Original | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )
Author: Azuma ( @azuma_eth )
Over the weekend, the Aave community experienced an extremely heated debate.
On one side of the debate is the core development team Aave Labs led by founder Stani Kulechov, and on the other side is the community group represented by Aave DAO face Marc Zeller.
The topic of the debate focused on the question of whether a new currency should be issued in addition to AAVE caused by a new proposal. The final result was that under strong opposition from the community, Stani stated that the new proposal would be temporarily shelved.
Cause: A new proposal with a hidden agenda
The cause of the incident can be traced back to March 13th local time.
Aave Labs initiated a draft in the governance forum that day, proposing to launch a new plan called Horizon to enter the RWA business that is temporarily missing from Aaves business map. The vision of the Horizon plan is to allow institutions to use tokenized money market funds (MMFs) as collateral to borrow USDC and GHO on a large scale, thereby releasing stablecoin liquidity and promoting institutional access to DeFi.
At first glance, there is nothing wrong with this draft, and it is even a very effective supplement to Aaves business situation, but the key lies in another content implied in it.
Aave Labs also proposed in the draft to launch new tokens for the Horizon project, and only 15% of the new tokens will be allocated to Aave DAO , with the specific allocation being as follows:
10% enters Aave DAO funding pool
3% reserved for Aave ecosystem incentives
2% airdropped to Staked Aave (stkAAVE) holders - meaning that in reality existing AAVE stakers (not pure holders) can only get 2% of the new tokens.
At the same time, Horizon will also distribute part of the profits to Aave DAO. The specific distribution ratio is as follows:
First year: 50%;
Second year: 30%;
Third year: 15%;
Fourth year and beyond: 10%;
Obviously, under Aave Labss assumptions, Horizon will only provide Aave DAO with a high proportion of profit sharing in the initial stage when the business scale is limited. In the future, as the business scale gradually expands, the reward distribution ratio will be gradually increased.
Progress: Community outrage, collective opposition
It is not difficult to predict that the Aave community, which is mainly composed of token holders, will find it difficult to support such an obvious value diversion proposal.
Once the Aave Labs draft was released, it quickly caused an uproar in the entire community. A large number of users began to leave comments and responses below the draft (many users even registered for the forum and spoke for the first time specifically for this proposal), and basically all the responses were unanimous in their opposition.
Community member gregrwalsh commented:
I dont understand why AAVE tokens should be diluted, if new tokens are needed for some reason, they should be kept at a 1:1 relationship with AAVE tokens and holders will receive their allocation accordingly. Aave DAOs share of revenue is also decreasing. This is clearly Aave Labs plan to build a new entity. I do not agree with this proposal.
Community member Apu Mallku commented:
This appears to be a cash-grabbing attempt by Aave Labs and is very disappointing for long-term AAVE holders.
Community member sreno commented:
If Horizon is the Aave DAO project, then value accumulation should flow to Aave DAO and AAVE tokens, not just 15% of new tokens allocated to Aave DAO. Aave DAO should retain full control and ownership of the Horizon project... The structure of the proposal reeks of VC.
Community member knew made a comparison with the Maker case:
I am adamantly against the proposal of a new token. Look at what happened when MakerDao upgraded to sky.money and issued a new token. MKR has been falling and will only continue to fall . Investors will be confused and the community will be traumatized. Aave is facing fierce competition. If holders leave the community and the AAVE price falls for a long time, the market share will also be lost.
Community member zzzzzs response was even more radical:
I have sold all of my AAVE and even if this proposal is rejected in the future, it is beyond comprehension that Aave Labs would have the audacity to make such a ridiculous suggestion - it is a complete betrayal. This is not just reckless, it is a shameless act of predation that shows their intent to exploit the community for their own greedy gain.
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For more objections, please visit the original post .
Climax: The upper will split
While the community clearly expressed its opposition, Marc Zeller, a prominent figure in Aave DAO governance and founder of the Aave Chan Initiative (ACI), made it clear that he did not support the issuance of new tokens and that Aave should only have one coin, AAVE.
Marc Zeller also mentioned that Aave Labs obviously anticipated the communitys reaction, but still chose to publish the proposal. Such an outrageous distribution ratio is actually Aave Labs usual negotiation strategy, that is, when they want to reach a certain solution, they do not directly propose the solution, but propose a more ridiculous version to make the community fall back on the original solution.
Marc Zeller concluded by saying that the proposal is not even worth considering, that ACI is firmly opposed to it, and that everyone in the community should take a stand.
Under heavy pressure, founder Stani himself had to speak out. He said in a speech at the governance forum on March 14 local time:
The Horizon plan aims to fill in the RWA business segment that Aave currently lacks. The plan is expected to surpass the revenue of Aaves current business line in five years;
The Horizon plan is more suitable for operating in a centralized mode, and therefore is not suitable for the current Aave DAO structure;
Aave DAO will not incur any costs for Project Horizon;
For business development purposes, Horizon needs to have a token;
What’s really important is nailing down the number itself so that Aave DAO can feel comfortable seeing this initiative move forward and unlock additional revenue streams for the DAO.
Apparently, Stani had not given up the plan to issue new coins at that time, and hoped to push the proposal through by negotiating a more reasonable distribution ratio.
Ending: Founder forced to compromise
While responding on the forum, Stani also had a heated debate on the proposal in the community on his personal X account.
Stani has always emphasized that the plan will not cause additional costs to Aave DAO and will only bring new revenue opportunities, but the community is obviously more concerned about whether AAVEs value expectations will be diluted.
Community user Champaqui even compared Stani to the Ethereum Foundation with great disappointment:
I started to get a vibe from Stani about the Ethereum Foundation (EF) , he was completely out of tune with what the community was saying and out of touch with reality. This was very disappointing. He always thought he was right.
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The debate continued, and in the end Stani chose to compromise.
On March 16, Stani finally spoke out on his personal X account:
The overall consensus of Aave DAO is that there is no interest in other tokens. Consensus will be respected, Aave DAO is a true DAO, and RWA exploration will continue once the right approach is found. Aave is only AAVE.
Follow-up: The suspense remains unsolved and the doubts are hard to resolve
This controversy, which community members called the most dangerous proposal in Aaves history, has come to an end, but there are still many puzzling questions. The biggest suspense is why Stani, the founder of Aave, would rather risk the communitys taboo and try to launch a new coin. Unfortunately, no one really knows the answer except Stani.
As X user solarcurve said:
The most serious problem at the moment is that the community already knows that Aave Labs is actively developing new products/companies, but most of the value created will not flow to AAVE holders.
Although Stani responded positively to this, it still seems difficult to calm public opinion.
We are fully aligned with Aave as 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, and Aave Labs still has more work to do to regain the trust of the community.
