Aave internally questions Labs' past performance: secured $86 million in funding, holds 23% of tokens, all six products failed or incurred losses

The founder of the Aave ecosystem contribution organization ACI, Marc Zeller, released a public report disclosing that Aave Labs has received approximately $86 million in capital support since 2017, including ICO, VC financing, and direct grants from the DAO. Meanwhile, the founding team retained 23% of the LEND tokens during the 2017 ICO (which were later migrated to AAVE at a ratio of 100:1).

The report points out that Labs had a capital base of about $48.7 million before receiving DAO funding, and subsequently received approximately $37.4 million in grants from the DAO. They are currently applying for an additional $51 million through the "Aave Will Win" proposal.

The report critically questions the past performance of Labs' products, stating that six independent products launched apart from the core protocol have either failed or not achieved profitability. Among them, the RWA project Horizon once claimed to have surpassed $1 billion in scale, but the actual RWA collateral scale is about $135 million, highly concentrated in a single asset. Since its launch in 2025, Horizon has generated approximately $216,000 in cumulative revenue for the DAO, while incentives and related costs amount to about $5.25 million, resulting in a return on investment ratio of about 24:1.

The report also notes that early core developers of Aave V1, V2, and V3 left Labs between 2021 and 2022, with V3 being seen as the last major protocol version led by Labs. Subsequent versions have primarily been advanced by DAO service providers. In related governance votes, a single large delegated address played a key role in passing the Horizon proposal, sparking community discussions about the concentration of governance power and the efficiency of fund usage.

This controversy comes at a time when a new proposal for a $17.5 million product growth grant is under review, further intensifying discussions within the Aave community regarding fund allocation, performance disclosure, and governance transparency.