[ARFC] $AAVE token alignment. Phase 1 - Ownership

Title: [ARFC] $AAVE token alignment. Phase 1 - Ownership

Author: Ernesto Boado (co-founder @bgdlabs)
Date: 2025-12-21

Summary

This is an Aave Governance proposal for AAVE token holders to request receiving control of Aave’s brand assets (domains, social handles, naming rights, etc), on a DAO-controlled vehicle (defined at a later stage) with strong anti-capture protections. Hence, asking for any party controlling them at the moment to deliver them both in ethos and in practice, no matter who that party is.

Motivation

Aave’s origins and long-term direction have consistently been framed around decentralization: a project initially funded via a decentralized mechanism (ICO), to be owned and governed by token holders through a real DAO, ideally self-sustainable, with both value and accountability expected to be inherent to the Aave DAO itself.

For years, the community has operated under the implicit expectation of alignment between contributors (e.g. Service Providers) and the DAO. In practice, for example, Aave Labs has been implicitly considered as a good-faith steward of communications channels, or important gateways such as aave.com on behalf of the broader ecosystem. Or BGD Labs, has been acting as implicit steward of others like the aave-dao Github organisation, where multiple contributors maintain different repositories.

But that implicit understanding, no matter who the third-party is, is not a healthy or beneficial for $AAVE long-term, as the fact of making the delegation stewardship explicit, is un-doubtfully only positive to $AAVE. Moreover, recent events have raised concerns on other community members in these forum, that these brand assets are being used to enable private monetisation and to support products the DAO has no practical say on, and is not the main value-recipient.

This proposal is therefore intended to bring explicit clarity and DAO control to how Aave-branded assets and intellectual property are, first, owned, and second, can be used, and the terms for it.

Specification

The proposal to vote is simple: should the Aave DAO and AAVE token holders regain full control over Aave’s brand, naming rights, and associated assets? With any third party currently controlling these assets (Aave Labs, BGD Labs, anybody), transferring them to the DAO via an appropriate DAO-controlled legal wrapper.

These “assets” rights include but are not limited to:

• The DAO deciding on “Aave” naming rights for products and organisations, not any third parties.
  • Examples: Usage of “Aave Labs”, “Aave App”, “Aave Web App”, “Aave Pro” or “Aave Horizon”.
  • This also includes representational titles, such as using executive titles of Aave (e.g., “CEO of Aave”) without proper clarification of separation.
• The DAO having ownership and control over all communication channels using “Aave” or implicitly associated names. This includes but is not limited to the “aave” handle on X, the Aave Discord, “aave” on Instagram, and any other social or public channel.
• The DAO having control and ownership over domains, including but not limited to aave.com, and any others with direct association (e.g., onaave.com).
• The DAO having ownership over online organisations, including but not limited to GitHub or npm. Example, “aave” and “aave-dao” Github organisations, “aave” npm, etc.

Additionally, this proposal approves the intention to establish strict mechanisms so that no third party can misuse these assets or privately benefit from them, implicitly or explicitly, with legally enforceable recourse by the DAO if such a situation arises.

And to seek legal advice if any of the counterparties don’t facilitate the process of ownership transfer.

This practical setup should be implemented by a provably neutral third party, independent from all Aave Service Providers, and legally accountable to AAVE token holders’ interests.

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived under CC0.