Stani Kulechov’s statements came after a lot of noise in the Aave community over the connection between Aave Labs and the Aave decentralised autonomous organisation.
Stani Kulechov, the creator and CEO of Aave Labs, the major business working on the Aave decentralised finance (DeFi) lending protocol, refuted reports that he bought $15 million worth of Aave’s (AAVE) $154.58 tokens to sway a community vote that didn’t pass.
Kulechov added that he never intended to use these tokens to vote on the most recent proposal, stating, “This is my life’s work, and I’m putting my own money behind my belief.”
He also argued that Aave Labs has not made it apparent how its interests are aligned with that of Aave token holders. He also said, “In the future, we’ll be more clear about how products made by Aave Labs benefit the DAO and AAVE token holders.”
Some people in the Aave community say that Kulechov bought Aave tokens to sway the governance vote in favour of Aave Labs by giving himself more voting power.
Cointelegraph asked Kulechov for a comment, but they didn’t hear back before the article was published.
Governance vote raises concerns over influence and transparency
Kulechov’s statements came after a community vote that gave the Aave decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) power over the brand’s assets. The DAO is the community-led group that runs the Aave DeFi protocol.
After EzR3aL, a psysdonomous member of the Aave DAO, alleged that fees from a recent integration with the decentralised exchange (DEX) aggregator CoW Swap went to a wallet address held by Aave Labs, the proposal was sent to the community for evaluation.
EzR3aL asserted that the DAO should receive the fees from crypto asset exchanges using CoW Swap. They should have talked to the DAO before the fees were sent to Aave Labs, which caused many people in the community to get angry.
More than 55% of people voted “no” on the idea, while more than 41% didn’t vote at all. Only 3.5% of the community voted in favour of the proposal.
But even before the voting was over, members of the Aave DAO said they were unhappy since the vote was rushed and standard community governance protocols were not followed.