Let me keep this grounded.

Aave is one of the very few DAOs that consistently produces real, recurring protocol revenue at scale. That engine did not run on autopilot. Over the past three years, it has been maintained, upgraded, protected, and expanded by an ecosystem of independent service providers, builders, delegates, voters, and contributors who show up every day to ship work, onboard strategic assets, curate risk, and keep the protocol safe and competitive.

If you want a simple mental model: the DAO is the engine, while brand assets and distribution channels are the storefront and the signage. The problem is not that private companies exist. Private companies should build products. The problem starts when one private actor has unilateral control over the storefront and signage, while the DAO ecosystem is the one keeping the engine running.

The historical context: Avara’s pivot

To understand why the DAO is the primary operational driver today, you have to look at the timeline.

Starting around late 2021 and through 2022, the entity formerly known as “Aave Companies” rebranded to Avara, a neutral corporate name that explicitly reduced the direct association between the private company and the protocol. During that period, focus shifted toward separate ventures, most notably Lens, and other product initiatives.

This is not a moral judgment. Private companies can and should allocate resources where they see fit. The governance question is simpler: when the protocol’s day-to-day execution is carried by the DAO ecosystem, should strategic Aave brand assets and distribution remain under unilateral private control, or should ownership sit with the DAO and be delegated under enforceable mandates.

Who actually carried execution, and what it produced

For the last several years, the bulk of day-to-day execution has been carried by the DAO’s service provider ecosystem.

That includes:

• risk management and parameter updates
• governance execution and coordination
• upgrades and technical stewardship
• strategic integrations and ecosystem growth initiatives

Teams like Chaos Labs, LlamaRisk, BGD Labs, TokenLogic, and ACI have done the work that allowed Aave to remain dominant through cycles.

But this is not just “maintenance”. It is active, compounding market share and revenue generation.

Service providers, including TokenLogic and ACI, have been key players in winning integrations and institutional relationships that drove real users and real borrow volume toward Aave, with the upside flowing back to the DAO via protocol revenue.

A non-exhaustive list of initiatives and wins that illustrate this dynamic:

• EtherFi and the broader LRT wave: onboarding and ecosystem coordination that helped Aave become a primary venue for LRT liquidity and borrowing demand.
• Aave Prime market: Third market of Aave in term of size, reinforced narrative of the ability to deliver curated and lowest risk DeFi and reinforced our relationship with the LST/LRT ecosystems.