[TEMP CHECK] One-Time Bounty Award — CoW Swap Fee Discovery
Author: phenk53.eth
Date: 2026-02-21
Summary
This TEMP CHECK proposes a one-time bounty payment to Aave DAO community member and Orbit delegate EzR3aL in recognition of their pivotal on-chain investigation published in December 2025, which uncovered that 100% of CoW Swap partner fees generated through the Aave interface were being silently routed to a private Aave Labs address — bypassing the Aave DAO treasury entirely.
The proposed bounty is denominated in GHO (with AAVE tokens as an alternative at the DAO’s discretion) and is set in the range of roughly $370k - $600k, representing approximately 10% of the total diverted fees, according to this dashboard by @tokenlogic.
Why is there are a range?
To be honest, I wasn’t sure, should the DAO consider the date of discovery or the date of posting this proposal and the so far accrued fees.
See image below for numbers and chart.
Motivation
On December 10, 2025, EzR3aL published a comprehensive, evidence-backed open letter on the Aave Governance Forum titled “Aave CowSwap Integration – Tokenholder Questions.” Through on-chain analysis, test transactions, and a careful review of CoW Swap’s documentation, EzR3aL identified the following:
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The CoW Swap adapter deployed by Aave Labs includes a 15–25 bps partner fee on every swap executed through the Aave interface.
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These fees were not flowing to the Aave DAO treasury. Instead, they were routed exclusively to address 0xC542C2F197c4939154017c802B0583C596438380 — a private address controlled by Aave Labs.
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On December 4, 2025 alone, 45.99 ETH (~$152,000 at the time) was transferred in a single weekly settlement on Ethereum mainnet.
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Extrapolating across all supported chains (confirmed on Ethereum and Arbitrum), EzR3aL estimated a minimum of $200,000 per week being diverted from DAO coffers — equivalent to a $10M+ annualized revenue loss to the Aave DAO.
The Previous Arrangement — And Why the Change Matters
Prior to the CoW Swap integration, Aave’s swap widget relied on ParaSwap, which had a referral program that redirected surplus swap revenue directly to the Aave DAO treasury — at zero cost to users. The switch to CoW Swap:
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Introduced explicit user-facing fees (15–25 bps) where none previously existed
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Eliminated all DAO revenue from swap activity
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Was implemented unilaterally by Aave Labs without a DAO vote or governance discussion
Without EzR3aL’s discovery, the DAO would have continued losing $10M+/year in swap revenue with zero awareness. (Although even after asking AaveLabs, so far not commitment has been made to payback the so far collected fees, see here
Additionally we can agree that, without his post and the chain of reactions by other DAO members like BGDLabs, (https://governance.aave.com/t/arfc-aave-token-alignment-phase-1-ownership/23616), AaveLabs most likely would have never created the Aave will win framework, that is not perfect in its current version, but at least gave the DAO a small win over a centralized entity.
Aave governance has historically recognized meaningful contributions to the DAO through grants and bounties. Incentivizing this kind of watchdog behavior is not just fair — it is strategic. A community that rewards accountability will produce more of it.
Specification
The proposed bounty is anchored to 10% of the estimated total diverted fees.
As mentioned before, the DAO should decide what type and amount of bounty makes sense the most.
Next Steps
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Gather feedback from the community.
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If consensus is reached on this TEMP CHECK, escalate this proposal to the Snapshot stage.
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EzR3aL confirms their recipient address in this thread
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If the TEMP CHECK passes, the author will proceed to an ARFC with a refined single-figure recommendation based on community feedback.
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Publication of a standard ARFC, collect community & service providers’ feedback before escalating the proposal to the ARFC snapshot stage.
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If the ARFC snapshot outcome is YAE, publish an AIP vote for final confirmation and enforcement of the proposal.
Disclaimer
The author of this proposal is not acting on behalf of any third party and is not and has never been compensated for creating this TEMP CHECK proposal.
I have been an Aave delegate for almost a year and I am holding either AAVE, aAAVE or stkAAVE as well as GHO or sGHO token.