Aave founder says DAOs must evolve governance beyond tokenholder voting

In January, a proposal to hand control of Aave's brand assets and intellectual property to its DAO was rejected, raising fresh questions about the protocol's long-term governance model. Aave founder Stani Kulechov later argued that DAOs are hard to operate at scale and should reduce the scope of tokenholder voting while keeping transparent, on-chain accountability for leadership teams. His remarks followed controversy around the "Aave Will Win Framework" proposal, which led a major delegate to exit over concerns about governance standards and voting dynamics.