Aave Ends Months-Long Revenue Battle With Vote Sending All Protocol Earnings to AAVE Holders

The “Aave Will Win” (AWW) proposal was approved, with protocol founder Stani Kulechov calling it “the most important proposal in history.” The decision establishes a framework that redirects 100% of the revenue generated by all branded products to the DAO, consolidating the protocol’s economic rights under the network’s native token. The approval also resolved a key dispute within the protocol.

Community delegates had warned that integrating the CoWSwap trading aggregator into the Aave interface had silently diverted swap fees away from the community treasury. The controversy highlighted a broader tension over who controls the protocol’s most valuable asset—its user-facing products and the revenue they generate.

What the approved AWW proposal changes

The proposal approved on Sunday redirects 100% of revenue from branded products to the DAO. It also ends the prior disagreement over how swap fees and related revenues should be handled within the protocol’s governance structure.

Funding for Aave Labs authorized

Alongside the revenue framework, the proposal authorized an allocation of $25 million in stablecoins and 5,000 AAVE tokens (equivalent to approximately $6.8 million) to fund the Labs division’s activities. Under the new framework, the DAO assumes responsibility for funding this division, reversing the previous approach.

Revenue and activity figures cited

Protocol revenues reached $140 million in 2025 and are projected to reach similar levels in 2026. In addition, the article cites application-layer revenues from Pro, App, Horizon, and Kit.

It also states that swap operations on the network generate between $10 million and $20 million in additional income on top of existing protocol fees.

Governance stance on “value leakage”

Kulechov wrote that holding AAVE means holders do not only own the protocol’s economic rights, but also “the brand, the users, and the integrations.” He described the proposal as addressing “value leakage,” the issue that triggered the December dispute.

Under the new stance, service providers will be required to work exclusively for the protocol, and relationships that harm holders will not be tolerated.

Protocol updates and planned investments

The article says Aave V4 introduces a feature that converts idle capital in lending pools into yield-generating positions, creating a revenue stream that did not exist in V3. It also notes that an investment in agentic artificial intelligence infrastructure is planned for developers building on top of the protocol.

Scale and strategic positioning

The network concentrates approximately $25 billion in total value locked across multiple chains, positioning it as the largest lending protocol in DeFi. Kulechov set a target of scaling to $1 trillion, describing the protocol not as a bank, but as “a financial network that any fintech, bank, or asset manager can plug into.”