Aave’s ’Will Win’ Proposal Clears Temp Check with 52.58% Approval—What’s Next for DeFi’s Lending Titan?

Aave's governance machine just got a green light. The protocol's latest proposal—dubbed 'Will Win'—has passed its initial temperature check, securing a majority vote from its community. This isn't just another routine upgrade; it's a signal of intent from one of decentralized finance's foundational pillars.

The Vote That Matters

Forget unanimous consent—in the rough-and-tumble world of DAO governance, a majority is a mandate. The approval margin, while not a landslide, demonstrates a clear directional push from Aave's tokenholders. It shows a community willing to back a forward-looking strategy, even if the path ahead isn't perfectly charted.

Beyond the Ballot Box

Passing a temp check is the starting gun, not the finish line. It grants the proposal the legitimacy to move into the next, more rigorous phases of Aave's governance process. Now comes the heavy lifting: detailed technical specification, risk assessment, and final on-chain voting. This is where proposals are stress-tested and where the real consensus is forged—or broken.

Aave's Strategic Gambit

This move underscores a broader trend among top-tier DeFi protocols: relentless evolution. In a sector where complacency is a one-way ticket to irrelevance, staying ahead means constantly iterating on governance, risk models, and product offerings. The 'Will Win' framing itself is a statement—it's about positioning, not just patching.

The Cynic's Corner

Let's be real—in crypto, a governance vote sometimes feels less like Athenian democracy and more like shareholders rubber-stamping a CEO's pet project. But hey, at least here your vote isn't diluted by a board of directors who think 'liquidity mining' is a new excavation technique.

The approval sets the stage for Aave's next chapter. The community has spoken, albeit with a measured voice. Now, the builders get to work, turning a majority vote into executable code and concrete advantage. In the race for DeFi dominance, standing still is the only true failure.

Vote exposes deep governance drift

The narrow margins from the published vote reflect months of increasing tensions between Aave Chain Initiative and Aave Labs over protocol control, funding transparency, and the future direction of one of DeFi’s biggest lending platforms.

In the proposal, tokenholders were asked to approve funding in exchange for Aave Labs redirecting all of its product revenue to the DAO treasury. This includes fees from aave.com swaps, its upcoming mobile app, Aave Card, Aave Pro, Aave Kit for enterprises, and Aave Horizon RWA market.

In exchange, Aave Labs requested funding to cover operations it was previously covering through product revenue.

According to the proposal, “by directing 100% of revenue to the DAO, Aave Labs will not be able to self-fund going forward. Without the ability to earn or raise revenue, there is no way to cover the costs across product development, business development, and other operational functions.”

Shortly after the vote, Kulechov himself posted on his X account saying, “Temp Check for the Aave Will Win proposal has passed. This brings Aave Labs closer to a fully token-centric model, directing 100% of product revenue to the $AAVE token.”

Governance power concerns increasing

Zeller’s post-vote analysis identified some concerns about Aave Labs acquiring additional governance weight through the 75,000 AAVE tokens. An Aave user also commented in the forum that “The risk of ACI consortium to milk the AAVE DAO treasury is higher as they do not have much AAVE tokens but control the daily ops (operations).”

The vote came just after Zeller published an audit on February 25, where he questioned the ROI for around $86 million that Aave Labs received in previous funding rounds ($16.2 million from the 2017 ICO, $32.5 million from venture rounds, $31.93 million in direct DAO payments, and around $5.5 million from “unapproved” swap fees from aave.com).

The audit used ROI analysis to assess Aave Labs’ historical funding. It credited Aave Labs with building V1, V2, and the initial V3.0 codebase, but argued that most of the following revenue growth came from upgrades by the DAO service providers.

Zeller claimed that the V3.0 revenue amounted to $3.33 million, significantly less than the $179 million generated after service provider upgrades.

Aave Labs then published its own report the same day, reiterating successful innovations like the liquidity pool model, Flash Loans, the Safety Module, and V3’s Efficiency Mode, which were all developed before the DAO started using a service-provider structure.

BGD Labs leaves the Aave scene

On February 20, BGD Labs announced that it would not renew its engagement with the AaveDAO after April 1, effectively ending a four-year tenure as the project’s main technical contributor. The firm was instrumental in building and maintaining Aave’s V3.

In their departure announcement, BGD Labs mentioned centralization concerns with Aave Labs and an asymmetric organizational scenario as their main reasons for leaving. BGD Labs also criticized what it described as an aggressive promotion of V4 by highlighting “unfounded” shortcomings of V3, despite its market dominance and secure track record.

The framework also proposes creating a Foundation to hold Aave trademarks and intellectual property on behalf of the DAO, which addresses concerns about Aave Labs’ exclusive legal ownership of the brand. However, details on the structure, governance, and trademark transfer would follow in a separate proposal.

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