The Aave community has put an end to a long-standing governance dispute with the approval of the 'Aave Will Win' proposal. This landmark decision, dubbed 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 is now responsible for funding Aave Labs' activities, with the proposal including a $25 million stablecoin grant and a 5,000 AAVE token allocation, valued at approximately $6.8 million, to Aave Labs. The Aave DAO, a community-run decision-making body, manages the Aave lending protocol, enabling token holders to vote on key decisions such as upgrades, fees, and treasury use.
The 'Aave Will Win' proposal resolves a controversy that emerged in December when it was discovered that the integration of CoWSwap into Aave's interface had quietly diverted swap-related fees away from the community treasury. This move exposed underlying tensions over whether Aave Labs or the DAO controlled the protocol's most valuable assets: user-facing products and the revenue they generate. The 'Aave Will Win' proposal decisively favors token holders, with protocol revenue, which reached $140 million in 2025 and is on track to match that in 2026, now 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.
Aave App aims to provide a 'fintech-like experience' for mainstream users, complete 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 sparked the December dispute, requiring service providers to build exclusively for Aave, with no tolerance for relationship gating or products built 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 transforms idle float capital in lending pools into yield-generating positions, creating an additional revenue stream. New 'Spokes' 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 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.