A significant governance decision has been made, with the Aave community voting in favor of the 'Aave Will Win' proposal, which aims to redirect all revenue from Aave-branded products back to the DAO and consolidate economic rights under the AAVE token. This move marks the end of a long-standing dispute that began when swap fees were quietly redirected away from the DAO treasury. The proposal, deemed the most important in Aave's history, has been passed with a landslide vote, with the community allocating a $25 million stablecoin grant and 5,000 AAVE tokens to Aave Labs. The Aave DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization, manages the Aave lending protocol and allows token holders to vote on key decisions.
The 'Aave Will Win' proposal decisively resolves the dispute in favor of token holders, ensuring that protocol revenue, which reached $140 million in 2025, will be supplemented by application-layer revenue from various Aave products. The proposal also takes a hard line against 'value leakage,' ensuring that service providers build exclusively for Aave and prioritize token holders' interests. With this decision, Aave is poised to become a fully token-centric platform, with a focus on scaling from $40 billion to $1 trillion and establishing itself as a financial network that can be integrated with various fintech, banks, and asset managers.