Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)

Over the weekend, the Aave community experienced an extremely intense debate.

On one side of the debate was the core development team Aave Labs, led by founder Stani Kulechov, and on the other side was the community group represented by Aave DAO figurehead Marc Zeller.

The debate centered around the question of whether a new token should be issued outside of AAVE due to a new proposal, and the final result was that, in light of strong opposition from the community, Stani stated that he would temporarily shelve the new proposal.

Cause: A hidden agenda in the new proposal

The incident can be traced back to March 13 local time.

On that day, Aave Labs initiated a draft on the governance forum, proposing a new plan called Horizon to venture into the RWA business, which was temporarily missing from Aave's business landscape. The vision of the Horizon plan is to allow institutions to use tokenized money market funds (MMF) as collateral to borrow USDC and GHO on a large scale, thereby releasing stablecoin liquidity and promoting institutional access to DeFi.

At first glance, this draft seemed unproblematic and even a very effective supplement to Aave's business situation, but the key lay in another implicit content within it.

Aave Labs also proposed to launch a new token for the Horizon plan, with only 15% of the new tokens allocated to Aave DAO, with the specific allocation as follows:

• 10% into the Aave DAO fund pool

• 3% reserved for Aave ecosystem incentives

• 2% airdropped to Staked Aave (stkAAVE) holders — which means that existing AAVE stakers (not just holders) would only receive 2% of the new tokens.

At the same time, Horizon would also distribute part of its profits to Aave DAO, with the specific distribution ratios as follows:

• Year 1: 50%;

• Year 2: 30%;

• Year 3: 15%;

• Year 4 and beyond: 10%;

Clearly, under Aave Labs' preset conditions, Horizon would only provide a high profit-sharing ratio to Aave DAO in the early stages of limited business scale, while the profit-sharing ratio would gradually decrease as the business scale expanded.

Progress: Community outrage and collective opposition

It was not difficult to predict that the Aave community, primarily composed of token holders, would find it hard to support such an obvious value diversion proposal.

Once Aave Labs' draft was released, it quickly caused a stir throughout the community, with a large number of users beginning to leave comments below the draft (many even registered on the forum for the first time to speak out), and almost all replies were unanimously opposed.

Community member gregrwalsh commented:

I don't understand why we would dilute the AAVE token. If a new token is needed for some reason, it should maintain a 1:1 relationship with the AAVE token, and holders should receive their allocation accordingly. The revenue share for Aave DAO is also decreasing. This is clearly Aave Labs plotting to build a new entity. I do not support this proposal.

Community member Apu Mallku commented:

This seems like a money grab attempt by Aave Labs, which is very disappointing for long-term AAVE holders.

Community member sreno commented:

If Horizon is Aave DAO's plan, then value accumulation should flow to Aave DAO and the AAVE token, rather than just allocating 15% of the new tokens to Aave DAO. Aave DAO should retain full control and ownership of the Horizon plan… The structure of the proposal is filled with the scent of VC.

Community member knew compared it to the Maker case:

I strongly oppose the new token proposal. Just look at what happened after MakerDao upgraded to sky.money and issued a new token; MKR has been falling and will continue to fall. Investors will become confused, and the community will suffer trauma as a result. Aave is facing fierce competition, and if holders leave the community while the AAVE price continues to fall, market share will be handed over.

Community member zzzzz's reaction was even more radical:

I have sold all my AAVE. Even if this proposal is rejected in the future, it is incomprehensible that Aave Labs would boldly propose such an absurd suggestion—this is a complete betrayal. This is not just reckless; it is a shameless act of plunder, indicating their intention to exploit the community for their own greedy interests.

……

More opposing opinions can be found in the original post.

Climax: Division of upper-level will

While the community clearly expressed its opposition, Marc Zeller, a prominent figure in Aave DAO governance and founder of the Aave Chan Initiative (ACI), explicitly stated that he does not support the issuance of a new token, and Aave should only have one token: AAVE.

Marc Zeller also mentioned that Aave Labs could clearly anticipate the community's reaction but still chose to release the proposal. Such an outrageous distribution ratio is actually Aave Labs' usual "negotiation strategy," which is to propose a more absurd version of a plan when they want to achieve a certain proposal, so that the community will settle for the original proposal.

Marc Zeller finally stated that the proposal is not even worth considering, ACI firmly opposes it, and everyone in the community should stand up.

Under pressure, founder Stani himself had to step forward to express his stance. On March 14 local time, he spoke on the governance forum, stating:

• The Horizon plan aims to fill the current gap in Aave's RWA business segment, and the plan is expected to surpass the revenue of Aave's current business line in five years;

• The Horizon plan is more suitable for centralized operation, so it is not suitable for the current Aave DAO structure;

• Aave DAO will not incur any costs due to the Horizon plan;

• For business development reasons, Horizon needs to have a token;

• What is truly important is to determine the number itself so that Aave DAO can confidently see this plan move forward and unlock more revenue sources for the DAO.

Clearly, Stani had not given up on the plan to issue a new token at that time, and he hoped to promote the proposal through negotiations for a more reasonable distribution ratio.

Conclusion: Founder forced to compromise

While responding on the forum, Stani also engaged in a heated debate about the proposal on his personal X account.

Stani consistently emphasized that the plan would not impose additional costs on Aave DAO, but would only bring new revenue opportunities. However, the community clearly focused more on whether the value expectations of AAVE would be diluted.

Community user Champaqui even expressed disappointment by comparing Stani to the Ethereum Foundation:

I am starting to feel the atmosphere of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) from Stani; he completely cannot hear what the community is saying and is out of touch with reality. This is very disappointing. He always thinks he is right.

……

The debate continued, and ultimately Stani chose to compromise.

On March 16, Stani finally spoke on his personal X account, stating:

The overall consensus of Aave DAO is that there is no interest in other tokens. The consensus will be respected, Aave DAO is a true DAO, and once the right method is found, the exploration of RWA will continue. Aave only has AAVE.

Aftermath: Unresolved suspense and lingering doubts

This incident, referred to by community members as "the most dangerous proposal in Aave's history," has reached a temporary conclusion, but many questions remain puzzling. The biggest suspense is why Stani, as the founder of Aave, would rather risk the community's strong disapproval to attempt to push for a new token. Unfortunately, no one truly knows the answer except Stani.

As X user solarcurve said:

The most serious issue at present is that the community knows Aave Labs is actively developing new products/companies, but most of the value created will not flow to AAVE holders.

Although Stani responded directly to this, it still seems difficult to quell public opinion.

We are fully aligned with Aave because we are one of the largest stakeholders, and there are decades of work and innovation to be done.

Doubts are easy to arise and hard to dispel. To regain the community's trust, Aave Labs still has more work to do.

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