Aave Community Governance Controversy Erupts: CoW Swap Integration May Lead to DAO Revenue Privatization

TechFlow to a report by The Block on December 12th, a governance controversy has erupted in the Aave community, focusing on whether the CoW Swap integration has led to protocol revenue flowing to Aave Labs instead of the Aave DAO. A representative, "EzR3aL," posted on the governance forum that their on-chain analysis shows transaction fees generated through the new CoW Swap interface are no longer flowing into the DAO treasury, but instead being redirected to a separate address, estimated to be worth approximately $200,000 per week. Marc Zeller, head of the Aave Chan Initiative, called the situation "extremely worrying," accusing it of "a secret privatization of approximately 10% of Aave DAO's potential revenue." The controversy has also extended to the revenue distribution of Aave Vaults, Horizon, and the Aave v4 liquidation engine. Aave founder Stani Kulechov responded that Aave Labs has the right to monetize its developed front-end interfaces, especially features outside of protocol functionality, and emphasized that its goal is to increase protocol users and revenue through new features.