Recently, the decentralized finance world watched a major turning point as the Aave DAO passed the first binding part of the “Aave Will Win” (AWW) plan. Approved on Sunday, the new framework sends 100% of income from all Aave-branded products directly back to the community treasury, and also authorizes a $25 million stablecoin grant and a 75,000 AAVE token bonus to the development firm Aave Labs.
After months of loud debates and the exit of several long-time partners, the success of this vote shows a clear yet controversial new path for the world’s largest lending protocol. While the vote represents a big win for founder Stani Kulechov with nearly 75% support (522,780 votes in favor vs. 175,310 against), it also highlights growing concerns about power becoming too centralized within a single entity.
Learn more: What Is DeFi? A Beginner’s Guide to Decentralized Finance
How $25 Million Funding Works
Aave DAO’s approved plan ensures Aave Labs has enough money to build its new products over the next several years. Because the DAO committed 25 million aEthLidoGHO, a yield-bearing stablecoin, the money will move from the DAO’s Collector Contract in strategic stages. As a result, the schedule includes an immediate $5 million payment, followed by another $5 million streamed over six months, and the final $15 million distributed over a full year. Their step-by-step approach helps the DAO keep an eye on how the money is being spent for short-term operations and product development.
Primarily, the second part of the deal includes 75,000 AAVE tokens, worth roughly $6.8 million at current market prices. Currently, these tokens are set to be given out slowly via a linear stream over 48 months, which is twice as long as the original 24-month plan. By making the waiting period longer, the DAO ensures that Aave Labs stays focused on the protocol’s long-term health and growth. These transfers were scheduled to begin Monday afternoon, officially starting this new financial chapter where the DAO acts as the primary funder for its core developers.
How $25 Million Funding Works
What ‘Aave Will Win’ Framework Means
The “Aave Will Win” framework represents a total strategic pivot that moves Aave from a fragmented group of contributors toward a unified, “token-centric” model. Historically, different teams handled different parts of the protocol, which sometimes led to disputes over brand ownership and fee redirection. AWW decisively solves those conflicts by placing all economic rights under the AAVE token. Under this setup, Aave Labs commits to working exclusively for the DAO, ensuring that the brand, the users, and the revenue belong solely to the token holders.
Thus, the framework turns Aave into an integrated financial ecosystem. It focuses on building an “application layer”, products that everyday people can use, on top of the existing lending protocol. After launching tools like the Aave App and Aave Card, the DAO aims to capture the mainstream fintech market while funneling every cent of generated profit back into the community treasury, aiming to scale Aave from a DeFi protocol holding roughly $25 billion in total value locked (TVL) into a global financial network capable of handling $1 trillion in value.
Aave is holding $25 billion in TVL. – Source: DeFiLlama
How The Vote Ends Fights Over Revenue Control
Surprisingly, the “Aave Will Win” vote ends a long battle about where the protocol’s money actually goes. Late in 2025, many users grew upset when they discovered that fees from “swaps” on the official website flowed away from the community treasury to external recipients. Decisively answering this problem, the new rules send 100% of the money from all Aave-branded products back to the DAO. Currently, the protocol earns about $140 million a year from lending fees, and these new application-layer products could add another $10 to $20 million annually.
Effectively, this change means that holding AAVE tokens now grants you a share in everything: the brand, the users, and the income. Stani Kulechov made it clear that the days of “value leakage” are over, and service providers must now work only for the benefit of token holders. Furthermore, every future product like the Aave Card or Aave Pro will now feed its fees directly into the community treasury.
Major Partners Leave the DAO
Despite the winning numbers, Monday’s vote showed a community that splits down the middle regarding governance standards. While the roughly 75% support marks a substantial improvement from the contested 52.58% support in March, many remains skeptical. Frequently, critics pointed out that big investment firms with top AAVE holding like ParaFi Capital (190,000 AAVE), Areta (75,775 AAVE), Token Logic (73,386 AAVE), and delegate “luggis.eth” (123,580 AAVE) pushed the vote through. Every large “Yes” vote from these firms basically cancelled out the “No” votes from smaller community groups and independent delegates.
For that reason, the Aave Chan Initiative (ACI) and Chaos Labs both recently announced their exit from the DAO following this shift. ACI founder Marc Zeller cast 166,200 AAVE against the proposal, pointing out that “100% revenue” remains a vague term without independent audits. Also, Chaos Labs, the risk management experts, expressed deep concerns that the current model lacks the safety required for a protocol of this size.
While “Aave Will Win” passed, the protocol lost many of the expert teams that used to check for risks and technical bugs, raising questions about future safety as technical contributors like BGD Labs also ended their engagement on April 1.
Major Partners Leave the DAO
Aave Targets $1 Trillion in Value
Immediately after the win, Kulechov called this the most important moment in Aave’s history. Under the new plan, Aave Labs wants to make the protocol feel more like a normal finance app, offering a “fintech-style” experience with the Aave App and even $1 million in account protection for users. To do this, the firm seeks legal licenses around the world to make it easier for people to use regular cash alongside crypto. The vote pays for the start of these goals, but the DAO must still vote on future payments as each specific product launches.
Aave Will Win, the most important proposal in Aave’s history just passed with a landslide.
Here’s the master plan going forward:
General Direction
– Aave becomes fully token-centric: one asset, one model: $AAVE
– To date, protocol revenue per AIP-1 has accumulated to the Aave…
— Stani (@StaniKulechov) April 12, 2026
Crucially, the new Aave V4 upgrade also helps generate more money by putting idle capital to work through a new reinvestment feature. Currently holding about $25 billion in deposits, Aave already leads the DeFi market, but Kulechov wants to grow that to a massive $1 trillion. This would turn Aave into a global network that any bank, asset manager, or fintech company can use. Interestingly, while Bitcoin fell to $71,000 following geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, AAVE price jumped over 8% to $97.67 following this news.
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