Aave has had a fresh governance look after the Aave Will Win proposal was voted through with a very slim margin of 52.58% Temp Check.
The proposal will make V4 the technical base of the protocol.
Immediately, ACI founder Marc Zeller appealed the decision on grounds of tampering by Aave Labs-related addresses.
The off-chain vote had 622,300 votes, 497,100 votes, and 64,200 votes not voting, respectively.
Zeller asserts that getting rid of votes associated with Aave Labs makes the outcome a denial.
The proposal has now taken to the Aave Request for Final Comment phase. In this case, pre-permanent on-chain vote terms can be updated.
Aave Labs applied up to 42.5 million stablecoins and 75,000 AAVE tokens to finance its operational expenses, previously financed by the revenue of its products.
Vote highlights governance tensions
The close call highlights the growing tension between Aave Labs and Aave Chain Initiative regarding transparency of control and funding.
The proposal seeks tokenholders to vote in favor of the redirection of all product revenue to the DAO treasury.
The sources of revenue are Aave swaps, mobile app, Aave Card, enterprise tools, and the Horizon RWA market.
Aave Labs would cease to fund its operations, both in product development and business, independently by remitting 100% of its revenue to the DAO.
After the vote, Aave co-founder Stani Kulechov affirmed on X that the vote that passed propels the protocol nearer to a fully token-centric one.
Governance, power, and funding concerns
Zeller also expressed the fear of Aave Labs getting governance weight due to the allocation of 75,000 AAVE tokens.
Other users of the forums also raised questions about the risks of ACI to control the daily operations while having fewer tokens.
On February 25, Zeller released an audit that signaled ROI on historical funding of Aave Labs totaling to $86 million.
The report credited the team with the development of V1 to initial V3.0 developments, but indicated that much growth in revenue came after the upgrading of service providers.
Aave Labs retorted with its own report highlighting a range of innovations, including liquidity pools, Flash Loans, the Safety Module, and V3 Efficiency Mode, all developed before the service-provider architecture of the DAO.
BGD labs exit and foundation proposal
BGD Labs stated that it was not renewing its participation in AaveDAO past April 1, concluding four years as the primary technical partner.
The company mentioned centralization issues and intense marketing of V4 as some of the causes fo quiting.
The proposal will also propose the establishment of a Foundation to store Aave trademarks and intellectual property on behalf of the DAO.
This is to alleviate the issue of exclusivity in terms of ownership by Aave Labs. Information on the organization and management of the Foundation will be presented in another proposal.
The current controversy shows how difficult it is to strike a balance between governance, transparency of funds, and control over operations in large DeFi projects.
The Aave Labs and ACI are now under greater scrutiny with the DAO nearing completion of its funding and architectural decisions.
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