[TEMP CHECK] Aave Will Win Framework

Governance General
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In my previous post, I outlined four conditions before this moves forward: unbundle the vote, independent Foundation verified before funds transfer, full wallet disclosure, and independent revenue verification.

None of these have been addressed. The proposal escalated to Snapshot anyway.

Labs published a contributions report today. It covers what was built. It does not cover what it cost, what failed, or what the DAO got per dollar. ACI published the other side of the ledger:

Aave Labs: $86 Million, 23% of the Token Supply, and This Is Their Track Record

$86M in total capitalization. Product outcomes. Cost-per-dollar breakdowns. On-chain wallet forensics. Revenue attribution. Every claim independently verifiable.

Delegates should review both reports before voting. The contributions report tells you what was built. The accountability audit tells you what it cost.

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I fully stand behind @MarcZeller and the transparency report published by ACI. The data is indisputable: $86 Million in historical capitalization, yet now Aave Labs demands an additional ~$51M while bypassing every single transparency condition before escalating to Snapshot.

This brings us directly back to my proposal: [TEMP CHECK] Securing True Decentralization: Forking Aave V3 or an Outright DAO Buyout of Aave Labs IP. If the DAO is paying such an astronomical sum, why are we not buying out Aave Labs and all its Intellectual Property (IP) entirely?

Let’s be honest: Aave Labs is treating the DAO like an ATM. The “Foundation” transition is a smokescreen. The strategy is to sell the brand to the DAO while using a forced V4 migration to create a new “vendor lock-in” mechanism, ensuring disproportionate financial extraction continues indefinitely.

As someone who has managed in a global corporation, I am stunned by the lack of vision here. It is nearly impossible to sabotage a market-leading protocol that generates ~$150M in annual revenue, yet the current leadership is achieving exactly that through amateurish greed. There is zero trust left in Aave Labs or Stani. A healthy, collaborative relationship is now structurally impossible.

Most alarmingly: We just witnessed a newly created on-chain wallet purchase 2 million AAVE right before this critical vote. Who is behind this massive, last-minute accumulation? The community deserves to know if governance is being bought to force through a $51M extraction.

Delegates, do not fund this endless extortion. We must either mandate a 100% IP buyout or fork the V3 codebase to end this toxic dependency once and for all.

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107

The level of corruption is staggering. It is cowardly to ignore the most pressing questions while maintaining total control over voting power; it renders the Snapshot process a farce. @stani you have become a weak leader, insulating yourself with subordinates to avoid accountability. This is a dirty game, and there will be consequences.

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108

What is the point of the Snapshot? You guys will force it through anyway, I am sure there is another 300-400k AAVE sitting in some random undisclosed wallet additional to your 650k already. Asking the DAO for 51m$ and behaving like kids by ignoring community concerns and questions is a disgrace. Your entire operation is not worth 51m$. Compared to what ACI is doing with 8 people and what you do with 90 people you should strongly consider some cuts. We don’t need to pay people for sitting on twitter and liking your posts.

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I have thoroughly reviewed the proposal, and it is entirely empty a hollow document with zero binding commitments. I have never witnessed such a staggering combination of greed and lack of vision in my entire career.

What kind of business logic or vision justifies halting the development and maintenance of a flawless protocol (V3) that generates ~$150M in annual revenue? It is astonishing. It honestly takes a special kind of effort and incompetence to try this hard to tear down something so successful.

Without a solidified, legally binding Foundation structure in place, extracting funds through vague promises is nothing short of hijacking Aave from every possible angle. Let me state this clearly and unequivocally: A hard fork of V3 would inflict significantly less damage on the DAO than submitting to this proposal. Their true intention is not to gracefully hand over the brand. The real plan is to use the forced V4 transition to take the protocol hostage in a brand new way, ensuring they can continue to bleed the DAO treasury dry for years to come.

I don’t think there is a single community in the entire crypto sector that resents its own founders and management entity as much as this one does right now. Aave cannot, and will not, move forward until it is completely freed from the grip of Stani and Aave Labs.

My question is simple: Is there truly no VC, no major delegate, or community leader left with the backbone to finally say “STOP” to Stani and Labs?

@MarcZeller @ACI @TokenLogic @WintermuteGovernance @Kene_Anode @EzR3aL @1delta @Ignas @LlamaRisk @DAOplomats.eth @ACI

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110

@AaveLabs you should suspend the Snapshot until these concerns are fully addressed. This is turning into a public circus that damages the entire ecosystem’s reputation. Don’t be short-sighted; don’t let Aave become the Jane Street of DeFi.

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111

Hello,

First of all I want to provide some color on this:

Everything else has been self-funded. This includes the product layer, which encompasses aave.com

because the same has been claimed in the previous post, debunked and frankly is a hit in the face of all the contributors.
app.aave.com was not self funded, it was not developed exclusively by you. You can not just say things.

  • the app was funded by the v3 retroactive funding, the funding request included the “frontend engineering”
  • the app was marketed as “decentralized interface”, the url is just a redirect to the decentralized ipfs deployment (for some time via crust)
  • the apps rpc was funded via grants (pokt/ pocket network)
  • you actively asked other SPs for contributions, and they delivered. address-book while now used by everyone for everything, initially got a js build, because it was painful to maintain the manual address configs in the DAOs UI
  • iirc there was even a snapshot vote to make a decision of HAL should be integrated or not

Also I don’t like this throwing around of numbers to inflate things 3,521 releases, sounds huge, but the fine print is: every commit creates a release. 2718 of these are caused by a bot I created to update a file system cache for governance data, 230 are created by another bot for changes in 18n files.

I’m not claiming that you did not contribute, you contributed more on the fronend than any other service provider combined - which is fair, as you got paid for it. But now just claiming “yes we did this all on our own, any paid for it for altruistic reasons”, is dishonest.

That out of the way, i still love AAVE.
I spent the last 4 years of my live analyzing and improving aave.
First as a hobby, than at labs, again as a hobby and finally at bgd.

I want AAVE to win and therefore urge you to correct course.

If then the original money paid was not enough and you want more to maintain the fontend, so be it. I bet if you would have asked, noone would have objected paying you more.
If you wanted to improve the UX via CowSwap, so be it. I bet if you would have asked, noone would have objected paying you or even doing some rev share.

For this proposal itself, as I said on the previous posts, i personally think it’s the wrong direction. The DAO should own the IP and SPs should pay the DAO (via rev share or similar), otherwise one forces centralization and discourages competition.

I hope the snapshot fails, I hope you come up with something better, for the good of the DAO.

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112

This conflicts is sad and will lead AAVA protocol to nowhere.

Some observations before more misleading and smokes.

1- AAVE Lab’s asking is huge. Most will agree that it needs more breakdown and details.

2- The so called ACV’s contribution vs it’s direct compensation is misleading. During the past 2-3 years while ACI is active. The ACI consortium has spent huge amount of DAO’s treasury in various incentives & expenses. It’s only fair if we include these amount spent by these service providers in addition to the direct compensations they received. This shall be a much better audit and more comprehensive. From my POV, a lot of money spent on the incentives were wasted. Whether they will go back indirectly to ACI and it’s associates are yet to be seen.

A lot of AAVE lab attacker claims that fair, transparency is needed. Now It’s a good time to look over the DAO’s expense to audit everyone.

The misalignment of DAO(Split into aave lab and aci consortium, LP, AAVE token holders, hurt everyone.

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113

An Open Letter to Aave Labs and Stani Kulechov: The Collapse of Centralized Hubris and the Will of the Community

The decentralized vision Aave has built for years is today being sacrificed to a monopoly oligarchy by its very own founders. The $51 million extortion attempt disguised as the “Aave Will Win” proposal is not about the future of the protocol; it is merely a desperate attempt to salvage your own bankrupt corporate policies. It is time for the community, delegates, and real developers to shout these truths aloud:

1. Killing Success to Sell a Dream (The Murder of V3): Every cent entering Aave’s treasury today is thanks to the battle-tested V3, which safely secures billions of dollars in liquidity. Despite this, just to establish your own monopoly and sell a V4 that has zero proven track record, you are actively smearing our biggest revenue engine, V3, and forcing a halt to its development and maintenance. Using the “Lindy effect” as an excuse to oppose V3 upgrades while condemning the DAO to an untested V4 codebase with zero Lindy is not vision it is deliberate sabotage. You are slaughtering the goose that lays the golden eggs with your own hands.

2. On-Chain Facts Dismantle Your Lies: The victimized and altruistic founder narrative you created by claiming “we financed everything out of pocket” has collapsed. The blockchain does not lie. Delegates and independent partners are proving, one by one, how hollow your claims are through on-chain data, grant wallets, and transparency reports. It wasn’t you who drove Aave’s 98% revenue growth; it was BGD Labs, Chaos Labs, TokenLogic, and ACI.

3. Astroturfing and Paid Propaganda: Because you cannot win on the table with actual data, you are trying to create a fake illusion of public consensus by pushing pro Labs propaganda through paid KOLs (influencers) and media channels on X. If you think you can manage a decentralized finance giant with cheap PR tricks and salaried trolls, you haven’t understood an ounce of the Web3 philosophy.

4. Hostage Governance and BGD Labs’ Justified Rebellion: You have practically taken the DAO hostage, using your whale votes and wallet weight as a weapon. You try to silence anyone who opposes you through sheer force. Let me make this clear: as long as this dictatorial attitude continues, all you will be left with is a hollowed-out aave.com domain and an abandoned pile of code. I fully support BGD Labs the technical mastermind that made Aave what it is in their decision to walk away. Because producing anything in this toxic, unfair, and artificially constrained environment you’ve created is now impossible.

5. Capital Flight and the Bankruptcy of Trust: Do you really think no one sees through the political games you are playing right in front of the community, major service providers, and institutional investors? The crypto ecosystem is not stupid. Just look at DefiLlama; the capital fleeing Aave and the bleeding of TVL are painfully obvious. Why would anyone trust and invest in an entity that tramples on the DAO and destroys transparency just to force its own proposal through? After a 0 for 5 failure record on your outside ventures, you don’t get to hand the bill to the Aave treasury.

6. The Only Way Out: A Return to Decentralization and a Community Fork! If Aave Labs does not abandon this dictatorial, centralized, and value destroying stance, the most legitimate and powerful option on the table is clear: gathering all independent partners, risk managers, and community members to execute a Community Fork of the proven, perfectly functioning V3 codebase.

The market rejects centralized dictatorships and will inevitably punish hubris. The soul of Aave does not reside in the pockets of a few founders or behind the closed doors of Aave Labs’ offices; it lives in the free will of the DAO, the risk managers, and the developers writing the code.

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114

Well played to AAVE LABS and Stani for their optimised extraction of maximum revenue and for their benevolent behaviour. I look forward to seeing a maximalist vote pass and watching the whole team rejoice with an “AAVE will win” — something I will certainly take as a form of irony.

Being particularly concerned about the future of the token, and since AAVE is one of the few failing to benefit from the recent rebound, I propose the abrupt launch (as is the fashion) of a snapshot aimed at changing the slogan to: “Everyone will win except AAVE”.

This may seem anecdotal, but I feel insulted. I have placed my trust and a part of my future in this token, only to discover with horror that nothing will stop certain players from prioritising their personal interests at the expense of everyone else.

I urge AAVE LABS and Stani to make concessions and accept, among other things, lower remuneration for the good of the token and the DAO. Specifically, by removing the 75,000 AAVE from the proposal. The token has already been underperforming for weeks; continuing on this path will create assured mutual destruction. Everyone will lose because no one will trust AAVE anymore.

It is not too late to act, but we must return to reason.

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115

Despite some good initial discussion it seems that it is turning into fighting again similar to December.

The token centric model is definitely the way to go and this proposal good first step. The ACI made a valid point about the initial funding ask being too large. However, the attacking each other in public back and forth needs to stop and it is time to work this out now. For Aave to win we need Labs and the ACI on the same page.

The ball is in the court of Labs narrow this proposal down further and listen to the concerns expressed by the community (transparency, excessive funding ask relative to DAO treasury).

My personal take is that RWAs and vertical integration directly the consumer is the game to win here, and this requires funding and a centralized entity to develop this and as a point of contact. Giving Labs the resources it needs along with the 75000 AAVE (it is a good thing if Labs employees are financially aligned with AAVE) is necessary, but I agree that the current ask is too large and needs to be dialed down initially.

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116

At a minimum, this proposal needs clearly defined KPIs and full transparency around any undisclosed wallets. Without that baseline level of clarity, it’s hard to take it seriously.

Beyond the metrics, there’s a broader issue that can’t be ignored: Aave Labs needs to start treating other service providers with respect. Sure, the average token holder who doesn’t engage in governance doesn’t give a f*ck. But those who actively participate in the DAO and forum understand just how instrumental these contributors have been in shaping Aave into the protocol and community it is today.

BDG stepping away already feels like a gut punch. The DAO simply can’t afford to lose more high-value service providers like ACI.

The proposal had a strong start, but AAVE Labs pushing the Snapshot vote live without addressing key community questions undermines that progress. It brings back uncomfortable memories of the December situation that led to unnecessary chaos :sweat_smile:

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While Aave is doing temp check and internal Drama

Morpho is integrated in Telegram….

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Don’t worry friend. Internal Drama is good because we care. We wake up everyday and tune in online to discuss Aave :joy: . This is our live. Morpho is small and meaningless. Wait until we finish this drama and you can see the true magic of Aave. Patience my friend. Patience.

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The market don’t have the samefeeling

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120

I get the whole “price narrative” but it’s honestly exhausting at this point.

Morpho’s volume (even ignoring the wash trading) is negligible. Most days it’s sitting between $10–30M. On top of that, the token is heavily concentrated in VC hands, and they’re clearly incentivized to keep the price elevated while they gradually offload vested tokens.

Comparing MORPHO’s price action to AAVE (which is fully unlocked, far more liquid, and widely distributedà just doesn’t make sense. The two aren’t playing the same game.

That said, the current situation and surrounding drama are obviously, very counterproductive. It’s creating uncertainty and pushing both current and future investors and/or community members away.

The sooner we get clear communication from Aave Labs (as well as more transparency) the better.

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The “7 Deadly Sins” of Aave Labs and the Looming Regulatory Storm

Hello everyone,

I am an holder who has been with this protocol since the EthLend (LEND) era in 2017. I currently hold a massive, core position in AAVE

For 8 years, through bull and bear markets, I have never sold my stack. I believed in the vision of DeFi and the power of the Aave DAO. But today, witnessing the forced departure of BGD Labs, the $51M “extortion” proposal, and the daily centralization farce, I can no longer stay silent.

Based on Marc Zeller’s latest ACI audit report (Feb 25, 2026), TokenLogic’s financial data, and Delegate EzR3aL’s on-chain tracking, I have compiled the “7 Deadly Sins” Aave Labs is committing against our protocol. This is not emotional venting; these are hard-evidence facts regarding the survival of our $26B TVL:

:police_car_light: Tier 1: Existential Threats (Directly endangering the $26B TVL)

Sin 1: Forcing Out BGD Labs via “Artificial Restrictions”
Security is our only moat. To pave the way for their V4 vision, Labs imposed development restrictions on V3 (our most profitable engine). This directly forced out BGD Labs, the top-tier security team that actually understands the core code.

  • [Hard Evidence]: On Feb 20, 2026, BGD Labs officially announced their resignation. Co-founder Ernesto Boado publicly condemned Labs’ conduct, citing “artificial restrictions” imposed on V3 improvements and stating that Labs had “broken all codes of trust with the community.”

Sin 2: The Stealth Privatization of $5.5M in Front-End Fees
Without DAO authorization, Labs used the CoW Swap integration on the aave.com frontend to route massive swap fees directly into their private wallets, completely dismissing any fiduciary duty.

  • [Hard Evidence]: Delegate EzR3aL published on-chain tracking proving that roughly $200,000 per week was being redirected to Labs. Stani arrogantly defended this by claiming the frontend is a “product” and it is “perfectly fine for Aave Labs to monetize its products.”

:drop_of_blood: Tier 2: Parasitic Threats (Draining the Treasury and Crushing Consensus)

Sin 3: The $51 Million “Hostile Extortion” Proposal
Holding the DAO’s frontend domain hostage, Labs is attempting to siphon a massive amount of capital—equivalent to 42% of the treasury’s non-AAVE reserves.

  • [Hard Evidence]: The “Aave Will Win” proposal explicitly demands $51 million. It contains a coercive clause: only if the DAO pays this $51M will Labs pledge to redirect frontend product revenue back to the DAO.

Sin 4: The $86M Financial Black Hole and a Disastrous ROI
Labs treats the DAO as an infinite ATM with zero capital efficiency and no financial transparency.

  • [Hard Evidence]: According to Zeller’s audit, Labs has absorbed roughly $86 million in total capitalization. Their flagship RWA project, Horizon, has a catastrophic ROI: for every $1 of revenue generated, the DAO spent $24 in incentive costs.

Sin 5: Dictatorial Governance Manipulation via 600,000+ Controlled Votes
When facing proposals that restrict their power, Labs and aligned entities do not abstain. They weaponize massive token concentration to bulldoze the consensus of retail holders and delegates.

  • [Hard Evidence]: Marc Zeller’s independent investigation explicitly revealed that Aave Labs and its closely affiliated entities control over 600,000 AAVE in voting power. They directly used this centralized voting bloc to ruthlessly veto the “Conflict of Interest” framework, proving that DAO governance is merely a facade whenever it threatens their bottom line.

:clown_face: Tier 3: Scandalous Threats (Moral Bankruptcy & Propaganda)

Sin 6: Stealing Credit for $179M in Revenue They Didn’t Build
To justify their $51M demand, Labs created the illusion that they are the sole creators of Aave’s massive revenue.

  • [Hard Evidence]: TokenLogic on-chain data ruthlessly exposes this: during the V3.0 era led solely by Aave Labs, the protocol earned only 3M

Sin 7: Corporate Sabotage via Bot Accounts and Paid PR (Astroturfing)
To force this extortion scheme through, they have resorted to the lowest forms of internet propaganda.

  • [Hard Evidence]: As directly accused in the ACI report, Labs is running incredibly cheap propaganda on X (Twitter) and the governance forums using “newly created bot accounts, paid PR profiles, and sponsored news” to drown out legitimate community outrage and cover up the departure of the core team.

Final Thoughts: A Warning on the Looming Regulatory and Compliance Storm

I must spell out a harsh reality to all voters and Aave Labs: Your current actions are not just “Web3 governance friction.” If these identical actions were performed in Traditional Finance (e.g., by a publicly traded entity on NASDAQ), they would trigger massive civil lawsuits and severe criminal charges.

Specifically, Aave Labs is dragging this entire protocol into a fatal compliance nightmare through the following exact TradFi legal equivalents:

  1. Corporate Tunneling & Asset Stripping:
    Holding the DAO’s frontend domain hostage to force a $51 million payout (42% of the treasury’s non-AAVE reserves) to your own private entity. In corporate law, this is textbook asset stripping and tunneling of public wealth by an insider.

  2. Illegal Self-Dealing & Severe Conflict of Interest:
    Weaponizing over 600,000 controlled votes to veto the “Conflict of Interest” framework, and using that same voting bloc to approve a massive contract to yourselves. In any regulated market, pushing through related-party transactions without independent shareholder abstention is an illegal self-dealing offense.

  3. Misappropriation of Corporate Funds / Conversion:
    Secretly altering the frontend routing to intercept $5.5 million in swap fees into private wallets without DAO authorization. You may call it “product monetization,” but in the eyes of the law, it is the direct misappropriation and conversion of fiduciary assets.

  4. Failure of Material Disclosure & Financial Obfuscation:
    Absorbing $86 million in total historical capitalization without ever providing audited financial statements, payroll breakdowns, or accurate ROI disclosures to the actual stakeholders.

  5. Oppression of Minority Shareholders:
    Using overwhelming centralized voting blocs, paid PR, and bot networks to suppress retail consensus, while deliberately endangering a $26 Billion ecosystem by pushing out the core security team (BGD Labs) via “artificial restrictions” to maintain monopoly control.

Altogether, these actions culminate in the ultimate TradFi charge: A Severe Breach of Fiduciary Duty.

I am issuing the sternest warning to Aave Labs and all institutional delegates: We are in an era of hyper-sensitive global regulation (especially from the SEC). Your dictatorial, centralized actions are handing regulators the perfect evidence on a silver platter—proof that Aave is not a decentralized protocol, but a centralized, unregistered security pool controlled by a single entity extracting value for its own enrichment.

What destroys Aave won’t be competitors; it will be the regulatory annihilation you are actively inviting. I urge all true Delegates and holders to vote NO. The Aave DAO is dying, unless we stop this right now.

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122

Will be brief, have nothing net-new to add that has not been said several times over. Maybe I’ll condense it / synthesize it differently, and at the very least throw yet another hat in the ring for the (understandably) screaming crowd of concerned purveyors

  1. Strongly second the Multicoin perspective (see post ca 2 wks ago)
  2. Strongly second the ACI (Marc) perspective. You can disagree with the framing, the nomenclature, the tonality, the language. But you cannot disagree with the sensibility & fairness of the asks

Putting 1. and 2. together, I have read exactly 0 good reasons for why we would not do all of the below:

(i) phase / stage-gate the funding ask with clear milestones, outcomes, lines of accountability etc
(ii) debundle the vote
(iii) provide clarity on what constitutes net vs gross “revenue”. Adjacent to this, structure a dispute resolution process upfront on e.g. disbursements / deductions / partner rebates
(iv) clarify whether Labs will be working on non-AAVE products ahead (if not, do not make the implicit distinction b/w AAVE and non-AAVE)
(v) enshrine transparency, reporting and monitoring requirements when 25% of the DAO’s livelihood is being requested. This is existential for the DAO
(vi) hold Labs accountable to the same degree, standard and on equal-footing to any other SP. Disclosing e.g. the Labs controlled governance-bags upfront and how these will be used in proposals where there is a clear CoI shouldn’t need to be justified

No, I do not consider “Voting on these items separately could result in a fragmented and unworkable plan.” as a legitimate criticism for why we should bundle the vote. This is highly ambiguous and does not pass the smell-test. Very open to clear, concise, non-hyperbolic critiques for why we should not do any / parts of the above; but then make the case, do not hide behind fluff & fugazzi

Hopefully we can all agree that this is not rocket-science. We are not building Lean Ethereum in zero-gravity on the dark side of the moon. We are talking about tablestakes controls, limitations, monitoring, reporting & clarifications that would be signed-and-dusted as “obvious” at a company board-meeting before the 1st coffee-break if the investment decision concerned 25% of the treasury

If you feel that this is all too much to incorporate and too extensive an ask, then I can only tip my metaphorical hat and welcome you to the pro-camp for debundling the vote (see ii)

/concerned citizen, bagholder & VC-investor

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123

AAVE Labs responded only to the easy questions, ignoring the ones about the undisclosed wallets.

Once again, the snapshot vote was pushed through early.

On top of that, 3 addresses (which have only participated in 2–4 votes each, exclusively supporting prior AAVE Labs funding requests and proposals) now account for 80% of the YAE votes.

Despite years of claims to the contrary, the DAO is not meaningfully governed by the AAVE token or its broader community of holders. In practice, control rests with a single holder, the same entity that has long suggested otherwise (aka AAVE Labs.)

I still had some hope, but it is now clear that the DAO is dead and that things will not get better.

It’s hard to witness this after 6 years of steadily building my $AAVE position, but I’ve reached the point where stepping back and cutting a meaningful portion of my bags is the right call.

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Let’s be real, the “AAVE Will Win” framework is utter bullsh1t.

Redirecting 100% of revenue to the DAO cannot be meaninful when, because of your large amount of tokens, you have full control over the DAO no matter what.

It places the DAO’s cash flow entirely under the control of AAVE Labs. AAVE Labs also has decisive influence over the continued engagement of other service providers within the ecosystem.

As a result, these providers are left with a stark choice: align with the direction of AAVE Labs or risk having their funding discontinued.

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