The protracted governance dispute that commenced when Aave Labs diverted swap fees away from the DAO treasury has come to an end, with the community voting in favor of the proposal. The Aave governance has approved the 'Aave Will Win' proposal, which founder Stani Kulechov termed 'the most crucial proposal in Aave's history', thereby establishing a framework that redirects 100% of revenue from all Aave-branded products to the DAO and consolidates economic rights under the AAVE token. This change implies that the DAO will now be responsible for funding Aave Labs' activities, with the proposal approving a $25 million stablecoin grant and 5,000 AAVE token allocation to Aave Labs. The Aave DAO, a governance system managing the Aave lending protocol, enables token holders to vote on decisions such as upgrades, fees, and treasury use, effectively serving as the community-driven decision-making body for the protocol.
The 'Aave Will Win' proposal, described as the most significant in Aave's history, has been passed with a landslide victory, outlining a master plan that involves Aave becoming fully token-centric, with one asset and one model: $AAVE. The vote resolves a dispute that surfaced in December when delegates noted that the integration of CoWSwap into Aave's interface had quietly shifted swap-related fees away from the community treasury to an external recipient. This controversy exposed a deeper tension over whether Aave Labs or the DAO controlled the protocol's most valuable asset: its user-facing products and the revenue they generate.
The 'Aave Will Win' proposal decisively answers this question in favor of token holders, with protocol revenue, which reached $140 million in 2025 and is expected to match that in 2026, now being supplemented by application-layer revenue from Aave Pro, Aave App, Horizon, and Aave Kit. Swaps on Aave.com and Aave Pro are already generating $10 to $20 million in additional revenue on top of existing protocol fees. The application layer is where the ambition lies, with Aave App targeting mainstream users with a 'fintech-like experience' that includes $1 million account protection per user and a card launching later that generates fees for the treasury. The proposal takes a firm stance against 'value leakage', the issue that triggered the December dispute, with service providers required to build exclusively for Aave, with zero tolerance for relationship gating or products built for themselves at the expense of token holders.
Every service provider will have measurable goals, and governance process improvements are planned to reduce 'politics and friction'. On the technical side, Aave V4's reinvestment feature turns idle float capital in lending pools into yield-generating positions, creating an additional revenue stream that did not exist in V3.
New 'Spokes' expand collateral options and address the demand side of DeFi liquidity, with the team also planning to invest in agentic AI infrastructure for developers building on Aave. Aave holds roughly $25 billion in total value locked across multiple chains, making it the largest lending protocol in DeFi, with the $140 million annual revenue figure positioning it alongside Uniswap and Lido as one of the few protocols generating nine-figure income. Kulechov's stated target is to scale from $40 billion to $1 trillion, positioning Aave not as a bank but as 'a financial network that any fintech, bank, or asset manager can plug into'.