A recent community vote has brought an end to the prolonged governance dispute within the Aave ecosystem, with the 'Aave Will Win' proposal emerging victorious. This proposal, deemed the most significant in Aave's history by founder Stani Kulechov, establishes a framework that channels 100% of revenue from all Aave-branded products back to the DAO, consolidating economic rights under the AAVE token. As a result, the DAO will now be responsible for funding Aave Labs' activities, with the approved proposal including a $25 million stablecoin grant and a 5,000 AAVE token allocation, valued at approximately $6.8 million, for Aave Labs.
The Aave DAO, a community-run decision-making body, oversees the Aave lending protocol, enabling token holders to vote on key decisions such as upgrades, fees, and treasury utilization. The 'Aave Will Win' proposal has addressed a contentious issue that arose in December when delegates discovered that the integration of CoWSwap into Aave's interface had discreetly diverted swap-related fees away from the community treasury. This controversy highlighted a deeper tension regarding control over the protocol's most valuable assets: its user-facing products and the revenue they generate. The proposal decisively resolves this issue 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 an additional $10 to $20 million in revenue beyond existing protocol fees. The application layer is a key area of focus, with Aave App aiming to provide mainstream users with a 'fintech-like experience' featuring $1 million account protection per user and a card that will be launched later, generating fees for the treasury. The proposal takes a firm stance against 'value leakage,' the issue that sparked the December dispute, mandating that service providers build exclusively for Aave, with no 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 front, Aave V4's reinvestment feature will convert idle float capital in lending pools into yield-generating positions, creating an additional revenue stream that did not exist in V3.
New 'Spokes' will expand collateral options and address the demand side of DeFi liquidity, while the team plans 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, and its $140 million annual revenue figure places 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 as 'a financial network that any fintech, bank, or asset manager can plug into,' rather than a bank.