Aave founder Stani Kulechov announced on X on April 12 that the "Aave Will Win (AWW)" proposal passed DAO governance voting by a landslide. He called it the most important governance decision in Aave's history — not just a financial tweak but a full unification of the protocol's architecture and vision.
The approval marks the formal end of Aave's months-long governance crisis. The community clashed with the team, the second-largest whale sold at a loss, and AAVE tokens dropped over 20% in a single week. Stani had attempted to calm the situation with a "profit-sharing" plan. Now AWW delivers on that commitment in full.
All Product Revenue to DAO: New Income Stream Opens
Stani explained that AWW's core breakthrough is an "off-protocol revenue" mechanism — all income from application-layer products such as Aave Pro, Aave.com, Aave App, Horizon RWA, and Aave Kit now flows directly into the Aave DAO instead of Aave Labs. The swap functions on Aave.com and Aave Pro alone have generated $10M–$20M in new revenue for the protocol. Combined with the reinvestment mechanism from V4 Spokes and the $140M in DAO revenue accumulated from the protocol layer in 2025, Aave's financial scale is expanding rapidly. Stani expects protocol-layer revenue to remain flat in 2026, with application-layer growth becoming the main driver.
Stani emphasized that AWW also creates a "community-protected vehicle" to independently govern Aave's brand assets and intellectual property, ensuring that ultimate beneficiaries are token holders, not any single team. His core message: "If you hold $AAVE, you own not just the protocol's economic rights but also the brand, users, integrations — everything goes to one asset." Aave Labs has committed to focusing solely on Aave-related products and going all-in.
Five Product Lines: From Retail to Institutional, DeFi to RWA
Stani detailed Aave's product lineup. Each line targets different users, all aimed at making Aave the foundational credit and repo market for the global $400T traditional finance asset base. Aave App offers a fintech-like simple experience with self-custody and up to $1M account protection per user, with a planned credit card feature. Aave Pro targets advanced users with complex operations and optimized fiat on-ramps. Aave Kit is a SOC2-compliant enterprise integration for fintechs and institutions. Horizon expands RWA (Real World Assets) on V4 with flexible asset listing. V4 Spokes unlocks new collateral types to fill DeFi liquidity gaps.
On the engineering side, V1 through V4 and the GHO stablecoin have all been developed internally by Aave Labs. V3 will receive ongoing maintenance. Stani also announced investment in agentic AI infrastructure, opening it to third-party developers to build smart agent applications on Aave, with Chainlink as a long-term partner.
Governance Principles: Zero Value Leakage, Anti-Vendor Lock-In, $40B to $1T
Stani outlined AWW's governance philosophy: support a multi-contributor ecosystem; oppose vendor lock-in; enforce "zero value leakage" — anything built with Aave's funds must belong to Aave; and ensure continued investment in brand, marketing, and events. He noted that tokens represent "the biggest opportunity to build collective governance protocols in our time," but require a unified vision for execution. AWW concretizes that vision into an executable mechanism. His long-term target for Aave is to grow from roughly $40B in protocol scale today to over $1T.
Looking back at Aave's journey over the past six months — the community revolt, whale exit, token crash, and founder's forced response — AWW's passage feels like a belated yet complete answer: Stani opted for a full governance restructuring, not verbal promises, to address community distrust.