Aave Labs posted a governance proposal on Feb. 12 asking tokenholders to endorse a strategic package that would direct 100% of Aave-branded product revenue to the DAO treasury, formalize brand protection, and center the roadmap on Aave V4.
The initiative was named the “Aave Will Win Framework.”
The proposal hasn’t been implemented yet, as an early governance temperature check. Yet, the public framing is unambiguous: “We believe there’s no better time to align behind a token-centric vision and position Aave to win over the next decade.”
That timing language is the real story.
Aave isn’t just restructuring its economics. Instead, it is building as if the US enforcement overhang that defined 2022 through 2024 is shrinking, and value accrual to tokenholders is safe to pursue again.
The proposal explicitly references “regulatory clarity emerging in certain markets,” and the numbers suggest that assessment isn’t just vibes.
SEC crypto enforcement fell 60% in 2025 compared with 2024, dropping from 33 actions to 13, per Cornerstone Research. That decline coincides with the first year under SEC Chair Paul Atkins.
Additionally, the SEC’s 2026 exam priorities placed less emphasis on crypto than in prior years, and the agency voluntarily dismissed its Binance lawsuit with prejudice, a move that explicitly links to the President Donald Trump administration’s policy stance.
The DOJ also signaled a softer posture, with a memo that scaled back certain crypto-platform enforcement and disbanded the national crypto enforcement team.
Aave’s move reads like pricing in a multi-year window, when enforcement risk is lower, and protocols can compete like businesses again without immediately triggering securities-tripwire fears. This includes budgets, brand protection, and product revenue funnels.
That’s bigger than one proposal. It’s a regime-shift thesis playing out across DeFi.
Building like a business, but on-chain
The Aave framework goes beyond tokenomics. It defines a comprehensive operating model.
If approved, the DAO would receive product revenues from aave.com interface fees, the mobile app, card products, Aave Pro, Aave Kit, Aave Horizon, and even an AAVE exchange-traded product line item.
Aave claims the swap integration on aave.com generates roughly $10 million in annualized revenue that would flow to the DAO under the framework. It also states that Aave V3 generates over $100 million in annualized revenue.
Those numbers position the DAO as more than a governance wrapper, as it’s being set up to steward a brand, allocate capital, and pursue regulated product ambitions.
The proposal bundles value capture with brand and IP protection, operational funding, and a faster execution path than governance by committee would allow.
Aave says it has been self-funding product development and legal work, including SEC defense, and now wants to align behind a token-centric model.
The framing is explicit: build the DAO to function as an entity that can compete institutionally, not just in a decentralized manner.
That shift matters because, when enforcement is intense, protocols avoid anything that appears to be profit distribution.
When enforcement cools, the opportunity cost of governance-only tokens becomes harder to defend, especially with institutions looming as users. Aave is betting the enforcement window has opened wide enough to make value accrual a feature, not a liability.
Value accrual is back
Aave isn’t alone. Uniswap is pursuing a similar playbook.
The UNIfication proposal aims to turn on protocol fees and burn UNI, among other ecosystem changes.
DefiLlama’s Uniswap V2 methodology shows that since Dec. 28, 2025, 17% of Ethereum fees have been allocated to UNI buybacks and burns. Tokenholder value accrual is embedded directly into the protocol’s live design and operations.
Uniswap is also pursuing a broader fee-and-burn roadmap across versions over time.
Other protocols already show measurable value accrual. DefiLlama tracks “holders revenue” across protocols such as Pendle, illustrating that value-capture mechanisms are normalized across parts of DeFi.
The data infrastructure exists to measure fees, revenue, and tokenholder-directed flows, which makes the shift from “governance token with unclear value” to “token with measurable capture” legible to institutions.
The pattern is clear: protocols that avoided fee switches or value routing during the enforcement-heavy years are reopening those levers. The calculus changed because the risk profile changed.
What the regime shift signals
Back to building like a business, but on-chain. Aave’s proposal doesn’t read like a DAO governance exercise. It reads like a company outlining its revenue model, brand strategy, and institutional roadmap.
The difference is that the “company” is on-chain, the budget flows to a treasury governed by tokenholders, and the distribution mechanism runs through smart contracts. However, the operational logic is familiar: capture value, allocate resources, protect IP, and compete for market share.
That kind of clarity was radioactive when the SEC was treating most tokens as unregistered securities. Now it’s being pitched as a competitive advantage.
Regime shift triggers value-accrual experiments. When the enforcement posture shifts, the opportunity set for protocol design shifts as well.
The underlying technology didn’t change. The regulatory environment did, and that unlocks design space.
Protocols can now experiment with fee switches, treasury routing, buybacks, burns, and distribution mechanisms that were too legally risky to implement when every token allocation was under scrutiny.
The next fight is legitimacy alongside decentralization. Aave bundles brand and IP protection into a single package alongside token-centric alignment. That’s a bet that the DAO must operate as a legible entity capable of stewarding a brand and a product suite, functioning as a coherent organization with accountable ownership over its ecosystem.
The proposal positions the DAO to interact with regulated markets, such as exchange-traded products, institutional custody, and compliance-wrapped interfaces. At the same time, it maintains on-chain economics.
That tension between decentralization and institutional legibility is the new frontier.
| Protocol | Mechanism (treasury routing / buyback+burn / staker distribution) | Status (proposed vs active) + date | Quant hook (what you can cite) | Data source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aave | Treasury routing — “100% of Aave-branded product revenue → Aave DAO treasury” (incl. aave.com fees, App, Card, Pro, Kit, Horizon, AAVE ETP) | Proposed (governance TEMP CHECK) — Feb 12, 2026 | Swap integration on aave.com “~$10M annualized revenue”; “Aave V3 already generates over $100M in annualized revenue” | Aave governance temp check. (Aave) |
| Uniswap V2 | Buyback+burn — DefiLlama methodology: protocol routes 17% of fees (Ethereum) to buy back & burn UNI | Active — since Dec 28, 2025 (per DefiLlama methodology note) | “From 28 Dec 2025, 17% (0% before) fees on Ethereum shared to buy back and burn UNI” | DefiLlama Uniswap V2 methodology section. (DeFi Llama) |
| Uniswap (UNIfication roadmap) | Roadmap to protocol fees + UNI burn (broader rollout intent across versions over time) | Proposed / governance roadmap — Nov 2025 (UNIfication post) | Explicitly proposes: turn on protocol fees → burn UNI, plus a retroactive burn of 100M UNI; rollout starts with v2 + a set of v3 pools representing ~80–95% of LP fees on Ethereum mainnet | Uniswap “UNIfication” post. (Uniswap Labs) |
| Pendle | Tokenholder-directed value (DefiLlama “Holders Revenue” — i.e., value routed to tokenholders via burn/distribution mechanisms) | Active (ongoing) | Holders Revenue 30d: $893,526; Holders Revenue (annualized): ~$10.9M | DefiLlama Pendle fees/revenue page + “Holders Revenue” definition. (DeFi Llama) |
What could derail this
Aave’s framework remains a governance proposal awaiting implementation. Legislative optionality exists, but the policy architecture is still developing.
Yet, if enforcement resurges, protocols could pause value accrual, route more through foundations or offshore structures, or limit US exposure.
Technical and competitive risks also matter. If Aave’s product revenue projections don’t materialize, or if competitors offer better terms by avoiding tokenholder routing, the framework’s appeal diminishes.
If the regulatory environment shifts again and the SEC or DOJ treats fee-routing structures as securities violations, the entire value-accrual thesis collapses back into risk mitigation mode.
Three forward scenarios
One potential scenario moving forward is a “durable thaw.”
If the current posture persists, expect more DAOs to flip fee switches, formalize budgets, and pursue US-compliant product wrappers. Key indicators to watch are the decline or flatlining of SEC crypto actions, incremental rulemaking, and more protocols copying the “protocol usage → token burn or treasury” model.
Another scenario is clarity without comfort. Laws move, but enforcement stays selective. Protocols engineer token-centric models to avoid “dividend optics,” more treasury routing, buybacks, and burns versus direct payouts.
Topics to watch are progress or stalls on bills like CLARITY and agency guidance details.
Lastly, a whipsaw is also a likely scenario. Political or legal backlash, or high-profile protocol failures, trigger a resurgence in enforcement.
Protocols pause value accrual, route more through foundations or offshore, or limit US exposure.
Even a friendlier SEC still says “fraud is fraud,” and a major scandal could reset the tolerance for tokenholder-directed revenue.
What’s at stake
Aave’s proposal doesn’t just ask tokenholders to endorse a budget. It asks them to endorse a thesis on what the next decade will look like: protocols competing as businesses, value accruing to tokens, and DAOs functioning as institutions.
That thesis depends on the US regulatory environment remaining more favorable than it was in 2022 through 2024.
The enforcement data, exam priorities, and dismissed cases suggest that the bet is rational at this time. Whether it holds for a decade is the open question.
Protocols are repricing themselves in anticipation of a window they believe is open. How long it stays open, and whether other jurisdictions follow or diverge, will determine whether this wave of value-accrual experiments becomes the new normal or another chapter in DeFi’s regulatory whiplash.