In a closely watched governance decision for one of DeFi’s largest protocols, the “Aave Will Win” framework has passed its initial Temp Check vote, moving the proposal forward in Aave DAO’s multi-stage governance process. The off-chain Snapshot vote closed with approximately 52.58% in favor, 42% against, and roughly 5% abstaining. This approval clears the first formal hurdle and advances the framework to the Aave Request for Final Comment (ARFC) phase, where structural and implementation details will be refined based on community feedback before any on-chain vote occurs.
The “Aave Will Win” framework proposes a fundamental shift in how Aave’s economic value is distributed and how Aave Labs is funded: it would direct 100% of product revenue generated by Aave products to the AAVE token and DAO treasury, aligning incentives between token holders and the protocol’s builders. Stani Kulechov, founder of Aave and long-time steward of the protocol, confirmed the result on social media shortly after the vote closed, framing the outcome as a step toward a fully token-centric model for the ecosystem. “Temp Check for the Aave Will Win proposal has passed,” Kulechov wrote. “This brings Aave Labs closer to a fully token-centric model, directing 100% of product revenue to the $AAVE token,” he wrote, underscoring the strategic shift.
Despite the ultimate approval, the vote exposed ongoing tensions within Aave’s governance community. The margin was relatively narrow, and earlier debate on the forums and in governance reports highlighted deep divisions over funding levels, the size of token allocations to Aave Labs, and how decentralized authority should evolve. Following the vote, Marc Zeller, founder of the Aave Chan Initiative, published a detailed post-mortem analyzing the Temp Check results, noting that when excluding votes from several large Aave Labs–linked addresses, the broader community actually tilted against the proposal. Zeller’s analysis argued that while many delegates support the general direction of “Aave Will Win,” concerns remain about fiscal guardrails, capital deployment phases, and independence from Labs’ influence.
With the Temp Check cleared, the Aave Will Win proposal now enters the ARFC stage, where community feedback will be folded into a more detailed governance proposal that may ultimately be put to an on-chain Aave Improvement Proposal (AIP) vote. Only through an AIP vote would any commitments become binding. If the framework ultimately garners approval in that final vote, it could reshape Aave’s economic and governance model and position V4 as the long-term technical foundation for future growth.
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