CONTENT
As a leading DeFi lending protocol managing roughly $34 billion in assets, Aave has long been regarded as a benchmark for on-chain governance. Yet in December 2025, a dispute sparked by frontend fee allocation escalated into the most serious trust crisis in the protocol’s eight-year history.
What appeared to be a minor technical and commercial adjustment set off a chain reaction. As competing interests, governance authority, and business realities converged, deeper tensions surfaced over a fundamental question: who truly controls the protocol?
This is not just an internal struggle within Aave. It reflects a broader, structural conflict facing DeFi as it scales—where governance ideals increasingly clash with real economic incentives.
WRITER’S INTRO
