Original author: Bootly, BitpushNews

On March 3, the core governance team of the Aave protocol, Aave Chan Initiative (ACI), announced that it would cease operations and exit AAVE.

This is the second major contributor to leave within two weeks – previously, on February 20, the development team BGD Labs, which worked on the Aave V3 codebase, announced its exit.

Following the announcement, the price of the AAVE token dropped more than 11%.

As the most successful DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) in DeFi history, with a total value locked (TVL) nearing $27 billion, this DeFi leader is experiencing a profound internal turmoil.

From Revenue Attribution Disputes to Bundled Voting

The roots of this crisis were planted as early as last December.

At that time, Aave Labs changed the front-end interface's trading aggregator from ParaSwap to CoW Swap without governance discussion. The fees that were originally directed to the DAO treasury were redirected to Aave Labs' account.

In response to the criticism, Aave founder Stani Kulechov stated that since the front-end interface is built by Labs, the revenues naturally belong to Labs; only the smart contracts and liquidity pools belong to the DAO. This explanation makes sense at a legal level but caused dissatisfaction at the community level.

To quell the controversy, Aave Labs proposed a plan called "Aave Will Win" in February of this year. The proposal primarily included: requesting the DAO to approve approximately $51 million in funding for V4 development; in exchange, all future revenues from Aave branded products would be attributed to the DAO, and Aave V4 would be established as the sole technical foundation, gradually phasing out V3.

The issue is that these three items were bundled together. Do you support the revenue going to the DAO but feel the funding scale is too large? You have no choice. Do you believe V3 still has value and should not be neglected? Likewise, you have no choice. It's either full acceptance or complete rejection.

ACI's Discontent: Non-transparent Voting

In ACI's exit statement, the core accusation was that a significant portion of the votes supporting the proposal came from addresses associated with Aave Labs. The interim vote passed with a narrow margin of 52.58%, and ACI believes that the outcome might have been different without these "self-votes."

ACI founder Marc Zeller wrote, "If a major budget recipient can use its undisclosed voting power to force through its proposal, then independent service providers lose their meaning of existence within the DAO."

ACI did not try to solve the issue. Before the vote, it proposed four conditions, including stricter on-chain milestone tracking and limiting self-voting by budget recipients, but none were adopted.

This conflict reflects structural issues in DAO governance.

Aave Labs controls the codebase, brand domain, social media, and development discourse. BGD Labs maintains the main version V3 - contributing over 75% of the protocol's revenue and 97% of total deposits. ACI is responsible for governance coordination and business development, claiming to have driven 61% of governance actions in the past three years, helping Aave's DeFi market share rise from less than 50% to over 65%.

These three teams should have balanced each other. But as BGD and ACI successively leave, the remaining power center makes it hard for people to feel completely assured regardless of their statements.

Stani Kulechov responded after ACI announced its exit: "Thank you, Marc, for your contributions over the years. The protocol will continue to operate normally."

However, this response did not address the core issue: when the person best equipped to assess the technical risks of V3 has left, how can the DAO confidently place its future bets on an untested V4?

Another notable detail is that the institutional investor Blockchain Capital later stated that due to the custodian platform not supporting snapshot voting, their holdings of AAVE could not participate. This reveals another reality of DAO governance: while it is nominally a decision-making process by token holders, in practice, voting power often concentrates in the hands of a few.

The Governance Dilemma of DAOs

ACI stated that in the upcoming four-month transition period, it would transfer or open-source governance dashboards, incentive frameworks, committee roles, and other tools and responsibilities. However, some things are hard to hand over: three years of accumulated governance experience, familiarity with the protocol's details, and the interpersonal network for coordinating different stakeholders.

Data shows that ACI has spent a total of $4.6 million from the DAO over the past three years, helping the GHO stablecoin grow from $35 million to $527 million. Who takes over these tasks in the future remains uncertain.

The turmoil at Aave is essentially a microcosm of the governance dilemmas faced by DAOs.

Theoretically, a DAO is a community of token holders. In practice, governance is often dominated by founding teams, early investors, and core developers. These roles are both rule-makers and rule-enforcers, and sometimes they are also budget recipients. When conflicts of interest arise, the adequacy of "procedural justice" becomes the focus of dispute.

A DeFi practitioner commented, "This is not about who is right or wrong, but when interests and positions are not aligned, the existing governance mechanisms do not provide effective resolution methods."

What Happens Next?

The ARFC stage for revising the "Aave Will Win" proposal will be the first window to observe the direction of the situation. If Kulechov's promised "structural improvements" can be implemented, separating the bundled proposal and clarifying voting behavior boundaries may help bring this turmoil to a close.

If consensus cannot be reached, the most extreme possibility is that BGD and ACI start afresh, forking out a new protocol. Although liquidity barriers are high, it is not impossible — the simultaneous departure of core developers and governance teams provides the technical foundation and community base for a fork.

For Aave, the immediate issue is how to fill the vacancies left by the departure of the two core teams. The longer-term question is how to find a more sustainable balance between the founder's vision, core developer interests, and community will. If the paradox of "power concentration" cannot be resolved, even the strongest protocols may lose their first-mover advantages in endless internal strife.

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