Stani Kulechov, founder of Aave Labs, discusses the controversial 'Aave Will Win' proposal that addresses December's fee controversy and proposes a radical restructuring of the relationship between Aave Labs and the Aave DAO.

The proposal centers on four key components: redirecting 100% of Aave Labs product revenues to the DAO, establishing a foundation for brand assets, securing $50.7 million in annual DAO funding, and ratifying Aave V4's hub-and-spoke lending architecture.

The discussion covers community criticisms from Mark Zeller of the Aave Chan Initiative and Multicoin Capital, who raised concerns about revenue definitions, funding size, and governance transparency while praising the overall direction toward token-centric value capture.

From Fee Controversy to 100% Revenue Sharing Model

The December controversy arose when Aave Labs switched from ParaSwap to CowSwap integration, moving positive slippage donations from the DAO to Labs revenue streams due to regulatory concerns about fee capture.

"The big thing about the Aave WillWin proposal is that we want to ensure that we send an extremely strong signal that the value capture is going to the token-centric model" - Stani, addressing uncertainty between Labs and DAO value capture.

Aave Labs will forego $10-30 million in annual CowSwap fees plus future Aave app and Aave card revenues, redirecting everything to benefit token holders while requesting DAO funding for sustainability.

Aave V4's Revolutionary Hub-and-Spoke Architecture

V4 introduces hubs that store assets and provide credit lines to customizable spokes with isolated risk, allowing "central bank" liquidity distribution to "commercial bank" lending strategies.

The architecture enables lending to non-tokenized assets like Bitcoin held in qualified custodians or direct consumer lending without tokenization, expanding beyond ERC-20 limitations.

Reinvestment features allow $100 million to $1.5 billion in idle pool float to be deployed into risk-free opportunities like treasury bills when pool rates are below risk-free rates.

"We released our first public smart contract audit last week" - Stani, with V4 in testnet after 2.5 years of development and public security contests completed.

Foundation Strategy Despite Industry Skepticism

Despite The End of the Foundation Era in Crypto thesis from A16Z, Kulechov argues foundations remain the "proven model" while Wyoming's DUNA structure needs more battle-testing.

"A16Z has a lot of bets, but they never bet on Aave and look what happened, right?" - Stani, defending the foundation approach for trademark enforcement and legal entity needs.

The foundation must maintain arm's length independence from all Aave DAO participants, not just Labs, while retaining enforceability for brand protection against unauthorized usage.

Community Pushback on Funding Size and Governance

Mark Zeller criticized the $50.7 million request as "31.5% of the entire treasury for a single service provider," while Multicoin demanded clearer revenue definitions and independent P&L verification.

Kulechov compared the ask to Uniswap's $120 million annual budget and Sky's $75-90 million, arguing Aave needs competitive funding to build three products and compete with fintech.

"There were some wallets that were tied to me personally, not all of them" - Stani, addressing accusations about four wallets voting against disclosure requirements, defending token governance participation rights.

Labs agreed not to vote with the requested 75,000 Aave tokens, addressing DeFi Ignis's concern about governance influence from DAO-funded tokens.

Scaling DeFi Through Abundance Asset Tokenization

"220 billion in total value in the ecosystem is an amazing achievement, but we have to scale beyond crypto assets" - Stani, outlining the vision for real-world asset expansion.

Solar power represents a $30-50 trillion abundance asset opportunity, with capital-expensive but operationally cheap infrastructure suitable for tokenization and Aave V4 collateral.

The abundance economy transition over three decades will shift from scarcity-based assets like real estate to infinite resources like solar energy, AI intelligence, and robotics accessible to all humans.

DeFi's "demand side collateral problem" can be solved by tokenizing abundance assets, distributing yields through Aave App, Aave Pro, and Aave Kit to fintech partners.