Fuss about revenue sharing, control, and alignment between developers has become a core issue for Defi protocols. Tension over these issues have been rising at Aave, one of the top decentralized lending platforms. Aave Labs has taken a major step to address this issue.
Aave Labs proposed a non binding temperature check on the Aave governance forum, naming it ‘Aave will win’ framework. Under this, Aave Labs proposes directing 100% of gross product revenue from all Aave-branded products to the Aave DAO treasury. This covers fees from Aave v3, the upcoming v4, the official aave.com interface, swaps, and future offerings like the Aave Card, Aave Pro, Aave Kit, Aave Horizon, and possible ETF related products. This move is to expand the DAO’s revenue above core protocol fees.
In return, Aave Labs is requesting funding from the DAO to support its operations. $25 million in stablecoins and 75,000 AAVE tokens. The plan suggests creating a new team to manage Aave’s trademark and IP (intellectual property). This is pushing Aave under a “token first” model, aligning Labs fully with token holders and the DAO.
Governance issues to new proposal
The proposal comes after community pushback on value leakage and control. In late 2025, Aave Labs integrated CoW swap on the aave.com interface, redirecting swap related fees to labs controlled wallets, which were previously flowing to the DAO. This prompted a “governance crisis,” and accusations of value extraction, especially as protocol revenue grew, but AAVE token price faced pressure. Which made community members push for IP recovery and defunding labs.
On January 31, 2026, a temperature check called Strategic Reassessment, Aave Labs Funding & IP Recovery proposed halting Labs funding, suspending swap revenue streams to them, and creating a committee to reclaim IP due to apparent disagreements on V4 and other projects.
Community reaction to the new proposal is mixed. Critics like Marc Zeller from Aave Chan Initiative have raised concerns about upfront payments and called for unbundled votes, audits, or clearer disclosures.
AAVE recorded a small price increase in response to this news. This framework marks Aave’s push to mature from a top DeFi lending protocol into a larger financial infrastructure, with the DAO at the center of value creation.
