Ave Founder Says $15M Token Purchase Was Not Used In Controversial DAO Vote

Stany Kulekov, founder and CEO of Aave Labs, the main developer of the decentralized finance (deFi) lending protocol, recently denied influencing the controversial community vote after failing to pass $15 million in Aave (AAVE) token purchases.

“These signs were not used to vote on the recent proposal, and that was never my intention. This is my life's work, and I put my own capital behind my loss,” Kulekov said.

He also said that Ave Labs did not clearly disclose the economic ties between it and the holders of Ave Tokens. “In the future, we will be more transparent about how products developed by Aave Labs will create value for the DAO and AAVE token holders,” he added.

Several members of the Aave community accused Kulekov of buying Ave Tokens and increasing the voting stake in favor of Aave Labs for a management vote.

Cointelegraph reached out to Kulekov for comment, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

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A dispute arose over intellectual property rights in the Aave community

Kulekov's comments follow the results of a community vote to bring Aave brand assets under the control of the Aave Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), the community lead organization that runs the Aave DeFi protocol.

The proposal was submitted for community review by EzR3aL, a psychotic Aave DAO member, who recently reported that CoW Swap payments from an integrated decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator were transferred to a wallet address controlled by Aave Labs.

The fees generated from crypto asset swaps using CoW Swap actually belong to the DAO and the DAO should have been consulted before the fee was changed, EzR3aL argued, sparking a community backlash against Aave Labs.

More than 55% voted “No” on the proposal, more than 41% did not vote, and only 3.5% of the public voted in favor.

However, even before the vote was completed, Aave DAO members expressed frustration, saying the vote was rushed and normal community governance processes were ignored.

Ernesto Boado, former chief technical officer at Aave Labs, is listed as the author of the proposal.

However, he said that the proposal was listed without his knowledge or consent and that if he had been consulted before publication, he would not have agreed to submit it.

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