The Aave community has voted in favor of the 'Aave Will Win' proposal, a landmark decision that marks the end of a prolonged governance dispute. The proposal, deemed the most significant in Aave's history, establishes a framework that channels 100% of revenue from all Aave-branded products back to the DAO, effectively consolidating economic rights under the AAVE token.
This move shifts the responsibility of funding Aave Labs' activities to the DAO, with the community approving a $25 million stablecoin grant and a 5,000 AAVE token allocation to support Aave Labs' operations. The Aave DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization, serves as the community-run decision-making body for the protocol, allowing token holders to vote on crucial decisions such as upgrades, fees, and treasury use. The 'Aave Will Win' proposal resolves a controversy that emerged in December when delegates discovered that the integration of CoWSwap into Aave's interface had quietly redirected swap-related fees away from the community treasury. This dispute exposed underlying tensions over whether Aave Labs or the DAO controlled the protocol's most valuable assets: its user-facing products and the revenue they generate.
The proposal decisively favors token holders, ensuring that protocol revenue, which reached $140 million in 2025 and is expected to match that in 2026, will be supplemented by application-layer revenue from Aave Pro, Aave App, Horizon, and Aave Kit. Swaps on Aave.com and Aave Pro are already generating an additional $10 to $20 million in revenue on top of existing protocol fees. The application layer is a key area of focus, with Aave App aiming to provide a 'fintech-like experience' with $1 million account protection per user and a card that will launch later, generating fees for the treasury.
The proposal takes a firm stance against 'value leakage,' the issue that triggered the December dispute, requiring service providers to build exclusively for Aave with zero tolerance for relationship gating or products built at the expense of token holders. Service providers will have measurable goals, and governance process improvements are planned to reduce 'politics and friction.' On the technical side, Aave V4's reinvestment feature will turn idle float capital in lending pools into yield-generating positions, creating an additional revenue stream. New 'Spokes' will 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. With roughly $25 billion in total value locked across multiple chains, Aave is the largest lending protocol in DeFi, generating $140 million in annual revenue.
The stated target is to scale from $40 billion to $1 trillion, positioning Aave as a financial network that any fintech, bank, or asset manager can plug into, rather than a traditional bank.