Aave DAO has approved AIP 469, authorizing a combined funding package worth about $31.8 million for Aave Labs. The proposal includes $25 million in aEthLidoGHO stablecoins and 75,000 AAVE tokens, making it the first binding governance action under founder Stani Kulechov’s “Aave Will Win” framework. Beyond the size of the grant itself, the vote is significant because it settles a key question around revenue ownership and formalizes a new operating relationship between the DAO and Aave Labs.
A binding vote with clear financial terms
AIP 469 passed on April 12, 2026, with 522,780 AAVE voting in favor, representing roughly 74.89% of participating votes. Opposition totaled 175,310 AAVE, with ACI.eth accounting for most of the dissent at around 166,000 tokens against. The approved package combines a yield-bearing stablecoin allocation drawn from the Aave V3 Ethereum Lido market with a long-dated token grant designed to support development over multiple years.
The stablecoin component consists of $25 million in aEthLidoGHO. The token component, 75,000 AAVE, vests linearly over 48 months. At the time of the vote, with AAVE trading around $90 to $91, the token allocation carried an estimated market value of approximately $6.8 million. The recipient address identified in the proposal is Aave Labs.
The disbursement schedule was also structured to preserve DAO oversight. Of the stablecoin grant, $5 million is available immediately, another $5 million is streamed over six months, and the remaining $15 million is streamed over 12 months. Any unspent portion must return to the DAO treasury after 12 months. Importantly, the vested AAVE tokens do not carry voting rights during the vesting period, reducing governance concerns tied to the grant.
Revenue control moves decisively to the DAO
The larger story behind the vote is governance design. Under the newly approved model, 100% of revenue generated by the Aave protocol and Aave-branded products will flow to the DAO treasury. Aave Labs will operate through grants approved by governance and will work exclusively on Aave-related initiatives under that structure.
This provision directly addresses tensions that emerged in late 2025. Community criticism intensified after Aave Labs redirected swap fees from a Cowswap integration away from the DAO treasury, sparking debate over who controlled revenue linked to the Aave brand and ecosystem. AIP 469 effectively closes that chapter by codifying treasury ownership over protocol and product income. In governance terms, the DAO now has a more explicit claim not only over economic output, but also over the commercial value created by Aave’s brand, users, and integrations.
Kulechov described the proposal’s passage as the most important in Aave’s history. His public framing emphasized that AAVE holders should be understood as owning more than protocol cash flows alone. The approved structure reflects that philosophy by connecting treasury rights, product growth, and brand monetization under a single governance-controlled framework.
The “Aave Will Win” framework and the growth agenda
The governance action is rooted in the “Aave Will Win” strategy first introduced by Kulechov in a governance forum post on January 2, 2026. In that post, he argued that Aave had become too inward-looking and needed to expand more aggressively into real-world assets (RWA), consumer-facing financial products, and institutional markets. He outlined a vast opportunity set, referring to an addressable market measured in the hundreds of trillions of dollars, while also pushing a longer-term ambition for more than $1 trillion in TVL.
Within that framework, Aave is targeting new revenue streams from products such as Aave App, Aave Pro, Aave Card, Aave Kit, and Horizon, the protocol’s vehicle for RWA expansion. The framework projects that these products could generate an additional $10 million to $20 million in annual revenue. It also references milestone-based grant structures totaling up to $17.5 million in future disbursements, though those were not part of the AIP 469 vote itself.
In practical terms, the DAO has now endorsed a model in which Aave Labs is funded to execute on expansion, while the value generated by successful execution is directed back to the treasury. That alignment is central to the thesis behind the proposal: fund growth aggressively, but keep ownership of the resulting economics at the DAO level.
V4, RWA expansion, and regulatory positioning
Aave V4 sits at the center of the technical roadmap. According to the reported framework, V4 is built around a modular architecture, deeper GHO stablecoin integrations, and a “Spokes” model intended to support new collateral types. That design is especially relevant for institutional and real-world asset use cases, where collateral requirements and market structures can differ substantially from crypto-native lending.
The execution plan also includes organizational changes. Aave Labs has absorbed operations from BGD Labs, whose role as a technical contributor ended on April 1, 2026. Consolidating responsibilities could simplify the delivery of the roadmap, though it also raises the stakes on Aave Labs’ ability to execute against milestones under greater public and governance scrutiny.
Regulatory strategy forms another pillar of the framework. The plan calls for pursuing a MiCA CASP license in Ireland, a UK EMI license, and broader global policy advocacy. Kulechov’s framing suggests these regulatory efforts are intended to function as competitive moats rather than mere compliance exercises. For a protocol seeking to serve institutional users and bridge onchain finance with real-world assets, licensing and policy engagement are positioned as part of product strategy rather than administrative overhead.
Protocol fundamentals and market reaction
The backdrop to the vote is a protocol that remains one of the largest in decentralized finance. According to DefiLlama data cited in the report, Aave currently holds about $25.08 billion in total value locked. Annualized fees stand at approximately $549.16 million, while annualized revenue is about $73.4 million. Outstanding borrowings total roughly $17.508 billion, the treasury balance sits near $83.49 million, and annual operating expenses are around $18.07 million.
Those figures help explain why the grant, while substantial, is being discussed within the context of a mature and cash-generating DeFi protocol rather than as an emergency measure. Supporters of the proposal appear to view the package as a strategic allocation aimed at accelerating product development and institutional expansion, not as a bailout.
The market responded positively after the vote’s execution. AAVE rose 5% to 6% in the aftermath and remained up more than 3% as of 8:30 a.m. Eastern on April 13. DefiLlama metrics cited the token at $93.79, with a market capitalization of about $1.423 billion and $311.86 million in 24-hour trading volume. Roughly 19.88% of the market cap was reported as staked.
What comes next for Aave governance
AIP 469 does more than authorize a large grant. It marks a structural reset in how Aave defines ownership, incentives, and execution. The DAO now has the alignment it sought: the treasury captures protocol and product revenues, while Aave Labs receives governance-approved funding to build under a clearly defined mandate.
The harder phase begins now. Delivering on ambitions tied to V4, RWA onboarding, consumer products, and institutional finance will depend on execution across engineering, regulation, and business development. The proposal gives Aave a cleaner governance architecture and a more unified revenue model. Whether that is enough to support the project’s trillion-dollar TVL aspirations remains uncertain, but the direction is now explicit. For tokenholders and the wider DeFi market, Aave has moved from debating structure to testing whether its new structure can actually scale.