Aave's ecosystem has stirred up quite a controversy. The issue originated after the integration of CoWSwap, where the trading fees were directed to Aave Labs instead of the DAO treasury, potentially leading to a loss of nearly 10 million dollars each year. The community is quite dissatisfied with this, and some have proposed a radical solution: to directly confiscate the IP, brand, and domain assets held by Aave Labs.

Aave Labs responded quickly, hurriedly initiating a Snapshot vote to try to lock in their position on the brand asset issue.

The whole matter reflects an old problem: how to allocate power and profits between the team that initially incubated and operated the project and the decentralized DAO. The misdirection of funds is just the surface issue; the underlying controversy is how much equity Aave Labs, as the actual developer, should enjoy, while the community believes that these should be transparently distributed. The outcome of this internal struggle may affect the entire DeFi ecosystem's thinking about the relationship between project parties and DAOs.