Core 'Key Contributors' Depart One After Another, Has Aave's DAO Dream Shattered?
Recent weeks have seen major internal turbulence within Aave, one of DeFi’s most successful DAOs. The Aave Chan Initiative (ACI), a core governance team, announced it would cease operations and exit the ecosystem on March 3, following the departure of BGD Labs, the development team behind Aave V3, just two weeks earlier.
The crisis stems from governance disputes that began in December, when Aave Labs unilaterally switched the protocol’s front-end aggregator from ParaSwap to CoW Swap, redirecting fee revenue from the DAO treasury to Aave Labs. In response, Aave Labs proposed the bundled “Aave Will Win” proposal in February, requesting $51M in funding for V4 development in exchange for routing all future product revenue to the DAO and phasing out V3.
ACI strongly criticized the proposal, alleging that a significant portion of supporting votes came from addresses linked to Aave Labs, raising concerns about self-dealing and lack of transparency. Despite ACI’s attempts to introduce stricter accountability measures, their proposals were not adopted.
The departures of both BGD Labs and ACI—key contributors responsible for technical development and governance—raise serious questions about Aave’s future, including technical risks associated with transitioning to V4 and the centralization of decision-making power. The situation highlights broader challenges in DAO governance, where power often remains concentrated among founders, developers despite the ideal of decentralized token-holder control.
Moving forward, the resolution of the “Aave Will Win” proposal and the possibility of a protocol fork remain critical points to watch. How Aave addresses its governance flaws and rebalances power among stakeholders may determine its ability to sustain long-term growth.
比推03/03 23:09
