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Aave founder Stani Kulechov has addressed recent market speculation, providing one of the clearest public explanations of the protocol’s revenue and governance structure to date. The protocol, which recently secured FCA registration for stablecoin infrastructure expansion in the UK, has been the topic of conversations in the cryptosphere recently, prompting the clarifications.
In a brief but well laid out post on X, Kulechov stated there are no plans to sell AAVE tokens at a 70% discount. He emphasized that 100% of revenue from the Aave Protocol and GHO stablecoin goes to the $AAVE token, as established in the Aave Will Win proposal passed by the DAO. This includes all product revenue from the Aave App, Aave Pro, and Swaps.
Lots of discussions around Aave so I want to clarify a few things:
• First off, there is NO WAY we’d sell AAVE at a 70% discount lol.
• 100% of Aave Protocol and GHO revenue goes to the $AAVE token. This was established in the Aave Will Win proposal.
• AWW also applies to…
— Stani (@StaniKulechov) June 25, 2026
Kulechov also made clear that Aave Labs functions strictly as a service provider to the DAO and does not receive any protocol or product revenue. While Aave Labs holds an allocation of AAVE tokens, any potential transactions involving that allocation would be part of deeper long-term partnerships rather than discounted sales.
Aave crossed $1 trillion all-time loans.
A first in DeFi history. pic.twitter.com/9zMKhtGq6R
— Aave (@aave) February 25, 2026
Aave controls nearly two-thirds of the DeFi lending market. In 2025, cumulative deposits topped $3.3 trillion while loan originations approached $1 trillion. The protocol currently generates approximately $134 million in annualized revenue, all of which flows to the Aave DAO. Kulechov also volunteered information that intellectual property, including the Aave brand and related software, belongs to $AAVE token holders.
This month over $150 million @USDT0_to has flowed back into @aave on @Plasma. pic.twitter.com/JeHRVcLWKw
— Kolten (@0xKolten) June 25, 2026
The existing buyback programme, which was approved by the DAO as part of Aavenomics 2.0 in 2025, allocates $50 million annually to purchasing AAVE on the open market using protocol revenue, deployed in weekly tranches of $250,000 to $1.75 million depending on market conditions. A pilot that ran from May to November 2025 removed over 94,000 tokens from supply, spending approximately $22 million to do so.
Kulechov revealed that the team is designing Aavenomics 3.0, which will include a new automated and non-discretionary buyback mechanism. However, he did not provide further details but said more information would follow.
Earlier in the same day, Standard Chartered initiated coverage on AAVE with a $3,500 price target by the end of 2030. The bank pointed to expected growth in tokenized DeFi assets to $2.7 trillion by 2030 and positioned Aave’s fee-based model as a primary beneficiary.
— Stani (@StaniKulechov) June 19, 2026
In a separate post on June 19, Kulechov laid out the scale of the traditional finance market Aave is targeting. The US repo market alone averages $12.6 trillion in daily balances. Margin financing adds $1.4 trillion, while collateralized securities lending adds over $400 billion.
Aave’s current TVL is significant for DeFi but represents a fraction of the conventional credit infrastructure it is positioning itself to replace through Aave V4’s hub-and-spoke architecture and its Horizon RWA lending market. Users and investors would be buoyed by the positive developments after $299m fallout from the KelpDAO hack. AAVE has risen nearly 5% to $85.39 following the news.
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