traced 663K votes to a single cluster connected to founding infrastructure during the COI vote. That hasn’t been addressed. Disclosing what you’ll do with new tokens while ignoring the question about current ones isn’t transparency.
V3 to V4
The response says “zero rush” and “V3 continues indefinitely.” The original proposal says pause new V3 features. Both can’t be true. V3 generates $142M/yr today. V4 is on testnet. The DAO needs a written commitments, not a forum comment that contradicts the proposal text.
The $17.5M in growth grants
These are framed as go-to-market costs benchmarked against “traditional fintech.” Aave isn’t a consumer fintech app. The comparison flatters the budget. $17.5M in milestone grants where milestones are defined as “product launches” means Labs decides when milestones are met. That’s self-grading.
“Minimum wage salary”
We’d like to also note that Stani takes only a minimum wage salary as the legal requirement, and does not receive AAVE tokens.
The framing is designed to generate sympathy. The public record paints a different picture. The founder controls 600K+ AAVE in governance voting power (traced on-chain during the COI analysis). He recently purchased a ~$30M property. He had enough disposable capital to acquire ~$10M in AAVE to influence governance votes. None of this is secret. I’m not here to judge anyone’s personal finances. But you don’t get to claim minimum wage with one hand and deploy eight figures in governance power with the other. The DAO evaluates entities, not personal narratives.
“Uncompensated since June 2025”
Labs’ V4 service provider contract was $12M GHO to deliver V4. Labs accepted that scope and that budget. V4 is still on testnet. That’s a delivery problem, not a funding problem. The DAO isn’t responsible for cost overruns on a fixed-scope engagement that Labs itself proposed.
During that same period since June 2025, Labs switched the aave.com swap adapter from ParaSwap (revenue to DAO) to CoW Swap (revenue to Labs-controlled address) and captured $5.5M in partner fees without a governance vote. By February 2026 the rate had accelerated to $510K/week ($26.5M annualized).
Labs wasn’t uncompensated. Labs paid itself. The “100% revenue to DAO” offer in this proposal is not a gift. It’s an offer to stop taking what was already flowing to the DAO before it was diverted.
The funding picture
The response frames this proposal as necessary because Labs has been underfunded. The public record tells a different story:
| Source | Amount | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| ICO raise (Nov 2017) | $16.2M | ICO Drops |
| 300M LEND dev fund (23.1% of supply) | Distributed 2017-2020 | ETHLend announcement |
| VC rounds (Framework, ParaFi, Blockchain Capital) | $32.5M | ICO Drops |
| Confirmed DAO payments | $31.93M | V3 retro $16.28M, V4 SP $12M, events $2.15M, V4 security up to $1.5M |
| stkAAVE held from V3 retroactive | ~82.5K stkAAVE (~$9M) | On-chain |
| Unapproved CoW Swap partner fees | ~$5.5M | TokenLogic dashboard |
That’s ~$95M+ in confirmed funding before any new ask. The “minimum wage salary” framing is about one person’s salary. It’s not about the entity’s capitalization.
The DAO has never received a transparency report from Labs.
Not once. No accounting of how $31.93M was spent.
No disclosure of current treasury, token holdings, or runway.
The proposal asks for $51M more on top of what has already been a generously funded operation by any serious standard.
We just published our own numbers:
ACI: Full Transparency Report | X article
$4.625M over three years. Every deliverable listed, every revenue strategy attributed, on-chain verified across 254 assets, 22 markets, 16 chains. The DAO can check every number without trusting us.
The largest funding request in Aave history should clear the same bar.
Publish a delivery report.
Disclose the treasury and voting power.
Account for the CoW Swap fees.
Then we can talk numbers.