Aave’s governance has passed the “Aave Will Win” (AWW) proposal with nearly 75% support, ending a months-long governance dispute over who controls the protocol’s revenue. The proposal redirects 100% of revenue from all Aave-branded products directly to the DAO treasury and consolidates economic rights under the AAVE token. Founder Stani Kulechov called it the most important proposal in Aave’s history.
CoWSwap Integration in December Sparked the Governance Fight
The conflict began in December 2025 when delegates flagged that Aave Labs’ integration of trading aggregator CoWSwap into the Aave interface had quietly shifted swap-related fees away from the community treasury to an external recipient. Onchain analysis estimated the revenue impact at roughly $200,000 per week, or more than $10 million annually, representing over 10% of the DAO’s estimated annualized revenue at the time.
The incident exposed a structural tension at the heart of Aave’s setup: the DAO governs the core lending smart contracts and accumulates protocol-level revenue, but Aave Labs — a private company — controls the interface, brand, domains and much of the product layer where monetization actually happens. The CoWSwap fee redirection made that ambiguity impossible to ignore. The dispute also had market consequences: a whale sold $38 million of AAVE during the December conflict, pushing the token down 10-20%. Core infrastructure contributor BGD Labs, the team behind Aave V3, also exited in early April, citing governance tensions with Aave Labs as a central reason.
Chaos Labs Quits Aave After Three Years. The Dispute Reveals a Deeper Governance Crisis.
AWW Redirects All Product Revenue to DAO and Funds Aave Labs With a Grant
Under the new framework, revenue from Aave Pro, Aave App, Horizon and Aave Kit flows directly to the DAO treasury. Swaps on Aave.com and Aave Pro are already generating an additional $10 to $20 million on top of existing protocol fees, which themselves reached $140 million in 2025 and are tracking similarly for 2026.
In exchange for committing all revenue to the DAO, the proposal approved a $25 million stablecoin grant and an allocation of 5,000 AAVE tokens (approximately $6.8 million) to fund Aave Labs’ operations. Aave Labs has also committed to working exclusively on Aave-related products going forward, eliminating the structural ambiguity that allowed the CoWSwap situation to arise.
The proposal also takes a hard line against what Kulechov called “value leakage”. Service providers must build exclusively for Aave, with zero tolerance for products built at the expense of token holders. Kulechov was direct: “Payments for posting governance proposals are over.” Every service provider will now be held to measurable goals.
Aave V4, Aave Foundation and a $1 Trillion AUM Target Frame the Path Forward
The AWW proposal also ratifies Aave V4 — launched March 30 — as the protocol’s long-term technical foundation. 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. The team also plans to invest in agentic AI infrastructure for developers building on Aave.
On the product side, Aave App will target mainstream users with what Kulechov described as a fintech-like experience, including $1 million account protection per user and a card that generates fees for the treasury. The proposal also introduces plans for a new Aave Foundation to steward the brand. Kulechov’s stated ambition is scaling the protocol from its current $40 billion to $1 trillion in assets under management.
For AAVE token holders, the result of Saturday’s vote is the clearest claim to the protocol’s future revenues they have ever had. As Kulechov put it: “If you own AAVE, you own not just the economic rights of the protocol, but the brand, the users, and the integrations.”
