Aave

Aave is led by founder Stani Kulechov through Aave Labs. In December 2025 he announced that the US SEC had closed its four-year investigation into the protocol without recommending enforcement action. In March 2026 Aave Labs proposed the Aave Will Win framework: it would send all revenue from Aave-branded products to the DAO treasury and take over work from two departing service providers, BGD Labs and ACI, in exchange for $25 million in stablecoins, 75,000 AAVE vesting over four years and up to $17.5 million in milestone grants. This keeps development funded, but it also concentrates more work in one company.

• [ARFC] Aave Will Win Framework (Aave governance forum)
• 'DeFi will win,' Aave CEO says after SEC ends years-long probe (The Block)

Grayscale filed Amendment No. 1 to its Form S-1 for the Grayscale Aave Trust on 12 May 2026, to list on NYSE Arca as GAVE with Coinbase Custody as custodian. Listing was not confirmed as of 27 September 2026. AAVE is on the National Bank of Kazakhstan's list of authorised digital assets (April 2026). Etherscan listed about 188,191 holder addresses on Ethereum on 27 September 2026. Data on the share held by insiders, the DAO and top addresses is insufficient.

• Grayscale Aave Trust (AAVE): Form S-1, Amendment No. 1
• List of authorized unsecured digital assets (National Bank of Kazakhstan)
• Aave Token (AAVE): Etherscan

AAVE has a fixed maximum supply of 16 million: 13 million came from converting LEND at 100:1 and 3 million were created for the Ecosystem Reserve. About 15.43 million were circulating on 27 September 2026, so little new supply remains. The DAO started buybacks of AAVE with protocol revenue in April 2025 with a $50 million yearly budget; repurchased tokens go to the Ecosystem Reserve rather than being burned. Buybacks were paused in April 2026 after the rsETH incident. Aave confirmed on 27 June 2026 that Aavenomics 3.0 was live, with automated buybacks and lower DAO spending. The governance vote behind it was not identified.

• Aave (AAVE): CoinGecko
• AAVE token (Aave docs)
• [ARFC] Pause AAVE Buybacks (Aave governance forum)
• Aave Confirms Aavenomics 3.0 Is Live With Buybacks and DAO Spending Cut (The Defiant)

DefiLlama showed Aave fees of about $742 million and treasury revenue of about $96 million over the year to 27 September 2026. Total value locked was about $19.34 billion on the same date, spread across more than 20 chains. Fees come from borrower interest, flash loans and liquidations. The April 2026 Kelp DAO bridge exploit was not a flaw in Aave's own contracts, but it pushed unbacked rsETH into Aave markets and TVL fell from about $26.4 billion to $18.6 billion.

• DefiLlama: Aave fees and revenue
• Aave V3 overview (Aave docs)
• Aave DAO Governance Vote to Pause Buybacks: KelpDAO Fallout Continues (crypto.news)