Key messages:

• This is bigger than Aave. The debate is about who should capture the economic value of a DeFi protocol when governance is onchain but operations and brand sit with a private company.
• Alignment has improved, but enforceability is still unclear. Routing revenue to the DAO is directionally positive, the real test is whether token holders can verify and control what “100% of revenue” actually means.
• The outcome sets a precedent for DeFi. If Aave can turn governance promises into enforceable economic rights, it could remove the governance discount not just for Aave, but for the sector. 

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Aave’s governance drama is not about a single vote or a single fee stream, it is about a delayed but inevitable question relevant to the wider DeFi community: Who owns the economic value of a decentralized protocol when governance is onchain, but the brand, interface, and key distribution surface sits with a private operator? 

Our article Aave’s governance crisis: the vote is over, the ownership question isn’t… was published on December 30, 2025 and now, six weeks later, it’s time for an update. The reason: Aave Labs has made a move rarely seen in DeFi disputes – a written attempt at a grand bargain.

Aave Will Win Framework was released by Aave Labs on February 12, 2006 and the Temp Check proposes to: 

• Route 100% of revenue from Aave-branded products to the Aave Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) treasury;
• Ratify Aave V4 as the protocol’s future architecture;
• Create an Aave Foundation to steward trademarks; and
• Establish a funding framework where the DAO finances Aave Labs’ execution. 

In plain terms: The storefront revenue goes to token holders, and token holders fund the storefront operator.

While this Temp Check – an official first step in a governance process – proposes real change, it doesn’t close the ownership question. Instead, it relocates the topic of ownership to a more mature (and harder) arena: definitions, controls, and governance safeguards.

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The question shifts from “who owns the storefront?” to “what is 100% of revenue?”

The most important line in the Temp Check is also the most fragile: “100% of Aave Labs’ product revenue will go to the DAO.” 

If implemented cleanly, it would directly address the core tension that detonated in December last year around the CoW Swap integration and the perception of interface-layer value leakage. 

But the proposal also defines “revenue” as gross inflows minus multiple categories of deductions, including partner revenue shares, rebates/subsidies, and “additional direct user incentives,” and explicitly states that Aave Labs retains the discretion to redirect certain inflows into incentives (with delayed disclosure). This is where alignment turns from narrative to mechanics.

The practical question is no longer whether value should accrue to the DAO. Most of the ecosystem now agrees it should.The question is whether the DAO can verify, audit, and ultimately control the definition of the number it is being promised.

That’s not a “gotcha.” It’s the difference between token-holder ownership as a principle and token-holder ownership as an enforceable economic right.

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The bundled deal: four decisions in one vote

Aave Labs positions the framework as a single, integrated strategy: revenue alignment, V4 ratification, brand governance via the Aave Foundation, and a significant funding request. 

As a strategy, bundling is understandable: these components are interdependent. If the DAO gets product revenue, it must fund product development; if V4 is the growth engine, service providers should align; if the brand is critical, it needs legal stewardship. However, when it comes to governance, bundling is risky: it forces delegates into an all-or-nothing vote across four distinct risk profiles.

This is exactly the pushback from many delegates, who agree with the destination yet question the route to get there. Marc Zeller, founder of Aave Chan Initiative (ACI), provided a very blunt summary of this sentiment. He questions whether it's appropriate to combine a large funding ask with strategic ratifications, noting his support for moving toward token-centric alignment but demanding clearer terms on revenue definition, sequencing, and disclosures.

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“DAO gets the revenue” really means “DAO becomes the payer”

Aave Labs state they have historically self-funded major portions of Aave’s product, legal, compliance, brand protection, and growth. Their February 2026 proposal makes an explicit trade: If the DOA receives product revenue it must now fund Aave Labs to keep execution running. 

While coherent in theory, three practical investor-relevant questions exist around pricing, control, a precedence:

1. Is the proposed budget commensurate with the revenue being redirected and the execution risk being assumed?
2. What does the DAO actually receive beyond a cashflow promise, contractual enforceability, audit rights, termination/renewal leverage, and milestone gating?
3. If “operator gets funded by DAO” becomes the template, what governance standards (disclosure, conflict-of-interest norms, audit) become mandatory across service providers?

The community is not allergic to DAOs funding contributors. It’s allergic to DAOs funding contributors without enforceable guardrails.

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Will a foundation resolve or replicate the power problems? 

The question of who owns the Aave brand still remains. Aave Labs states that because the DAO is not a legal entity, it cannot hold or defend trademarks directly. It proposes an Aave Foundation to hold and steward the Aave trademarks going forward, mandated to protect and license the brand in alignment with DAO-approved parameters (with details to follow). 

This is directionally sensible. Trademarks require active legal defense, and DAOs themselves typically lack the legal standing to enforce those rights. 

But brand stewardship only reduces centralization risk if the architecture is meaningfully independent, operationally competent, and constrained by governance in ways that cannot be bypassed in practice. That’s the point where fine print matters more than mission statements.

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V4 ratification: a growth bet without disrupting today’s engine

The proposed framework asks the DAO to ratify Aave V4 as the protocol’s core technical direction. It outlines a phased implementation, where V3 continues operating, but meaningful new feature development may shift toward V4.

This is not just a technical roadmap, it is a capital allocation decision. Developer resources, contributor incentives, and governance attention are finite. Prioritizing V4 means directing those resources toward future architecture rather than optimizing the existing revenue engine in V3.

V3 is the proven production system generating current fees. V4 represents long-term optionality and competitive positioning. Investors should expect delegates to pressure-test sequencing: Can Aave fund and build V4 without weakening V3’s near-term economics, or does ratifying V4 now help coordinate the ecosystem more effectively?

Either path can be rational. The key variable is governance credibility: how cleanly Aave can manage a multi-version transition without destabilizing its current cash flows.

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Does this mean the DAO won?

This depends on how winning is defined. 

If pushing the ecosystem to publicly address who captures Aave’s economic value counts as a win, then governance pressure clearly worked. Aave Labs responded with a framework that shifts product revenue toward the DAO and acknowledges token holders as the primary economic beneficiaries.

But if a “win” means fully resolving the ownership question, then the debate is not over.

Back in December, what started as a narrow issue – frontend fee routing – escalated into something larger. It exposed a structural reality: token-holder ownership in DeFi is often based on norms and expectations, not legally or contractually enforceable rights.

Aave Labs’ proposal is the first serious attempt to formalize that relationship. But formalization requires precise definitions, enforceable rights, and governance safeguards and those details are still being negotiated.

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Where the focus shifts now

Market attention will now turn to governance and whether the next iterations will deliver:

• A DAO-controlled definition of revenue (not just an Aave Labs-defined net figure) plus credible verification/auditability. 
• Unbundling and sequencing so the DAO can say “yes” to alignment while negotiating funding and governance structures in separate votes. 
• Independence for the proposed Aave Foundation, solving the legal trademark constraint without recreating unilateral control of the brand layer. 
• Funding safeguards: milestone gating, renewal leverage, termination rights, transparency standards, and clear reporting obligations that scale with the budget size. 

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An uncomfortable but bullish closing remark

There’s a reason this matters beyond Aave. Most DeFi protocols are quietly built on the same split: a DAO that “owns the protocol” and an operator that owns the distribution surfaces users touch. Aave is just the first blue-chip to have this ownership debate publically.

The optimistic read is not that conflict happened, it’s that conflict produced a path toward alignment that can be copied across DeFi. However, this depends on Aave succeeding in delivering an enforceable structure. This would remove the current governance discount for Aave. 

In other words: the governance vote last year was never the main story. Rather, the real story is whether DeFi can evolve from “governance as vibes” to “governance as credible ownership” without breaking the teams that work on the products. Aave just took a real step in that direction. Now it has to prove the step holds weight.