What impacts will the “Sure Win” framework brought by #Gate13周年Dr.Han公开信 Aave have?

After this proposal is approved, the Aave DAO will allocate $25 million in stablecoins and 75,000 AAVE tokens (worth about $6.8 million) to the development team, which will directly change the supply and demand dynamics of AAVE in the short term.
Although these funds will be linearly unlocked over four years and not all will enter the market circulation immediately, concerns about future market supply from investors cannot be ruled out. Additionally, the stablecoin allocation means Aave Labs has sufficient operational funds, which often indirectly translate into market selling pressure or hedging activities. But at the same time, the proposal itself also introduces a new narrative.
Expectations around Aave V4, application layer expansion, and the “Full Ecosystem Revenue Reflow DAO” have improved market sentiment and provided price support. As of press time, AAVE is trading at $97.04, up 8.5%.
In the medium term, the most significant change this framework brings to Aave is making it a “Full Ecosystem Revenue Reflow DAO” composite model. This signifies Aave’s move from a DeFi protocol toward a financial platform, and Aave is also expected to stand out in the DeFi track. In the long term, control rights are concentrated in Aave Labs; core product and brand-related revenues are unified and flow back to the DAO; shifting from decentralized collaboration to a more centralized operational model.
Under Stani Kulechov’s X post, followers expressed their views: this is a quite powerful statement: “If you hold $AAVE, you not only hold the economic rights of the protocol but also the brand, users, and integrations.” Once your funds are exhausted again, you can force the DAO to agree to your conditions. While the overwhelming voting results for governance proposals are encouraging, when you realize that the final decision-making power actually resides in just 12 wallets, that feeling disappears.
Nevertheless, Aave’s execution capability still surpasses most wallets. Integrating brand, intellectual property, products, and revenues into a single token can greatly enhance alliance cohesion and value accumulation, but also concentrates power at the coordination layer. The real issue is whether the governance mechanism can effectively balance Aave Labs in the long run or will gradually evolve into a soft centralization. This approach is only effective if the tokens purchased by the DAO are not used for payments to service providers or sold on the market. Otherwise, the token price will not be affected. If DAO payments are decided by just a few wallets, the situation is even more so.
From 2017 to 2026, Aave took nearly ten years to evolve from a failed P2P lending project into a core DeFi infrastructure, and now it is trying to become a global financial platform. Whether it adheres to the decentralization ideal or prioritizes efficiency and execution, Aave is providing its own answer.
Appendix: Timeline of Aave Development
2017, founded by Stani Kulechov under the name ETHLend, focusing on peer-to-peer lending matchmaking.
January 2020, ETHLend officially renamed Aave (“Ghost” in Finnish), launching Aave V1. Transitioned from P2P to a liquidity pool model, becoming one of the core players in DeFi lending.
December 2020, Aave V2 launched. Upgrades included collateral switching, debt tokenization, gas optimization, etc. Marking Aave’s product maturity.
2021, launched Aave Arc, deployed on Polygon and Avalanche. Aave began shifting from an “Ethereum protocol” to a “multi-chain liquidity layer.”
2022, introduced the over-collateralized stablecoin GHO. In 2023, GHO gradually launched and expanded, and DAO revenue structure diversified. Aave began to control the “monetary issuance rights.”
2022, Aave V3 gradually implemented, with core features including Portal (cross-chain liquidity), Isolation Mode (risk isolation), eMode (efficient lending), making Aave a cross-chain liquidity infrastructure.
March 30, 2026, Aave V4 officially launched on the Ethereum mainnet, representing a major upgrade at the underlying architecture level in DeFi. Application layer products include: Aave App, Aave Pro, Aave Kit, Horizon (RWA). Aave is shifting from “DeFi infrastructure” to a “user-level financial product platform.”
April 12, 2026, the Aave DAO approved the “Sure Win” framework proposed by founder Stani Kulechov, providing funds to Aave Labs and directing all ecosystem revenue back to the DAO. Aave completed the closed-loop design of its business model.