Aave's Future Development Path Sparks Debate Among Stakeholders

According to Odaily, monetsupply.eth, the strategic director of Spark, highlighted on X that many lack the necessary background understanding of the recent Aave event. Over the past few years, Avara and Aave Labs have been advancing the development of Aave v4, funded by a $15 million grant from the DAO. Meanwhile, ACI, BGD, TokenLogic, LlamaRisk, and other service providers have focused on the expansion and growth of Aave v3. During this period, Aave v3 has grown to become the largest on-chain lending protocol and a significant revenue-generating project, with annual net income reaching tens of millions of dollars. The efforts of the DAO and service providers around v3 are considered a major success. In contrast, Avara's development of v4 involved significant efforts on projects not directly related to the Aave ecosystem, which ultimately did not add value to it. As a result, there is now a divergence in opinions regarding the future direction of the Aave protocol. The core issue is the choice between two paths: fully focusing on the migration to v4 and gradually phasing out v3, or allowing v3 and v4 to run concurrently with continued support for v3 over a longer period. Aave Labs favors the first option, while ACI, BGD, and other service providers generally prefer the second. In this context, control over the Aave brand and IP, particularly the control of the aave.com front end, becomes crucial. This front end is the most important and widely used entry point for users accessing the Aave protocol. It concerns not only the fees generated by the front-end exchange function but also who controls the "traffic gateway" of the Aave ecosystem and the eventual development route of v3 and v4.