Stani Kulechov, founder of Aave — the largest decentralized lending protocol on Ethereum — has publicly dismissed reports that Aave Labs is in talks to sell a significant AAVE token allocation to Kraken’s parent company Payward at a steep discount to market value. While stopping short of denying that strategic partnership discussions are underway, Kulechov pushed back forcefully against the deal’s reported framing, using the controversy to restate Aave’s revenue model and announce a coming upgrade to its token economics.
The Report That Triggered the Pushback
CoinDesk reported on Thursday, citing two unnamed sources, that Kraken parent firm Payward is in talks to buy a 15% stake in the Aave protocol at a $385 million valuation — a figure that would represent just 30% of the AAVE token’s fully diluted valuation. A separate report elaborated that the proposed transaction was valued at approximately $71 million and involved Kraken investing 35,000 ETH in exchange for 250,000 AAVE tokens and a 15% equity stake in Aave Group.
The implied discount to AAVE’s market price drew immediate community backlash — and a swift rebuttal from the top.
“First off, there is NO WAY we’d sell AAVE at a 70% discount lol,” Kulechov wrote in an X post on Thursday, calling the article’s framing inaccurate.
Kulechov said Aave Labs owns an allocation of AAVE that multiple market participants have discussed purchasing, either directly or indirectly, through deeper long-term partnerships — but separated those discussions from the idea that Aave would sell tokens cheaply against token-holder interests.
Aave founder Stani Kulechov dismisses rumors of selling $AAVE at a 70% discount
Revenue Model Clarified
The controversy gave Kulechov a platform to reinforce Aave’s restructured economics. Under the Aave Will Win (AWW) proposal, already passed by the DAO, 100% of Aave Protocol and GHO revenue is directed to the AAVE token. The framework covers all product revenue streams, including the Aave App, Aave Pro, and Swaps, with none of it flowing to Aave Labs, which operates solely as a service provider to the DAO.
The AWW proposal passed with about 75% support in April 2026, redirecting 100% of protocol and Aave-branded product revenue to the DAO and AAVE token holders, with the DAO approving multi-year funding for Labs in return.
Kulechov confirmed that all intellectual property — including the Aave brand and any software built for Aave — belongs to AAVE token holders, not Aave Labs, under the current governance structure. He added that the protocol is currently generating $134 million in annualized revenue, all directed to the Aave DAO.
Aavenomics 3.0 and Automated Buybacks
Beyond clarifying the revenue model, Kulechov teased a significant upgrade to the protocol’s token mechanics. He revealed that the Aave team is designing Aavenomics 3.0, which includes a new automated and non-discretionary AAVE buyback mechanism, with further details to follow.
The planned upgrade extends a discretionary buyback program already cleared to purchase up to $50 million of AAVE per year. An automated system would reduce reliance on governance votes for individual buyback decisions, creating a more predictable and continuous link between protocol revenue and token purchases — a structure likely to appeal to institutional participants evaluating AAVE as a yield-bearing asset.
Context: The KelpDAO Fallout
The Kraken reports surface against a difficult backdrop. After the April 18 KelpDAO exploit, an attacker deposited $292 million in stolen rsETH into Aave V3 as collateral and borrowed substantial amounts of wrapped ETH against it, saddling the protocol with an estimated $196 million in bad debt. Aave’s total value locked collapsed from $26.4 billion to nearly $20 billion within days. Kulechov confirmed at the time that Aave’s own smart contracts were not compromised.
The incident weighed heavily on user confidence, with Aave’s TVL dropping roughly $12 billion — about 46% of its deposits — in just days after the attack. Deposits currently sit near $12 billion. Earlier this month, Aave released an updated risk framework to prevent situations like the KelpDAO attack.
AAVE’s TVL Data (Source: DefiLlama)
Kraken’s Broader Strategy
For Kraken, a stake in Aave would fit a pattern of aggressive expansion ahead of its anticipated public listing. The exchange agreed this year to buy derivatives venue Bitnomial for up to $550 million, securing rare US derivatives licenses. The two companies already have an established relationship: Kraken’s Layer 2 Ink launched a white-label instance of Aave called Tydro last year to serve as its core lending infrastructure, following a 99.8% DAO vote to license Aave’s code to the network.
Market Reaction and Analyst Outlook
Despite the post-KelpDAO turbulence, AAVE has attracted bullish institutional attention. Following Kulechov’s post, the token reached an intraday high of $87.50 before easing to around $82, while continuing to receive support from Standard Chartered’s previously published $3,500 price target for AAVE by end of 2030. Grayscale Research has separately flagged AAVE as undervalued at current prices under a cash-flow model applying traditional fintech earnings multiples.
Kulechov closed with a pointed statement on alignment: “Everyone at Aave Labs and Aave DAO works for $AAVE.” A quarterly community call is expected within weeks, where the Kraken partnership status and Aavenomics 3.0 details are anticipated to become clearer.
