Aave Founder Unveils Strategic Plan Amid Governance Tensions – Key Details Revealed

Aave's founder just dropped a strategic blueprint aimed at defusing governance tensions—and the DeFi community is watching closely.

The Core Conflict

Internal debates over protocol direction and treasury management reached a boiling point, threatening to stall progress. The founder's intervention signals a move to align factions and push forward with a unified vision.

The Strategic Playbook

Details remain under wraps, but the plan reportedly focuses on streamlining decision-making and clarifying long-term incentives. It's a bid to cut through bureaucratic inertia and refocus builders on what matters: protocol growth and user adoption.

Why It Matters for DeFi

Governance disputes can cripple a leading protocol. Aave's response sets a precedent. Will other DAOs follow suit, or is this just another case of decentralized theater masking a centralized power move? Sometimes, crypto governance feels like a boardroom battle with extra steps—and anonymous avatars.

The plan's success hinges on execution. Can it bridge divides and accelerate development, or will it just add another layer of proposals to debate? The market will decide with its votes—and its capital.

Time To Scale Beyond Crypto – Aave CEO

In a post on Friday, Kulechov framed the present moment as a crossroads for Aave, emphasizing that the protocol’s growth cannot be limited to its current crypto-native lending products. He sees enormous potential in expanding into real-world assets (RWAs) and institutional markets, projecting that Aave could ultimately support a $500 trillion asset base and onboard tens of millions of users through the Aave App. 

Kulechov said:

Today, most of Aave’s lending is concentrated around ETH, BTC, or leverage-driven looping strategies correlated with crypto market cycles. When I started Aave (originally as ETHLend) in 2017, the vision was to use smart contracts to power lending across virtually all asset classes and use cases.

A Core aspect of this strategy is the upcoming Aave V4, a modular architecture designed to integrate new lending models and asset classes safely. The design allows innovation without compromising protocol integrity, enabling both crypto-native and RWA-backed use cases while creating a developer-friendly environment to encourage innovation.

Consumer Products, Revenue, And Alignment

Addressing operational concerns, Kulechov stressed that mainstream consumer-grade products needed to onboard millions of users should be developed by independent, highly autonomous teams on top of the permissionless Aave Protocol rather than funded or controlled directly by the DAO. This approach ensures rapid execution while allowing the protocol to benefit from increased usage and revenue.

Kulechov said:

World class consumer products are built by highly opinionated teams with the autonomy to MOVE quickly. While decentralized governance works well for protocol economics, it is not suited for product-level decision making.

Kulechov also pledged to share revenue generated outside the protocol with token holders and confirmed that upcoming proposals will include clear guardrails for branding and revenue alignment. In his concluding notes, Kulechov reinforced his belief in Aave’s potential while also appealing for collaboration to drive the protocol and its native token’s success.