The Aave community has voted in favor of the 'Aave Will Win' proposal, a landmark decision that marks the end of a months-long dispute over protocol revenue control. The proposal, which was described by founder Stani Kulechov as 'the most important proposal in Aave's history', redirects 100% of revenue from all Aave-branded products back to the DAO and consolidates economic rights under a single asset - the AAVE token.
This shift means that the DAO is now responsible for funding Aave Labs' activities, and the proposal includes a $25 million stablecoin grant and 5,000 AAVE token allocation to Aave Labs. The Aave DAO, a governance system that manages the Aave lending protocol, allows token holders to vote on decisions such as upgrades, fees, and treasury use. The 'Aave Will Win' proposal resolves a dispute that began in December when delegates flagged that the integration of trading aggregator CoWSwap into Aave's interface had quietly shifted swap-related fees away from the community treasury to an external recipient. The proposal takes a hard line against 'value leakage', with service providers required to build exclusively for Aave and zero tolerance for relationship gating or products built for themselves at the expense of token holders.
Aave V4's reinvestment feature turns 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, and 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 the $140 million annual revenue figure puts it alongside Uniswap and Lido as one of the few protocols generating nine-figure income.