Aave founder and CEO Stani Kulechov outlined a strategic plan to address governance tensions following a rejected proposal that would have transferred protocol brand and front-end control to the community. The vote saw 55% oppose the measure, 41% abstain, and just 3.5% support, exposing divisions over value distribution between Aave Labs and token holders.
What Happened: Governance Vote
Kulechov posted Friday that Aave must expand beyond crypto-native lending products into real-world assets and institutional markets, targeting a $500 trillion asset base and millions of users through the Aave App.
"Today, most of Aave's lending is concentrated around ETH, BTC, or leverage-driven looping strategies correlated with crypto market cycles," Kulechov said. "When I started Aave (originally as ETHLend) in 2017, the vision was to use smart contracts to power lending across virtually all asset classes and use cases."
The upcoming Aave V4 will feature modular architecture designed to integrate new lending models and asset classes without compromising protocol integrity.
The design enables both crypto-native and real-world asset-backed use cases while creating a developer-friendly environment.
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Why It Matters: Revenue Sharing
Kulechov emphasized that mainstream products needed to onboard millions of users should be developed by independent teams rather than controlled directly by the DAO.
"World class consumer products are built by highly opinionated teams with the autonomy to move quickly," Kulechov said. "While decentralized governance works well for protocol economics, it is not suited for product-level decision making."
Kulechov pledged to share revenue generated outside the protocol with token holders and confirmed upcoming proposals will include guardrails for branding and revenue alignment.
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