The founder said all Aave protocol and GHO revenue flows to the AAVE token and that the brand and software belong to holders, responding to a report that Kraken is in talks to buy a 15% stake at a $385 million valuation.
Aave founder Stani Kulechov on Thursday disputed a report that crypto exchange Kraken is in talks to take a stake in the largest decentralized lending protocol, saying the team would not sell its AAVE tokens cheaply.
“First off, there is NO WAY we’d sell AAVE at a 70% discount lol,” Kulechov wrote on X, addressing what he called “lots of discussions around Aave.” He said an allocation of AAVE held by Aave Labs is what “multiple market participants have discussed purchasing, directly or indirectly, through deeper long-term partnerships,” and that “the article’s framing is inaccurate.”
The valuation at the center of the report sits well below where the market prices the token. CoinDesk reported Thursday that Kraken, part of Payward Inc., was in talks to acquire a 15% stake in Aave at a $385 million valuation, citing three people familiar with the matter. That figure is about 69% below AAVE’s roughly $1.24 billion market capitalization, according to CoinGecko data.
Aave is the largest decentralized lending protocol, with about $11.6 billion locked in its main V3 markets, according to DefiLlama.
What Kraken Is Said to Be Weighing
The proposed deal would see Kraken invest 35,000 ether in return for 250,000 AAVE tokens and a 15% common equity stake in Aave Group, according to a document CoinDesk said it reviewed. At current prices, that AAVE allocation is worth about $20 million, per CoinGecko. CoinDesk reported the transaction was worth around $71 million and that Kraken was looking to syndicate it, and described the investment as the first in a series of deals to build out Payward Asset Management.
Kraken’s parent has been acquisitive ahead of a planned public listing. In April, Payward agreed to buy crypto derivatives exchange Bitnomial for up to $550 million, and CoinDesk reported in May that the company was raising capital at a $20 billion valuation.
Kulechov’s Revenue and Ownership Claims
Kulechov used the post to lay out how Aave directs its income. He said 100% of Aave protocol and GHO stablecoin revenue goes to the AAVE token under the “Aave Will Win” proposal, and that the arrangement extends to product revenue from the Aave App, Aave Pro and Swaps. No protocol or product revenue goes to Aave Labs, which he described as a service provider to the DAO responsible for building and growing Aave.
He said Aave generates $134 million in annualized revenue that flows to the Aave DAO. DefiLlama, which tracks onchain fees, shows Aave produced about $123 million in protocol revenue over the trailing year. Kulechov also said all intellectual property, including the Aave brand and any software built for Aave, belongs to the token.
Kulechov said the team is designing “Aavenomics 3.0,” which he said would include a new automated and non-discretionary buyback mechanism, without providing details or timing. He said Aave is building for the broader finance asset market, including tokenized real-world assets, and that “everyone at Aave Labs and Aave DAO works for $AAVE.”
AAVE rose about 5% over the 24 hours through Thursday, outpacing a roughly 3% slide in ether over the same period, according to CoinGecko.
The KelpDAO Overhang
The talks come as Aave continues to recover from the largest DeFi exploit of the year. On April 18, an attacker exploited KelpDAO’s LayerZero bridge to mint roughly $292 million of unbacked rsETH, then deposited the tokens on Aave and borrowed real assets against them, as The Defiant reported. Aave’s own smart contracts were not compromised, but the protocol was left with between $124 million and $230 million in modeled bad debt, according to a later incident report, and its total value locked fell by roughly $10 billion as users withdrew, The Defiant reported. LayerZero attributed the attack to the North Korea-linked Lazarus Group.
Aave coordinated a “DeFi United” relief effort with other protocols to restore rsETH backing, The Defiant reported, and Aave LLC later asked a New York court to vacate a restraining notice on about $71 million in recovered ether frozen by Arbitrum, The Defiant reported.
The reported terms come from a document and three anonymous sources cited by CoinDesk, not from Aave or Kraken, both of which declined to comment or did not respond to that outlet.
Kulechov said Aave will host its quarterly community call in the coming weeks, where the team plans to share updates on its roadmap.
